Bordel Militaire Controle: That was the
rather bureaucratic term applied to official "supervised military
bordellos" run by the French Army during much of the 20th century.
Clear-eyed French defence officials of the First World War conceded that some
proportion - and perhaps a large proportion - of the soldiers whom they
deployed in expeditionary settings would seek to satisfy their carnal urges
when and where they could, and that generally no good would come of it.
They considered that burgeoning prostitution, a hostile and alienated
local populace, and rampant disease would undermine social support for the
troops, and their fighting abilities. And so, exercising the rigorous logic
characteristic of the culture which gave us Descartes, they reasoned that
rather than wringing their hands, it would be better to set up
medically-supervised institutions that would at least limit the negative
results of behaviour which they could not otherwise hope to adequately
control.
Such an unsentimental application of moral reason is foreign to tender
American sensibilities, but even puritanical US officials - after being
forced during World War II to deal with the undisciplined appetites of
conscript armies - eventually had to accommodate the fact that unless they
took preventive measures, venereal disease would do to American armies what
the Axis Powers could not.
Perhaps a bit closer to home, earnest American moralists of the
current day who preach "abstinence-only" sex education in a
sex-obsessed culture, and who have questionably passing acquaintance with
relevant statistics concerning teen pregnancy, are being badly embarrassed by
those more practical souls who supplement their preaching with ready access
to contraceptives.
"In the absence of a crime and
dereliction of professional responsibility, the matter should have ended
there, with none of us the wiser, and a highly dedicated and competent
public official still at work for his country."
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I mention these as examples of the reasoned efforts of honest,
clear-minded people to accommodate high-minded moral values to the practical
realities of ordinary human behaviour. They stand in sharp contrast to the
latest spate of puerile nonsense currently on such garish display in
Washington.
One doubts that there is anywhere on the planet so remote as to have
been spared the myriad details of the sex scandal that has claimed the career
of General David Petraeus, most lately Director of the CIA. Still, it is
worth briefly reviewing the core facts of the case, as they have been
revealed to us: A woman in Tampa complains to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation of threatening e-mails sent from an anonymous source. The FBI
investigates, and finds them to have been sent by another woman residing in
North Carolina. Scrutiny of this woman's e-mail reveals that she is involved
in an illicit affair with General Petraeus. After a thorough investigation,
including interviews with both Petraeus and the woman, it is determined that
the offending e-mails neither meet the threshold for criminal harassment, nor
has there been any security breach involving Director Petraeus's
communications with his paramour.
That is where this investigation should have ended. It was appropriate
that FBI officials, who might have been concerned about the future potential
for blackmail of a senior US official with access to highly sensitive
national security information (of whom, by the way, there are many thousands
of others), should inform that person's superior (in Petraeus's case General
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence). In the natural course
of these events, CIA security officials - whose duty it is to guard such
confidential personal information zealously - would have insisted that
General Petraeus make a clean breast of the matter to them in order to help
ensure that he could not be suborned later by, say, a hostile intelligence
service that might independently learn of his affair. In the absence of a
crime and dereliction of professional responsibility, the matter should have
ended there, with none of us the wiser and a highly dedicated and competent
public official still at work for his country.
Yes, it would be better if all those many thousands of individuals
entrusted with safekeeping of America's national security secrets - and the
rest of us, as well - could be relied upon to lead unerringly virtuous lives,
both public and private. It would be better if they never abused drink, felt
financial difficulty, or succumbed to the lure of messy sexual dalliances.
But the fact is that some of them will: It is an actuarial certainty. The US
Intelligence Community has long understood this, and has mechanisms in place
to deal with such peccadilloes privately, while limiting the scope for others
to exploit the personal vulnerabilities thus revealed. This is only sensible.
But in the case of General Petraeus, none of what should have happened
did happen. The FBI did not close down its investigation. Instead, it
continued to search, we are told, "for some link between Petraeus and
the harassing e-mails", the ones that they had already found not to be
criminal. Why this degree of solicitousness on the part of these over-dedicated
public servants? Well, let us not forget that a criminal case involving a
high-profile figure is the sort of thing that gets faceless Justice
Department bureaucrats noticed.
Such opportunities should not be passed up. Before long, FBI agents
were sharing information concerning General Petraeus's private life quite
liberally as their feckless "investigation" continued. By the time
word reached General Clapper, one presumes that it was the certainty of
imminent mass public mortification that induced him to suggest Petraeus
resign. At that point the floodgates of salacious gossip, invariably sourced
in a fully complicit media to "anonymous" government sources,
opened wide - a perfect example of "your American tax dollars at work".
"The most celebrated military
officer of his generation - a public servant of rare competence and
dedication - has been unnecessarily hounded from public life."
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The reader should not be fooled by the supposed trove of
"classified documents" subsequently found in a raid of the former
mistress' home. The FBI, stung by the nascent criticism of having thoroughly
violated the privacy of two citizens who have committed no crimes and then
driving a campaign of public opprobrium in the bargain, is hell-bent to find
some wrongdoing to which it can point as justification.
The fact that a reserve Army officer who possesses security clearances
and has spent years engaged in research in which she was being actively aided
by many serving military personnel turns out to have official military
documents in her possession should come as no great surprise. No one - even
in the FBI - has had the temerity thus far to claim there is any substantive
compromise of national security in any of this material. At the end of the
day it is most likely that such violations of document protocol as may have
been committed will merit only administrative sanction at best.
No one is coming out of this episode looking righteous: Not the
protagonists, not the law enforcement community, not the pandering media, and
not the scandal-obsessed public. But in the end, the most celebrated military
officer of his generation - a public servant of rare competence and
dedication - has been unnecessarily hounded from public life, and his
continued service to the country has been lost. And his example will not be
lost on the most senior public officials, who must know that, if ensnared in
a compromising situation, any attempt to seek official help will very likely
not protect them, but instead assure their public humiliation and private
destruction.
Americans appear to be mightily enjoying this spectacle, whatever
their protestations to the contrary. Theirs is a childish and hypocritical
culture, as it has always been. But they should know: Infantilism comes at a
price.
Former CIA station chief Robert
Grenier heads ERG Partners, a financial consultancy firm.
The views expressed in this article
are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial
policy.
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