Petraeus Affair

[Zelandakh]

I have been thinking a little more about this. Here is a simple (?) question: If Bill Clinton did not resign over Monica, why should Petraeus resign over Paula?

I suspect that Petraeus has ideas about a political career and thinks it is in his best interest to be seen to do the right thing now so that the affair does not permanently tarnish his image. He has plenty of cash in the bank and a reputation as a strong strategic thinker - how hard do you think it will be for him to find another senior posting until he has secured his position enough to make moves towards Washington again?

[blackshoe]

I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace_Electronic_Security_Act

This does not, in itself, quite do it, I think. Maybe there is more somewhere/

No it doesn't. As I read the article, the bill was never passed into law.

[blackshoe]

The way that this has been explained to me is that export regulations make "unbreakable" encrytion illegal for communications that cross the borders of the US, and emails are not restricted geographically. Software companies cooperate with the government on this as a practical matter, but you could theoretically use roll-your-own PGP or other encryption. If you could then make certain that your encrypted communication stayed within US borders, the fifth amendment would protect you unless law enforcement had some probable cause to force decryption.

This sounds like BS to me.

[blackshoe]

Another indicator of poor judgement? Shouldn't someone in his position be a better judge of character?

 

It's not like he'd just met her in a bar, she'd been spending time with him writing his biography.

Shouldn't someone in his position be perfect? :blink:

[PassedOut]

This sounds like BS to me.

Could be.

[kenberg]

Possession of basic decency and morals could be one fairly obvious difference. Pretty hard to draw conclusions about what someone should do by looking at what Bill Clinton actually did.

 

I was thinking of it more as an abstraction. Permit me to repose this as three questins:

 

1. If it is discovered that the married president of the United States is having an affair, should s/he immediately resign?

 

2. If it is discovered that the married head of the CIA is having an affair, should s/he immediately resign?

 

3. If the answers to 1. and 2. are different, why?

 

It seems to me that if the answer to question 1 is yes, then we had better take a lot of care in who is chosen as vice-president, and probably also take care in who is chosen Speaker of the House.

[y66]

Guest post from Adam Gopnik:

 

Petraeus, and his defenders and attackers alike, referred to his “poor judgment,” but if the affair had had anything to do with judgment it never would have happened. Desire is not subject to the language of judicious choice, or it would not be desire, with a language all its own. The point of lust, not to put too fine a point on it, is that it lures us to do dumb stuff, and the fact that the dumb stuff gets done is continuing proof of its power. As Roth’s Alexander Portnoy tells us, “Ven der putz shteht, ligt der sechel in drerd”—a Yiddish saying that means, more or less, that when desire comes in the door judgment jumps out the window and cracks its skull on the pavement.

 

The really big news of the week was that Roth had stopped writing fiction, for reasons of his own, one gathers, though it isn’t hard to imagine him awed into silence by what American reality had once again wrought. Let’s hope that a novelist’s retirement may be, like a soprano’s, quickly reversible. In the meantime, let’s recall, from “The Human Stain,” the narrator’s dream that, at the height of the Clinton imbroglio, someone had hung a banner from the White House reading, “A Human Being Lives Here.”

[barmar]

Yes, it's obviously not really judgement, it's self-control. I think the expectation (or hope, at least) is that people in positions of great power should have better self-control, so that lust doesn't lead them to do stupid things.

 

Is there any reason to believe that he'll take his oath of office more seriously than his marriage vows when in the heat of passion? If a woman can seduce Petraeus to cheat on his wife, is it far-fetched that she might be able to get him to divulge national secrets during pillow talk? We want leaders who aren't likely to give it up to Mata Hari-type spies.

 

I'm not really sure any of this is really the issue. Others have mentioned that affairs are not a big deal in other countries. I think much of the hoopla is simply because America is more puritanical in this respect. Most of the time, sex scandals kill political careers -- Clinton is a notable exception to the rule.

[PassedOut]

Is there any reason to believe that he'll take his oath of office more seriously than his marriage vows when in the heat of passion? If a woman can seduce Petraeus to cheat on his wife, is it far-fetched that she might be able to get him to divulge national secrets during pillow talk? We want leaders who aren't likely to give it up to Mata Hari-type spies.

First, why suppose that he's made any marriage "vows" at all? Some people do and some don't. I've been married twice and in neither case did either of us make vows.

 

Second, I do think it farfetched that Petraeus would divulge national secrets during the pillow talk of an affair. Many intelligence officers don't even tell their wives national secrets.

[kenberg]

I have no real knowledge of security procedures for the CIA or other agencies. I imagine that they have a list of triggers. Unreported meetings with foreign nationals, a lifestyle that seems beyond the paycheck, a gambling habit, and so on. I would expect extramarital affairs to be on this list. But beyond that, I really have no idea. If, say, it is discovered that a high level, but not top level, senior analyst is having relations with someone, what happens? I simply don't know. If this high level person would get dumped, then it would appear to be unfair, and bad for morale, if Petraeus stayed on. Really, I would not drop dead of shock to learn that some high level analyst was found to be in such a situation, was called in and told to knock it off, and then everything went on as before. But I didn't get the memo, so I just don't know what happens.

 

From a while back:

[blackshoe]

I think the expectation (or hope, at least) is that people in positions of great power should have better self-control, so that lust doesn't lead them to do stupid things.

Perhaps so. Personally, I think that to hold to this hope in the face of thousands of years of human history that demonstrates that people in positions of great power do not necessarily have better self-control (or, in some cases, any self-control at all) is insane.

[helene_t]

The evolutionary explanation for the fact that men are more eager than women to reach powerful positions is that it increases their expected number of sex partners. In most if not all social mamals, alpha males have more sex than the underdogs and humans are no exceptions.

 

So expecting powerful men to show sexual restraint is very naive.

[barmar]

Rational or not, we like to believe that we've evolved beyond this. Thousands of years of history also indicate that war (and other forms of violence) is inevitable, but society has made much progress in reducing this.

[jeffford76]

I'm sure that most posters here know that it is illegal in the US to encrypt emails or other electronic communications in such a way that the government cannot easily decrypt them.

 

This isn't true. Encryption is legal in the US.

[barmar]

This isn't true. Encryption is legal in the US.

I believe you're correct.

 

At one time in the 90's, I think the government tried to pass a law that required that all encryption technology incorporate "key escrow". I don't think it ever passed.

 

Encryption technology was also classified as a munition, which made it subject to severe export regulations. So you could use and sell it domestically, but not to any foreign customers. A loophole that was noticed is that this does not apply to DEcryption technology, so you could encrypt a message in the US and send it to someone outside, and they could purchase the software to decode it. I don't know offhand if these restrictions are still in place.

[dwar0123]

Rational or not, I like to believe that we've evolved beyond this. Thousands of years of history also indicate that war (and other forms of violence) is inevitable, but society has made much progress in reducing this.

FYP

[kidd2012]

I think war is as prevalent as it has ever been. There are currently 13 armed conflicts causing at least 1,000 deaths each year.

[barmar]

I think war is as prevalent as it has ever been. There are currently 13 armed conflicts causing at least 1,000 deaths each year.

Read Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

[cherdano]

I think war is as prevalent as it has ever been. There are currently 13 armed conflicts causing at least 1,000 deaths each year.

The 30-year war in Europe killed a third of the population.

[Zelandakh]

While the proportion of Germans killed in thde 30 Years War was somewhere around a third, perhaps even higher, you would be hard pushed to show that a third of the entire European population was killed. The majority of deaths were caused by disese and the like which are generally not included in the casualty rates of other conflicts. If you do then World War One is probably the deadliest conflict due to the Spanish Flu. It also had a far wider reach, the flu alone killing somewhere in the order of 4% of the world population, about 75 million people give or take, although estimates vary enormously.

[JLOGIC]

The evolutionary explanation for the fact that men are more eager than women to reach powerful positions is that it increases their expected number of sex partners. In most if not all social mamals, alpha males have more sex than the underdogs and humans are no exceptions.

 

So expecting powerful men to show sexual restraint is very naive.

 

Post of the year, well done.

[kenberg]

The evolutionary explanation for the fact that men are more eager than women to reach powerful positions is that it increases their expected number of sex partners. In most if not all social mamals, alpha males have more sex than the underdogs and humans are no exceptions.

 

So expecting powerful men to show sexual restraint is very naive.

 

We gamma males just aren't getting our fair share.

[mike777]

There is a big difference between being naive and society accepting or just not caring if men in leadership roles cheat on their wives.

 

This mainly comes down to does society for reproductive and stability issues want to encourage marriage or is a stable marriage not really that important to social order.

 

Sort of the same issue with out of wedlock births. If you dont think there is a direct link between out of wedlock births and poverty then the issue is rather moot.

 

To put it another way, do you feel that maritial norms serve children, spouses, and hence our whole economy, especially the poor?

 

If the answer is no then marriage and maritial norms are not really an important issue for society.

[kenberg]

And a difference between what we accept socially and what we accept professionally. I mentioned earlier that my colleagues in academia would not think highly of an adulterer, but it would not affect salary decisions or tenure decisions. Of course it is not really so black and white,, everyone has his/her own mix of motivations when making a decision, but I have never been at a tenure meeting or a salary discussion where the matter of a person's fidelity to his/her spouse was brought up. I have no idea if it would be legal to bring it up, it just isn't.

 

I also posed the question: Is it different for a president and for a CIA chief? Do they both have to resign over an exposed adulterous relationship? Or does neither have to? If one does and the other doesn't, why is that?

 

This s not just a matter of minding, or not minding, our own business. It is also a matter of not shooting ourselves in the foot. We lost the services of a very capable individual with the Petraeus resignation.

 

I gladly confess I am not at all clear on the answers here.

[mike777]

Ken would it be fair to say that being known as an adulterer used to matter when it came to matters such as keeping your job or a promotion?

 

Just as it used to matter if you had a baby out of wedlock for your job?

 

I do agree that many if not most think it is a good thing that society just does not care when it comes to these matters.

 

Not sure how the spouse and children feel.