On Petraeus and Westhusing

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What to make of this? The ethical, philosopher Army officer with an appreciation for ancient Greek "arête" gets an anonymous letter allegedly incriminating the contractors under his command. The letter basically states that the very foundation of the Iraq mission over which he and Petraeus are responsible has collapsed. He asks around, gets some information, and then has to decide what to do with what he has learned. He realizes that he is scheduled to return home from Iraq in a mere six weeks. So he then writes a letter to Major General Fil stating that there is no basis for the claims. Nothing to see here. Everything is fine with the operation.

Eight days later, he’s dead.

One possibility is that Westhusing knew how badly things were going as far as the Iraqi Security Forces were concerned—that he believed the contents of the anonymous letter were true, and that he had seen other things that told him they were true. But perhaps in an effort to maintain the image of his beloved and honorable Army, he couldn’t bring himself to publicly find the allegations true. He couldn’t deal with the idea that his Army could be operating in such a way. Perhaps his sense of guilt over covering up the transgressions made him take his own life.

Another possibility is that he knew how badly things were going, but wanted to keep it quiet because he only had a few weeks left in Iraq—and he didn’t want to make waves that would not only keep him there longer, but could also endanger his career and reputation and the reputations of those above him. Here again, perhaps the guilt over doing such a thing ate away at him to the point that he decided he couldn’t live with himself anymore.

But there is a third, more sinister, possibility. What if Westhusing was pressured or coerced, by the contractors or his superiors (Petraeus or Fil), to find that nothing was going wrong? In that case, what could Westhusing have done?

If that were the case, he would have had, of course, two options: he could blow the whistle anyway, or he could "go along" with whoever was pressuring him. Let’s say Westhusing was coerced into keeping it quiet. Could it be that this drove him to commit suicide shortly before he was to leave? Could it be that his sense of honor was so highly developed that he could neither turn on his own Army, nor live with himself for not blowing the whistle? Maybe.

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http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/on_petraeus_and_1.html

This diary entry/essay is in two parts. The above excerpt is from Part 2.

He was playing the CYA game, and there is no honor in that. Honor is when you do the right thing regardless of what will happen.

If he did commit suicide then he took the easy way out and the deaths of other troops and civilians that may result from his "sense of honor" being more important then doing the right thing, are on his head along with Bush and his cabal!

He has very little honor, if any, and he's a liar.

and has been for a long time now, isn't paying attention. Thoroughly corrupt, top to bottom. Just take a look at the course of events in Afghanistan and Iraq.