Whatever officials did against Petraeus is hardly the gist of the story in my opinion.
What's happened is that his rise was tolerated, but considered questionable, by many. He's a public relations genius officer like MacArthur or Rommel, and success-wise rather in MacArthur's league than in Rommel's (who was still a poor strategist, poor logistician and an utter failure as a political person).
Petraeus is falling deep and hard not because he rose so high, but because nobody appears to slow his descent; instead, they appear to accelerate it by distancing themselves from him.
This happens usually to people who rose high with more style than substance. Germany experienced recently how this happened to a federal minister after a quick political rise with lots of good (if not devotional) press.
I therefore second gute's hint about how there are no or few true heroes who deserve as much praise as they get.
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