I've mentioned more than once (incessantly is a word that has been suggested) that I spent eight years in the US Air Force. Technically and truthfully, I spent all of the time in an Air Force uniform but am not sure how much of anything after basic training in Lackland AFB (the largest US base in the world without a landing strip; true) was actually in the Air Force.
A year's isolated remote at Sondrestrom Fjord, Greenland wasn't exactly like being at Headquarters and that was followed by a prolonged assignment to American Forces Network, Europe, which was a Department of the Army operation at its headquarters in the days of the two Germanys in Frankfurt am Main. I did serve with a Steve Canyon (actually Steve 'Canyon' Robinson) but again it wasn't the 'real' Air Force and intending no disrespect, we never claimed to be the real US military.
I've offered my curriculum vitae as bonafides for opening my yap about something I should know less than nothing about, David Petraeus' lost weekend. I've been very good at staying away from all of these shenanigans and minding my own beeswax. Everyone else should be following my good example (and I cannot remember ever suggesting that before in my entire life) but no one does so I'll follow theirs.
This isn't anyone else's concern except Mr. and Mrs. Petraeus. My need to NOT know exceeds any media outlet's imperative to tell me. I'm not naive and I have baggage of my own but I'm offering nothing about that and want to know likewise about yours or Petraeus' or anyone else's. It's a family matter and I hope that for all of those in all of the families involved, some sort of ending will come swiftly and and a semblance of regularity and a veneer of normalcy can be applied. Healing is beyond reach or hope, I fear.
When a story like this makes it into print, words fail me. Yeah, in my years in service I encountered spouses who wore their husband's rank on their collars and maybe that's a part of this but I'm thinking that in so many relationships, there's more at work than some kind of a math problem or a recipe for making silver dollar pancakes. Taking one for the team should come with a limited warranty.
When the person you promised to love and cherish becomes a casualty of 'the fog of war' we are using the banality of venality to rationalize the erosion of our morality. The costumes of 'the warrior' that so many of these men purport to be is nothing more than a brilliant disguise and fools no one but themselves.
-bill kenny
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