#7. With respect, Besoeker, and most commenters: you are being unfair to Petraeus and de-contextual with regard to his audience, as pure an anti-national sovereignty group of Globalists as one could find in the USA. Bookings is the sanctimonious face of modern Communist/Globalist/Islam/Democrat-Republican/Progressive post-modern, deconstructed, post-nationalsm. They want USA gone, damn it, GONE, and replaced with just them as all-worthy, unquestioned "practitioners."

Ask yourself why Petraeus would agree to speak to such a gathering. He does not need to. Ask yourself why he agreed to teach for $1/year at CUNY, and get hounded by Commies.

At Brookings he was addressing THEM and their anti-American pretensions and saying what those pretentious involve practically if they are to amount to anything more than hot air and rampant misery. He said no one is going to negotiate outside a military context, aka bad guys are made an offer they cannot refuse. What is more true?

Dave Petraeus has that rare gift of seeing the large picture with all of its moving parts. He is one or two in a generation. The new CJCS may be another such. Anyhow, the gift is rare. And admiration for Petraeus in the Armed Forces, especially the Army, could not be higher.

I am astonished at the febrile expostulations of so many here and at the PJMedia original. Taking Petraeus as a regime champion, a toady, is bathetic, not worthy of these sanctums.