The political discourse these days is so trivial, hyperbolic, and lacking in thought that we might wonder if we are undergoing staging for a reality show rather than vetting potential Presidents of the United States.  The idea that there might be a philosophy of engagement for the most powerful nation on earth or an identified self interest is anathema to the candied brains of the current front runners.  The Democrat front runner sees the Libyan fiasco as a great accomplishment.  The Republican front runner wants to get rid of NATO and demands fools gold from other allies to maintain positions in the world that long have been critical to the nation’s self interest.  The current President uses political calculus rather than in-depth analysis to attempt a policy of retrenchment.  As a result, his concept of retrenchment waffles between red lines and withdrawals, disdain for his enemies capabilities and inept, pinprick reactionary responses to threats.  Is there anybody left who has thought this through?

Well, there is someone.  Someone who could have been President, but ruptured his bond with integrity and took himself out.  General David Petraeus, who served both Republican and Democrat Administrations and was the strategic genius behind the Iraq surge that finally won the Iraqi conflict, only to have it dissolve with the forced withdrawal of his carefully and painfully won stabilizing force.  The general committed political hari-kari when he exposed three classified documents to his biographer mistress, who as an intelligence officer additionally had classified document clearance.  It resulted in a very public humiliation by the Obama  Administration by Petraeus, who was forced to resign as CIA Director, and a Justice Department prosecution that led in 2015 to 2 years probation and a 100 thousand dollar fine.  The four star general’s career was over, and the unique means of his political demise takes on special focus when weighed against the massively larger security breach that was brazenly propagated by Secretary of State Clinton. Ms. Clinton, who could very well be our next President.

It is David Petraeus, not Hillary Clinton, who is banished to the wilderness.  We should remind ourselves however who General Petraeus is, because the old war horse has a soaring intellect and much yet to teach, if we are willing to listen.  David Petraeus was in the top 5% of his 1974 graduating class at West Point, the top graduate of his 1983 class at the 1983 US Army Command General Staff College, and subsequently earned a MPA and PhD in International Relations from Princeton University.  As a commanding intellectual, Petraeus proved equally adept at the real testing ground of soldiering, becoming a commissioned Army Ranger, promoted to commanding a battalion of the famed 101st Airborne Division, a brigade with the 82nd Airborne Division and eventually the commanding major general of the 101st in the second Gulf War combat assault on Baghdad, Karbala and Mosul.

What tied Petraeus’s unique balance of intellectual depth and combat assertiveness into success was the depth of his own philosophical development in concepts of counter insurgency.   Petraeus saw counter insurgency as requiring creation of security and stability by the twins of tactical force and political compromise, achieving the trust and the buy in of those he was asked to defend.  Nowhere did he succeed more profoundly then when he was asked to command the surge of US forces in 2007 in the desperate attempt to salvage the floundering US effort to pacify Iraq. Recognizing the Anbar Awakening for what it was, Petraeus presciently identified the appropriate winners and losers and supported his winners until they could assert their own control.  The success of the surge was so dramatic, that the key issue of the 2008 presidential campaign was lost to then candidate Obama. By 2010, the Obama Administration, noting that Iraq was so pacified that US Army deaths due to monthly training accidents exceeded combat deaths, declared a stable Iraq as their Greatest Achievement, and promptly threw it all away by not renewing the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.  All of the hard work and sacrifices of the American effort in Iraq came to nothing as the black anarchy of death rapidly seeped into the vacuum.

Obama requested Petraeus’s help in Afghanistan and then the CIA in an effort to contain Petraeus rapidly rising political star, before Petraeus removed himself as a political foe through his own foible.  Nobody was more relieved then Obama.

Petraeus might have been the next in line of the perfect citizen soldier statesmen, such as Washington, Grant, Marshall, and Eisenhower that helped this nation out of its doldrums in the past.  Instead his personal vanity led to foolish weakness that has deprived us of this generation’s great leader.  Petraeus thankfully has not given up on helping format a way out of our current international morass.  In a Washington Post OpEd, Petraeus helps suggest the principles in countering the plague of radical Islam, that could direct future Administrations to a restoration of stability in this most unstable world.  His Five Big Ideas in the OpEd reflect Petraeus’s philosophical underpinnings he has previously described for breaking sclerotic impasses and achieving Institutional Change: First: Get the Big Ideas Right. Second: Communicate the Big Ideas Effectively. Third: Oversee Big Idea Implementation. Fourth: Capture the Lessons Learned, Refine, and Repeat the Process.  The current opinion piece mirrors the foundational Big Idea concept. Petraeus defines the Five Big Ideas as :

1. Recognition that ungoverned spaces contribute the agar dish of chaos that draw radicals and allow them to flourish.
2. Radical Islamists will not confine their attacks to their lairs or strongholds.
3. The U.S. can not absolve itself of responsibility as the singular world leader capable of coordinating a counter insurgency
4. The path to success will be comprehensive, multi-faceted, involve allies and friends,   and not just precision strikes and special operations.
5. Victory ( and Petraeus does not see U.S. self interest in something short of victory) will require sustained U.S. effort for extended periods, defined by conditions on the ground, not enforced timetables.

What the general is describing is nothing more than the reversal of the last seven years of U.S. strategy of leaving the chaos of the world for others to solve, and retrenching to the role of leading from behind.  Such strategy has led to propagation of Syria’s catastrophic collapse, Iraq’s dissolution, ineptly permitted by  a puppet government of the Iranian mullahs that lost the Anbar to the ISIS monsters, sacrificed the Yazidis, offended the Kurds, and seek to destroy the Sunni ,  and the Libya, Mali, Somali, and Nigeria calamitous infernos of Mad Max warscapes.  I could easily see where it might be long past time to reverse such strategy.  Unfortunately, the political discourse would suggest we may  be willing to elect even more wrong way thinking approaching at its extreme, real bone headed logic.

There is real thinking out there.  If the country is willing to overlook completely profligately amoral and sustained behavior from its leading candidates, could it possibly overlook a brief lapse in a career of brilliance for our nation’s sake?

Where have you gone, General Petraeus, Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you woo,woo,woo…