Petraeus Blinded Like Belisarius by the Well-Clothed Emperor

Petraeus Affair The Sacrificial Blinding of the American Belisarius

By Winsip Custer

 

    National Review Magazine On-Line has called him a “modern Belisarius” on November 19^th, 2012.  That was 14 months after this reporter had made the comparison on September 14, 2011 in an article titled Petraeus,Westhusing and the Lessons of Belisarius.  The NRMOL comparison uses the analogy inappropriately.  The writer, Victor Davis Hanson, an honored historian who has taught at the numerous U.S. military academies and think tanks should have known better.  A professor at Stanford and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, Dr. Hanson's associates there include Condoleeza Rice,  Donald Rumsfeld, Edwin Meese and George Schultz.  Stanford University will, of course, be forever associated with its namesake, Leland Stanford, one of the  first U.S. Transcontinental Railroad's "Big Four".  It will also be associated with Myron Du Bain, president of the Stanford Research Institute and the "men who stare at goats" experiments of the CIA's MK-Ultra program.  Hanson sees the West as the giver of enlightenment through military conquest, a role that was honed by the Greeks.  In a recent discussion on his book on the Peloponesian Wars, Hanson explained that Iraq, Afghanistan and other tribally led regions are parasites. 

Victor Davis Hanson, military historian and
22nd Chester M. Nimitz guest lecturer at
Berkley arguing for the benefits of empire.

     Frederick Mellon, noted economist whose Eco-Echo-Micro-Macro Theory has convincingly argued that all humans and human organizations on planet earth, however enlightened they appear to be, are simply parasites sucking the resources out of a dying planet.  "Who are you going to believe?" asked Mellon.  "The truth or a nose picking professor who was probably part of du Bain's LSD experiments at Stanford and whose bad trip left him with a fixation on white soxs?"



The original text of Goebbels'
diaries are held by
The Hoover Institute.
Louis P. Lochner edited and
translated
Goebbels' diary and provided
the introduction.  Lochner
was Henry Ford's secretary.
Ford was a leading member of
the 1930's "Business Plot" foiled by
two-time Congressional Medal
of Honor winner,
General Smedley Darlington Butler.
 

    The Hoover Institute is no stranger to propaganda.  It domiciles the papers of Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels.  Dr. Hanson has been a staunch defender of Donald Rumsfeld who purchased the plantation where U.S. abolitionist Frederick Douglas was renditioned before his return to the South....."Misery Plantation".   If ownership of such a high profile icon in humanity's struggle against tyranny was intended to serve as a constant reminder to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeldt that forgetting history dooms one to repeat it, the Plantation's purpose was thwarted at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.

     A fifth generation California vineyard keeper, Hanson has written what critics have called a non-apologist's assessment of the American family farm.  Fields Without Dreams was a eulogy not a call to arms. 
     One review said of Hanson's book: "As we read this book it became clear that Professor Hanson's uniformly negative opinions of the people who now support themselves as professional farmers are truly clouded by his amateur status as a farmer. The sad thing is that he does not see that himself. In case you are wondering, his profession is, after all, that of College professor."  Another says that he personally knows Hanson and then provides a litany of Hanson's accomplishments in his family's California's grape and raisin business.  What is clear is that someone, perhaps Hanson's father or those of his powerful friends at Hoover ate sour grapes and set the children's teeth on edge when it comes to America's smaller farms.  We know, for example, that George Schultz's company, Bechtel, was involved in Bolivia's water wars whereby the World Bank promised clean water if the people signed over all their access to water, even rainwater, to the corporation which would charge the people about 20% of their annual household income.
    Recognizing the corporatization of the family farm, illustrated recently by ConAgra's multi-billion dollar purchase of Ralsco, Hanson's inclusion in the California wine culture puts him squarely within the company of Robert P. "Bobby" Koch, the Wine Institute's chief Washington lobbyist and husband of George Herbert Walker Bush's only daughter, Dorothy, sister of George Walker Bush.  Jenna Bush, Dorthy's neice, spent time after college writing a book about the poor of South America while touring the 100,000 acre family property near the headwaters of the Amazon just across the border of Bolivia and Brazil in Paraguay. 

    When one takes a good close gander at propaganda, however seemingly sophisticated and credentialed the source, it becomes evident that the truth never speaks for itself.  The truth must be championed.  If you cannot trust that the map that you are following is trustworthy, you are as likely to end up in Auschwitz or Abu Ghraib instead of your intended destination, Albuquerque.   Believe it or not, history is replete  with examples of  lighthouse keepers that move the light at night so that unsuspecting sailors trusting their bearings are misdirected to run aground for the salvage value of their ships and cargo....a fairly accurate analogy to the U.S. ship of state.

 

      The bizarre nature of the outing of not only General Petraeus, but also of a colleague, General John R. Allen, has Republicans and Democrats pointing fingers wildly at what they assert was a politically motivated action.  Either it was to cover over what Petraeus knew of the Benghazi embassy attack or it was, according to some Democrats, a public disclosure that was aimed at embarrassing Obama as inept.   His opponents claimed he should have known that the George W. Bush appointed head of the Iraqi “surge” and General whom Obama kept in the saddle to become the  new CIA Director, was seriously compromised.    

     The assumption is that the President would have handled all of these events differently, more expeditiously, with greater wisdom and decorum, if he were an effective leader who had prevented the death of four in Benghazi as George W. Bush had failed to do with 2,753 at the World Trade Center in spite of advanced warning of terrorist plots to use domestic aircraft as missiles.  At the very least, it was being argued when the Petraeus story broke, that Obama should have been honest about the events in Benghazi and on the home front, allowing a celebrated U.S military officer to retire from public office graciously and gracefully with the least possible damage to his family, his wife and children and the organizations he has served.  Which if Obama was trying to protect his reputation is what would have happened through top-down pressure brought to bear on lower level FBI agents from Director Mueller long before the well-timed waste-bearing flatulence hit the politically spinning fan blades. 

     Was Petraeus that much different from William Jefferson Clinton or Barney Frank except for the absence of the Clinton/Lewinski power differential within the workplace and Frank's sexual orientation?  A tragedy is still a tragedy, but even sex scandals repeat themselves differently as these examples clearly show and with widely different outcomes.

   Unfortunately, a reasoned approach to the crisis and civil decorum is not what happened.  What happened is high school all over again.  The scandalous emails were, from all outward appearances, released in such a way to provide the greatest collateral damage like a terrorist bomb detonated in a town square during a community carnival,  like a fog of Agent Orange spray blasted to defoliate the underbrush of the U.S. Presidential election, or Corexit sprinkled into the froth to sink the grease and grunge that the nation's leaders had in a deeper sense created.  Why had not the NSA who reads every one's emails long ago read Petraeus' and Allen's even if the FBI hadn't and doesn't the NSA talk to the President?  Of course, Obama didn’t elevate Petraeus.  Bush did. 
     The decider of “Mission Accomplished”, yellow cake uranium and countless other political missteps put Petraeus in charge.  Petraeus' leadership was to  help fuel a planned terrorism-on-the-run out of control war, two wars, Iraq alone to have cost a measly $60 billion and which now sits at over $1.5 trillion and still the nation that we had a clear hand in breaking is a disgusting mess.   We were told by General Colin Powell we would fix what now remains an open sore and monument to the stupidity of war.  The dead and wounded?  How does one put a price tag on that?  
     One would think that George Walker Bush's ancestor was Texas Ranger Samuel Hamilton Walker for whom the Colt Walker pistol is named. Perhaps to the nutty filibustering fruitcake, that "gray-eyed man of destiny", William Walker.  Or that Bush's friends at Yale are heavily invested in everything from gunpowder, to lead mines, to tank track makers, military uniform contractors like General Patton's family who was a major supplier of WWII uniforms, or to spent ordinance picker-uppers and mine diffusers whose no-bid contracts with the Pentagon are mired in secrecy in a system that morphed from liberators to  the subject of Eisenhower's  departing advice and warning, ironically given from a war hero who had made a fine living off of the complex, expanded its arsenal like no other and was said by Harry Truman to have defeated the Nazis "only to become one."

   Petraeus has long been compromised.  Holly Petraeus was the West Point Commandant’s daughter.  Her husband appears to have been picked early for a major role in the U.S. military establishment.  In addition he had suffered a traumatic case of “friendly fire” at Fort Campbell, Kentucky where a soldier, according to various accounts of what happened, fell or tripped, accidentally (or on purpose?) perfectly perforating the young officer’s lung.  Rushed to the hospital his wound was closed by none other than George W. Bush’s closest ally in the Senate, Senator Dr. William "Bill" Frist from Tennessee, whose business partner at Columbia-HCA Hospitals, Richard Scott, went on to become the Governor of Florida where the two Generals unwisely succumbed to the affections and friendship of Mrs. Kelley, also a friend of the FBI agent who reported the General’s indiscretions.  How such a state as Florida became the playground for Mrs. Kelley is beyond most of us until we remember Jeb Bush and Texas' Richard Scott have been its governors with Scott's place in the annals of corporate fraud forever concreted by the $1.7 billion Columbia-HCA Medicare fraud fine his company paid before its failure and his $400 million severance package much of which he used to gain his cushy Florida government job.  Florida, where not only have the ethics of public service mutated, but where the effects of Global Warming have etched away the beaches where once Delores Hart, now a cloistered nun, was wooed on the silver screen by actor George Hamilton in Where the Boys Are in 1962.  Another 50 years and the remake will have the spring breakers partying on the beach in  front of the Florida's Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee.

    More significantly, General Petraeus was compromised in his role as the leading commander in Iraq’s Green Zone.   There, following a heated encounter with West Point’s top ethicist and beloved teacher-warrior and a man concerned with the concept of ‘just wars’…  a man who was charged with the training of an indigenous security force which had not been adequately considered before the invasion, Colonel Theodore “Ted” Westhusing, who would be "sullied no more", Westhusing died mysteriously, tragically and disbelievingly for many who knew him.  Westhusing’s story is told in Christian T. Miller’s book Blood Money and raises, without mentioning specifically Belisarius, the specter of a Belisarius-like drama unfolding.  The Westhusing confrontation with Petraeus followed within hours  by Westhusing’s questionable “suicide” shows that the two men were likely following the same course that led to Belisarious’ blinding.   Loyally do the Emperor's bidding and you will be blinded.  Each of the men in their own way were being sacrificed on the altar of the brutal power elites' tribal home-front protectionism that included the promulgation of endless war abroad and the camouflaging of family empire building through privatized security company revenue streams and no-bid defense business arrangements under the bigger banner of national patriotism

     Investigative reporters for Dunkelheitslügen, the German off-line political journal, Mort Zartorbach and Albert Teller Oppenheimer agree.  “You don’t have to be a nuclear physicist to see that this Petraeus case is nuttier than a Filbert orgy at a Brazil nut convention," said Zartorbach.

     “I’d say that the military in and around Tampa Bay, the old stomping ground of Mob boss, Carlos Trafficante, is probably trafficking in a network of toxic Tampa housewife wannabe babes all siliconed up  and  stooping, not just from the weight of the silicone,  to do anything to feel important.  Throw in an FBI agent with an irrational interest in the inner workings of the this twisted sludge and a Bond girl bimbo who likes to play with guns and walla!  Just what the newest Karl Rove or Lee Atwater ordered as a last minute attempt to swing the election away from Obama," said Zartorbach.

     “Behind all this is more than Petraeus’ interest in Broadwell’s behind.  The errant bullet through the General’s young lung patched by Senator Frist, would have had the effect of preparing him for a role in the military machinery as perfectly fitted to taking orders from the real powers behind the Presidency as a finely tuned transmission cog in the heart of a Mercedes Benz.  If Obama is slow to redirect this carefully orchestrated train wreck, his is no fool.  Petraeus could be counted on to  prolong the wars that Obama seems in no hurry to stop and to keep the greasing a tightly guarded secret.  Until the leaking emails, that is.   Now Petraeus is in a position to retreat from the front of the public and secret wars where he can do no real damage….now that  Westhusing and Pat Tillman are gone along with many of the Seal Team 6 that took out Osama Bin Laden,” said Oppenheimer noting that he agreed with many who thought that the timing on the Bin Laden capture and burial at sea seemed far too convenient.  "This is how Petraeus is blinded by the Emperor like Belisarius," said Oppenheimer.

     “I’d like to interview and investigate that soldier who fired the shot at Petraeus at Fort Campbell.  My bet is that he is dead or on some secret assignment in Manchuria,” said Zartorbach.  “I’d start with the premise that Frederick W. Humphries is closely connected to families deeply invested in the U.S. military complex’s historic families…..Brown,  Root,  Walker…that connection could be traced to U.S. defense contracting companies and mining operations or heavy equipment companies that benefit from the raping and pillaging of foreign nations for the mineral and other assets that can be extracted to extend the Empire, made up as they are of many smaller family business empires,” said Zartorbach as Oppenheimer noted that FBI Agent Humphries' wife is Sara Walker Humphries.

     “It’s business as usual,” said Zartorbach suggesting that the uninformed read General Smedley Darlington Butler’s book War Is A Racket and Col. Daniel Marvin’s Expendable Elite which he said "could just as easily been the title of a book about Belisarius as about Marvin's experiences as a Green Beret in Cambodia.   During the Viet Nam War Marvin's encounter with the CIA and U.S. political power echoes the courage of Col. Westhusing and Pat Tillman  in Iraq and Afghanistan, but unlike them Marvin lived to tell about it," said Zartorbach.  "When Marvin went to publish his story the Special Forces Association representing members of all U.S. Special Forces groups....Berets, Delta Force, Navy Seals, Army Rangers,  turned on him and sued him for libel in the most conservative state in the U.S., South Carolina.  Figuring that he'd not dare show up in court, Marvin, who refused the CIA orders to pull off the execution of the Cambodian prince, showed up in court and won the case.  Petraeus could one day tell the truth about his military experiences, but sadly the present situation takes away so much of his credibility that it's not likely that he would be believed by the discerning or, more to the point, that he could dodge another bout of "friendly fire" likely ordered  by shadowy figures whose closest thing to real combat is bird hunting. 

     General Smedley Darlington Butler's battle with the "Business Plotters" who planned the overthrow of FDR by asking Butler to lead a 500,000 soldier army in a coup d'tat was led by Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, Charles Lindberg and Prescott Bush whose  position as a director of the FBI targeted Union Bank, was joined by Hitler's banker, Fritz Thyssen.  Critics would say that Thyssen was jailed by Hitler in Germany, but that was after the Union Bank's dealings with Germany were already disclosed severely curtailing Thyssen's usefulness to the Nazis.  In the 1930's as with Henry Ford's earlier mission to keep Americans out of any militarized peace keeping role in the lead up to World War I with his peace initiative and "Ship of Fools", was the unparalleled access of Louis P. Lochner to Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and others at the top of the Nazi's mechanized pyramid of death and destruction. 
      
     The real truth about the Petraeus case in all likelihood, like the eyes of the blinded Belisarius who had done the emperor's dirty work only to be hauled up on who knows exactly what charges or like so many killed in Iraq and Afghanistan like Westhusing and Tillman, will never again see the sunlight of a new day.  Not without many more willing to be silenced like Westhusing and Tillman. Turning a blind eye leads inevitably to turning a blind eye.  Not turning an eye is to invite a sharp stick!  Few will pay that price and the evil ones bank on it.