The Marching Camp (and Mating Habits) of Rome’s Military

by Ilana Mercer

There’s David Petraeus, former CIA director, formerly a four-star general who cultivated his own celebrity. There’s his mistress-cum-stalker, the bombastic, narcissistic Paula Broadwell, who despite – or, rather, because of – her pockmarked character has been propelled to prominence by the country’s elites.

There’s Petraeus’ even skankier BFF (Best Friends Forever), Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, and her dysfunctional twin. Primped like street walkers, the twins can be seen in pictures, flanking their BFF and his ungroomed, graying wife, Holly Petraeus.

The fawning press takes the position that this – the flotsam and jetsam of American society – is indeed an aristocracy of talent and merit. Broadwell, they tell us, was soul-mate and intellectual companion to our grandiose general. Their mating was a meeting of minds. Woe is me!

In the tradition of this "meritocracy" is U.S. Marine General John Allen. Mentored by Petraeus, Allen is the top American commander in Afghanistan, and candidate for supreme commander of NATO. Allen and Kelley were caught in flagrante. As a shrinking segment of America toiled to support these ponces in-style, the two had been exchanging 20,000 to 30,000 steamy, pixelated pages over the course of two years.

On behalf of the twin sister of the Tampa tease, Allen and his mentor Petraeus went so far as to join forces and intervene in a (no doubt sordid) child-custody dispute, heard in the District of Columbia Superior Court.

Petraeus’s paramour blew her cover as the lover some months back. The pushy, dumbbell-obsessed lightweight is said to have threatened the cheap-looking BFF (Kelly). One source dismissed the threat as a mere "cat fight"; the other hyped it as a "stay away from my guy, or else" broadside. (And the difference between these "barbed" observations?)

Described by ABC’s Brian Ross as a "name-dropping, social-climbing, bored socialite, who ingratiated herself to the brass through parties and favors," the Tampa tease’s grating self-importance played out on a 911 call," in which she demands protection from the media. "‘Cause I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability" she told the dispatcher in Kim-Kardashian twang.

Why appeal to the rights of private property, when you enjoy the prerogatives of celebrity?

As for Broadwell’s romp through elite institutions stateside and abroad: A graduate of West Point, Broadwell holds degrees from and a research associate’s position at Harvard. She was made a poster girl for "Inspired Women Magazine." By invitation of our country’s cognoscenti, Broadwell took her groupie tour to C-SPAN’s Book TV, and on the speaker’s circuit. (Bristol Palin is there too, commanding between $15,000 and $30,000 a pop.)

Richly revealing is the Ph.D. in "Petraeus" on which Broadwell is "working." Broadwell’s "thesis" tells you all you need to know about intellectual life in the West.

This Anatomy-of-a-Leader dissertation was green-lighted by the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, no less, where Broadwell was accepted as a Ph.D. candidate.

"The description of Broadwell’s doctoral research," reports a Forbes magazine academic, "is almost identical to 'her publisher’s summary of [the book] All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."

Not only has Broadwell’s praise to Petraeus been accepted as a doctoral dissertation, but it would appear that this affectionate biography was ghostwritten by one Vernon Loeb.

I rest my case. Military top brass and the brassy broads who attach themselves to Rome’s Army do not stand aloof from the state and its supermarket culture.

Its evil imperial reach notwithstanding, the military is manacled by doctrinaire mediocrity, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action (fem and other), and every postmodern pox imaginable.

And this is only the froth on the top. I wonder what next big shoe is fixing to drop.

Copyright © 2012 Money and Markets

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