Petraeus, who resigned when the scandal about his extramarital affair with his biographer came to light, was a retired four-star army general who became the director of the CIA in September 2011 after a long and accomplished military career that included stints as commander of US and international troops in Iraq and, more recently, Afghanistan. His paramour Paula Broadwell wrote his worshipful biography All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, that “read something like a love letter to the general”. She graduated from West Point, first meeting him in 2006 when he visited Harvard where she was a graduate student. The affair began in late 2011. Investigation into the relationship was triggered when another woman who got in touch with Petraeus received threat messages, which were traced to Broadwell.
America is seen as a permissive society where what one does in his private life is no one’s business. Less permissive societies include this licence in their charge sheet of the US as a superpower in decline. What they miss, however, is the extremely traditional-conservative view in America of the family and the sex-related ethical codes each person in public life has to observe. Given the strictly airtight institutional functioning of the state, it is difficult to break the codes and survive — something which is possible in the less institutionally strong conservative-religious states critical of American ‘laxity of morals’. The truth is that these codes matter more to the American society than to some states in Europe. The judgment delivered on Petraeus by one American columnist contains this stricture, too: “Petraeus let down the CIA, the men and women in the army who looked to him for leadership and a moral/ethical grounding”.
America is still hands-off on morality and freedom of expression. And that goes back to the European experience in the 16th century when the states were dominated by religiosity and fought long wars about standards of piety. The religious wars gave way to the nation-state under the Westphalia Treaty that began the process of separating religion from the state. The experience of the nation-state in Europe is worth looking into. With the passage of time, the state converged on moulding public character by publicising penal codes while staying away from piety which could not be measured. ‘Civic virtue’ was produced negatively by deterring the citizen from committing the crimes listed in the penal code. Unlike some states elsewhere — and particularly, in Pakistan — the clerical community aggressively prescribes ‘worships’ to produce piety. For instance, one warlord of the Khyber Agency, called Mangal Bagh, laid down the law that anyone not attending the mosque for prayers would be punished. At times, Articles 62 and 63 in the Constitution of Pakistan are interpreted as measuring rods of personal piety.
Petraeus says he revealed no secrets of the state to his paramour but that may not be the real plaint of the Americans against him. Most of them focus on his wife of 38 years to whom he has been unfair. The easy verdict delivered on America after the Petraeus affair, by some clerical leaders in Pakistan, predicts the decline (zawal) of the United States after which the Muslims of the world will have opportunity to rise and organise state utopias to gain the moral right to rule the world. Actually, the Petraeus affair points to the capacity of the American system to deal with scandals of public office to everyone’s satisfaction.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 18th, 2012.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ