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| "Saving the Guns" at Maiwand |
While Washington, a city of wingless drones and worker-bees, is easily titillated by the private indiscretions of its
hero generals,
US Person questions how a general
responsible for a failed counterinsurgency in Afghanistan can be put on the same pedestal as, for example, an Admiral Lord Nelson. Notwithstanding, the larger question of
how far the government can invade citizens' private lives and read private communications is completely ignored by breathless corporate talking heads. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act allows federal law enforcement to intercept and read personal electronic information with only an administrative subpoena, a loophole that should be fixed. In the case of General Petraeus the FBI determined in early days that no classified information was compromised. The investigation should have ended there, but in the
worst tradition of J. Edgar Hoover the snooping continued into what is essentially a private failing, and the affair it is now being
blown up by the CMM into a melodramatic sex scandal worthy of Congressional prying. Official Washington has lost any sense of proper perspective when it comes to sex, and especially sex engaged in by politically ambitious individuals.