Maureen Dowd, "Reputation, Reputation, Reputation": The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Yesterday, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni rushed to the defense of Paula Broadwell, asserting that "it's the women in these situations who are often subjected to a more vigorous public shaming — and assigned greater responsibility" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/frank-bruni-siren-and-spook-i-could.html). Today, we have New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd telling us that General Petraeus, "[a]ccustomed to being a demigod, expert at polishing his own celebrity and swaying public opinion," was responsible for Obama's escalation of US ground involvement in Afghanistan.

In her latest Times op-ed entitled "Reputation, Reputation, Reputation" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/dowd-reputation-reputation-reputation.html?_r=0), Maureen Dowd concludes:

"Petraeus rolled the younger commander in chief into going ahead with a bound-to-fail surge in Afghanistan, just as, half-a-century earlier, the C.I.A. had rolled Jack Kennedy into going ahead with the bound-to-fail Bay of Pigs scheme. Both missions defied logic, but the untested presidents put aside their own doubts and instincts, caving to experience.

. . . .

So many more American kids and Afghanistan civilians were killed and maimed in a war that went on too long. That’s the real scandal."

Those who read this blog know that I have consistently opposed America's disastrous war in Afghanistan. But to now lay the blame on Petraeus for Obama's plodding decision, taken after many months of procrastination, to expand the fighting while at the same time providing the Taliban with a timetable for withdrawal? This was the fecklessness and fatuousness of an egoistic president attempting to show he could also be tough at the cost of thousands of dead and $6 billion per month. Sorry, Maureen, but there can be no shifting the blame.

Peculiar how the Queen of Snark, who in 2009 "inadvertently" lifted language from another writer, is now happy to snicker at the misfortune of Petraeus. Go ahead and laugh, Maureen, but this man spent a lifetime serving his country to the best of his ability.

Also peculiar how Dowd, so titillated by the downfall of Petraeus, has refused to acknowledge in her columns the depravity of the Obama administration's response to what occurred in Benghazi.

At a time when America is witnessing the resurrection of al-Qaeda, is facing imminent confrontation with Iran's crazy mullahs owing to Obama's impotence, and is so desperately in need of a strategy to prevent Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles from finding their way into the hands of terrorists across the globe, David Petraeus will be sorely missed.