11.20.12

Nerds and young men big on Call of Duty, not so much on the real thing

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 2:49 pm by George Smith

The twisted, ludicrous nature of American life can’t be exaggerated.

From the wire:

An animated version of the fallen US spymaster [David Petraeus] has a part in what is expected to be the top selling video game of the year – freshly-launched military espionage action title Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Petraeus is promoted to US Secretary of Defence in the game, set in a fictional near-future, serving under a woman president who resembles Hillary Clinton …

Players following the game’s main storyline will come upon Petraeus taking custody of a terrorist prisoner on a virtual aircraft carrier called the USS Barack Obama …

From a Philly newspaper, on two of America’s most famous generals, both in worthless drag on war, then and now:

Aside from the strategic implications, the Petraeus myth has inflicted a serious human cost. Since the former general’s flawed strategy was applied in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of American service members have paid for it with their lives, limbs, and emotional well-being.

It’s worth noting that when Gen. William Westmoreland told Congress how well the Vietnam War was going in April 1967, he was hailed as a hero and interrupted by applause 19 times. But years later, when an honest evaluation of his performance was made and the truth was laid bare, his name became a byword for military failure.

Before too many more get carried away lauding Petraeus with such superlatives as “one of the great American battlefield commanders,” let’s look at what actually happened in Afghanistan …

Hat tip to Pine View Farm.

There is a very salient difference between Westmoreland and Petraeus. Westmoreland was brought down by the Tet Offensive. The latter was brought down by his penis and a jealous lover.

Which says more about how bad things have turned in this country, along with the annoying fact that more of the country’s citizens play a silly game about special operations in the war on terror than fight in it.

Also, thanks to Frank, a pointer to another column in the same vein:

It couldn’t be clearer now that, from the shirtless FBI agent to the “embedded??? biographer and the “other other woman,??? the “fall??? of David Petraeus is playing out as farce of the first order. What’s less obvious is that Petraeus, America’s military golden boy and Caesar of celebrity, was always smoke and mirrors, always the farce, even if the denizens of Washington didn’t know it.

Until recently, here was the open secret of Petraeus’s life: he may not have understood Iraqis or Afghans, but no military man in generations more intuitively grasped how to flatter and charm American reporters, pundits, and politicians into praising him. This was, after all, the general who got his first Newsweek cover (“Can This Man Save Iraq????) in 2004 while he was making a mess of a training program for Iraqi security forces, and two more before that magazine, too, took the fall. In 2007, he was a runner-up to Vladimir Putin for TIME’s “Person of the Year.??? And long before Paula Broadwell’s aptly named biography, All In, was published to hosannas from the usual elite crew, that was par for the course.

In 2007, on the old blog, I collected some of the Petraeus hagiography from daily newspapers. It’s a remarkable collection:

Petraeus, the physical fitness freak

“A physical fitness buff, Petraeus was accidentally shot in the chest at the firing range in Fort Campbell in 1991. His surgeon was Bill Frist . . . –Clarksville Leaf Chronicle

“He’s a fitness fanatic, a PhD in international relations from Princeton, an expert on counterinsurgency tactics and known for his ambition …” –Toronto Globe and Mail

“Petraeus, a counterinsurgency expert and an intensely competitive fitness nut …” –Slate

Lickspittle and bootlicking

“IT WAS A different war back in November 2003 … Petraeus’s office was 100 percent USA, with its military issue desk, topography maps, and his battle gear — a vest, helmet, and boots — mounted on a wooden cross and standing at the ready. His running shoes — Petraeus is a marathon runner — were neatly placed in a corner.

“And in the months that followed the invasion, Petraeus, armed with his Princeton doctorate and his reputation as a ‘warrior scholar,’ was credited with finding perhaps the best balance of hard and soft power in Iraq … Petraeus found a way to use his new assignment — and his intellect — to influence events on the ground despite being stationed in Kansas. –Charles M. Sennott, the Boston Globe

Compared to T.E. Lawrence, Robert E. Lee, Obi Wan Kenobi and Steven Jobs.

“[Petraeus] looks more like the real Colonel T. E. Lawrence, not the too-beautiful version played by Peter O’Toole in the movies. Like Lawrence, Petraeus is a little bit on the plain side, and he’s short like Lawrence, with the slightly stooped posture of a hardcore long-distance runner who simply can’t give it up despite his fifty-three years… A Washington Post article in November 2005 described Petraeus’s recall from Iraq as akin to Jefferson Davis deciding to pull General Robert E. Lee from the field of battle early in the Civil War…[Petraeus presided] over the Jedi Knights, which is the nickname given to the students of the college’s elite School of Advanced Military Studies—sort of the Army’s version of Top Gun. These are the guys whom the generals turn to when they want to take down some Death Star.” –Esquire

“By naming Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus as the top American military commander in Iraq, President Bush has done roughly what Apple Computer’s board of directors did when they brought back Steve Jobs in 1996: turned to a popular figure with a reputation for brilliant innovation to solve seemingly intractable problems.” –San Francisco Chronicle

PowerPoint slides of wisdom

“And so Petraeus also has his own version of [T.E. Lawrence’s] Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which in his case number thirteen. It’s a simple PowerPoint package of thirteen slides of lessons learned in the war.” –Esquire, again

A brilliant scholar. Did we say brilliant enough times? Well, he’s brilliant!

“Petraeus is regarded as an incisive leader and a ‘warrior-scholar.’ The 1974 West Point graduate also has a doctorate from Princeton University.” –CNN

“You see, David Petraeus is one of a rare breed of senior scholar-soldiers who knows—and can convince others, drawing on extensive historical facts…” –Family Security Matters

“Petraeus is a Warrior/Scholar in the classic tradition…” –typical random dimwit at a newspaper, the name of which I forgot to jot down

“There is no question that General Petraeus, your new military commander in Iraq, is a brilliant scholar and military mind … ” –Westwood Press

“David Petraeus. This man is probably the most brilliant person in uniform, genius IQ and Ph.D. from Princeton.” –Bloomington Pantagraph

“Members of his staff, that I know, say that he is the most brilliant man they know…” –The American Thinker

“Petraeus truly is a brilliant talent…” –The One Republic

“A guy like Petraeus is so ferociously creative and brilliant, sometimes that makes the buttoned-down senior military leadership nervous…” –The Guardian

“He’s a brilliant general who has already spent years in Iraq.” –Robertson County Times

“His cordial relations with the media, and the Newsweek cover story that depicted him as a potential savior for the Bush administration, rankled some of his superiors in the Pentagon…” Eudora News, Kansas, originally from the WaPost.

The hometown newspaper, overjoyed that someone, now a big deal, who lived there a long time ago will go to Iraq

” ‘David was always well groomed, one of the guys who had the right personality …’He was always on time, always had his homework done, always had a smile.'”

“…[A] flip through the general’s high school yearbook reads like a U.S. Military Academy admissions brochure: President of the ski club; striker on the 1969 championship soccer team; National Honor Society scholar; actor; linguist.

“In his West Point yearbook four years later, Petraeus was remembered as ‘always going for it in sports, academics, leadership, and even his social life.’ The accolades have continued. These days, Petraeus is seen as one of the Army’s premier intellectuals, with a doctorate from Princeton to bookend his West Point education. His drive and physical toughness — he’s an obsessive athlete and survived an accidental M-16 round to his chest…At 5 feet 9 and 155 pounds, the general has been compared to ‘an intensely compacted hank of steel wire.'” –The Cornwall Record

Hey, here’s a bit of wisdom from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Your horse would trot as well were some of the brags dismounted.

Rude, and it totally rules. The Echoplex effect is particularly cool.

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