It has been quite the tumultuous week for national
news. President Barack Obama was
re-elected on November 6th, but that’s old news now, due to the
shocking revelation from David Petraeus.
The CIA director resigned last Friday, citing an extramarital affair as
the reason for his resignation, saying that he had shown “extremely poor
judgment.” I don’t disagree with
that. Upon closer investigation, though,
some other facts come out that muddy up the waters a little bit.
The affair was with David Patraeus’ official biographer,
Paula Broadwell (a married mother of two children, by the way). She made several trips to Afghanistan with
Petraeus as his official biographer when he was still a general in the United
States Army (and the face of the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq). According to Patraeus, though, the affair did
not begin until after he took the position as director of the CIA, which was
September 6, 2011. None of this really
bothered me at first. I hate to see
another reminder of the failings of our country’s leaders, but it is nice to
see someone admit fault instead of covering for it by saying something along
the lines that they “deserve to be happy.”
However, there is more to the story.
Let’s start with how this all got unfolded. If you stopped here, it sounds as if he felt
guilty, broke off the affair, and resigned all in a relatively brief period of
time. That’s not the way it
happened. Enter Jill Kelley, a family
friend of David and Holly Petraeus’s (Holly is David’s wife). While Paula Broadwell had been following
David as his official biographer, she had been suspicious of Broadwell, saying
that she was far too “gushy” about him.
It’s worthy of note that Broadwell is 40 years old and Petraeus is
60. Earlier this year, Kelley began
receiving anonymous emails that she found so threatening that she took them to
the authorities. Upon investigation, the
FBI tracked them to Paula Broadwell, and found emails exchanged between her and
Petraeus. In the interest of being
delicate, I will say that the emails between Broadwell and Petraeus made it
crystal clear that an affair was taking place between them. So this was not a result of the conscience of
David Petraeus, but of an investigation of the FBI. However, that’s what I find the most
upsetting. According to Petraeus, he
ended the affair four months ago. In
other words, what really happened was that four months after the fact, someone ripped
back the rug and he resigned since his dirt was uncovered for the world to see.
There is some positive things in all of this: he did admit that it
showed extremely poor judgment, he was the one who broke the affair off, he did
it before he got caught, and as of yet he and his wife have not divorced, which
I hope means they are working it out as married couples should do in these
situations. However, he didn’t apologize
until he had no choice. There’s
something here that we can learn from: don’t be sorry you got caught. Learn true repentance instead. Aim for true integrity and selfless service
and this won’t happen in the first place.
If you lose your place and it does, have the sincerity to correct in the
best way possible. That will save you
from these kinds of headaches in the future, and your loved ones will thank you
dearly for your honesty and integrity.
