General David Petraeus

Excellent military strategist. Was sad to see him go.

AKA General BetrayUs.

I don’t think his long-term reputation took a real hit over his personal peccadillo, OP.

Trump asked him to be Secretary of Defense several times in 2016, and each time he "respectfully declined."

Isn't what got him in trouble was that he shit talked about Obama to a reporter or am I thinking of someone else?

BDF

Are you thinking of Mike Flynn, R5?

Maybe Stanley McChrystal

Petraeus was gung ho about the "forever war" in Afghanistan which IMO was pure folly to begin with. Britain and Russia failed to bring the country to heel so Dubya thinking the U.S. could do it was just messianic nonsense on his part.

Yes, the Taliban is horrible but they had come so far in reclaiming much of the country by the time the U.S. left, that it was an increasingly losing battle. The only way the Taliban will be defeated in Afghanistan is if the people of that country rise up and get rid of them.

Petraeus is the kind of general who can be very intelligent about some issues and very pig headed and misguided about others.

I always wonder how many generals who lobbied for staying in Afghanistan were getting kickbacks from defense contractors.

I think we should have left Afghanistan in December 2001.

Weird looking

He IS General David Petraeus!

Great general

We should have treated 9/11 as a crime and the perpetrators as nothing more than murderers. W massively overreacted, to say the least. I think he knows he was a terrible president and that's why he's kept such a low profile in the past 15 years.

The word is ugly, r11.

[quote] We should have treated 9/11 as a crime and the perpetrators as nothing more than murderers.

Isn't that what we did in response to the 1993 WTC bombing?

Yeah, r15. I'm pretty sure those guys are still in federal prison.

The response to 9/11 was completely insane on the global stage and it seems we've been flooded with muslim immigrants starting in 2005, which is incredibly stupid and almost suicidal.

Treating terrorism exclusively as a criminal law problem wasn't the answer.

I know you're frightened by their odd religion, strange clothing, spicy food and colorful ways but that doesn't mean they're dangerous, r17.

It's been proven over and over again that immigrants commit violent crimes at a lower rate than citizens. The guys who committed mass murder at Sandy Hook, Uvalde and the El Paso Walmart were all non-muslim naturalized citizens. Shit, we had a full-blown attempted insurrection in 1/2021 and I doubt a single Muslim immigrant participated.

Btw, the 9/11 hijackers had student, business and tourist visas. Not a single naturalized citizens or green card holder among them.

Sorry, the mass shooters weren't naturalized citizens. Just regular citizens.

Why not, r18? What's the point of mythologizing them and making them more than just killers? I think George Bush's reaction had something to do with his religion. He was a big believer in capital E evil.

R19, learn some history you fool and look beyond your little bubble.

- R17

If you were able to defend your point then you wouldn't resort to lame personal insults, r22.

Paula Broadwell, his crazy-eyed mistress, was DL catnip when the scandal broke.

R23, saying I was afraid of an odd religion was insulting. A dear friend was massacred on 9/11, I studied Islam and the islamic conquest for years since then, and have been watching the islamification of the west and even my own NYC borough, and the incredible amount of islamic terrorism around the globe since 9/11.

Anyone who knows nothing about any of this is a fool.

Bush doesn’t know shit, R14. He’s busy playing with the cats and asking Laura if she made his favorite spaghetti for dinner.

Because, R21, after 9/11, the lesson of WTC 1 is that responding to international terrorism wholly through the criminal law system was inadequate.

And paintin' pitchers of Barney and me in the bathtub R26!

What?