Looks like this is a multi-part takedown operation. First they took down Petraeus, now they're taking down Gen. John Allen. Want to bet money that John Allen has made remarks in the past critical of US-Israel relations or Israel-aligned US foreign policy??
Clayton -
It could be that Gen. John Allen tried to expose Obama for using Netanyahu for the tool the latter is.
EDIT: Not that I like Obama at all, but he's not quite as much of an extreme tool as Benjamin Netanyahu is. Benjamin Netanyahu thinks he'd defending his people, yet he doesn't even realize that consent of the governed isn't possible. Obama, OTOH, doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself so he's not as much of a tool as Benyamin Netanyahu is.
This has blocked Allen's nomination to commander of NATO forces in Europe. Whoa. This is every bit as dirty as the DSK scandal.
Here's a question for you, Clayton: would you say that Petraeus and Allen were consummate establishment men or not? If you'd say they were, then why would the establishment "eat its own"? Could this be some sort of major CYA measure?
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
why would the establishment "eat its own"?
The Establishment does little else. This is what people who sign up for a lifetime of groveling and obesiance to the hierarchy in their youth don't understand. Once you make it to the top, once you reach the pinnacles of achievement and recognition, they'll just piss on you.
One thing I'll point your attention to is Defense Secretary Robert Gates who stayed on another 3 years after Bush left office. This is highly unusual... like any cabinet member, SecDef usually changes with POTUS. So, what I suspect is that the right-wing power interests (e.g. Koch-aligned) had somehow "booby-trapped" the Pentagon and surrounding bureaucracies to retain a hold on certain sections of the government even while the left-wing power interests (e.g. Soros-aligned) had taken the reins of government through the office of the President with their man Obama.
If you'll recall, Petraeus originally rose to stardom under Bush with the "surge" in Iraq. So, I think he was actually a "Bush" man, so-to-speak (right-wing power aligned). I don't know anything about John Allen but I will not be surprised if we discover similar patterns there. Also, don't be surprised if there are more takedowns.
With the second-term, I think the the left-wing power had been planning a clean change-of-the-guard this time, to clear out any last vestiges of the Bush-era influence. And this is what we're seeing happen right now.
In particular, you'll recall that there was strident opposition to the Iraq war in 2003 - I don't think the MSM was "faking" this opposition, I think they genuinely did not want war in Iraq because they wanted war in Iran. That is, the left-wing power interests had the Iran war plan as their baby and the right-wing power interests had the Iraq war plan as their baby. Had Gore won in 2000, I have a feeling we would have attacked Iran (don't know if we would have invaded, though), not Iraq. In the run up to the 2008 election, the MSM was relentlessly pounding the Iran war drums. When Obama got into office, this fizzled out and I think the Bush-era booby-traps may have played a role in this.
This is one of the reasons why I'm extremely pessimistic regarding the prospects of war with Iran. At this point, I regard it as a virtual certainty. I predicted hostilities to begin within the year and even faster now that they've cleaned out Petraeus et. al.
Jill Kelley is being described as an "unpaid social liaison". LOL - is that like a hooker who works for free?
Clayton:The Establishment does little else. This is what people who sign up for a lifetime of groveling and obesiance to the hierarchy in their youth don't understand. Once you make it to the top, once you reach the pinnacles of achievement and recognition, they'll just piss on you.
If it's people above them who are doing the pissing on them, then that implies that they haven't reached the pinnacles of achievement and recognition, right?
In any case, saying that the establishment does little else other than "eat its own" doesn't explain to me why it "eats its own" at all. With the purported examle you gave, maybe Edward VII just happened to have a sadistic streak and/or Christopher Sykes had little or no backbone.
The rest of your post suggests that there isn't really a unified establishment after all. If you actually believe that, how come?
They've reached the pinnacles of achievement and recognition within the organization. Whoever said the world is an organization?
I think that's a very shallow analysis of the human dynamic involved. Sykes was a "ladder-climber"... when he got to the top of the ladder, he imagined he could be "friends" or "buddies" with the crown Prince. Edward did not (to my knowledge) pour alcohol over the heads of his royal peers nor even on the heads of any other nobility or politicians. It was the very fact that Skyes was orbiting too high for his own good that was the problem. Haven't you seen those non-cool kids that do everything in their power to please the cool kids and, after enough groveling and boot-licking they are eventually permitted to hang around the outskirts but never be the center of action or attention? Or, at least, if they ever do become the center of attention, they immediately become an object of ridicule. That's what happened to Sykes. He was hob-nobbing with royalty as if he belonged among them. He falsely imagined that "Prince" was just another rank above him. It's not... the crown Prince is next in line to be King, that is, to head the royal mafia. While royalty use the pretense of title and honor to their advantage, the ruling royals have a distinctly unvarnished view of the true nature of their power - it is built on threats and conquests and nothing else.
Men like Petraeus are "true believers"... they really believe in the organization and they really trust that promoting to the top is synonymous with attaining the highest level of respect. The Establishment, however, protects itself first and foremost where "itself" is defined by 1) blood relation, 2) inter-marriage, 3) certain special exceptions of "promotion"... though these are very rare.
It's difficult to tell precisely how unified/fractured the Establishment is. I think it depends on how you look at it. On certain things (e.g. taxation, tax regularization, statutory powers, etc), the Establishment is absolutely unified... it might as well be like an Illuminati pyramid. But then other things are more contentious... oil, financial regulation, nuclear proliferation, economic policy, (territorial claims) etc.
My method of Power Elite analysis is to take completely literally the idea of our rulers as mafia dons. They function on precisely the mafia model. Family comes first. And they are patriarchal. Inheritance is by primogeniture (eldest inherits all). Protecting the interests of the family is job #1 for the patriarch, as well as expanding the empire as much as possible. Job #2 is arranging marriages and maintaining moral order within the house. There might be slight variations between, say, the Japanese model and the English model but these principles roughly hold everywhere among those with what I call "undelegated power"... power they didn't get by delegation from somebody else.
I call these mafia dons "power centers". They are mostly unidentified... not because there isn't a list of suspects but because it's difficult to tell who is on top of who, who are peers, and so on.
When I speak of "Establishment" in the broadest possible sense, I mean the system of ruling families irrespective of the slowly changing membership roster. That is the permanent Establishment and it's not an organization but exhibits organized principles (IOW, it is emergent).
GlobalResearch via LRC nails it.
The thing is that Petraeus was taken down almost immediately after taking the helm and when you look at the timing of Broadwell's entry into his life, it looks to me that this must have been in the works at least from the moment Petraeus stepped up as DCI, but likely even before he took the post. This is the basis of my theory of Petraeus as a Bush-man. Let me fill in some more details. I think they wanted to "clean house" for Obama's second term - I have a feeling Petraeus is only the center of a web of other takedowns that will never make the news (i.e. I predict there will be a "spike" in "voluntary" early retirements across the Federal government).
Don't get me wrong, I think Broadwell was double-crossed by whoever she was working for. See the story of the Scorpion and the Frog or the Wolf and the Crane.
I see a "glob" of potential variables all working into this:
Apparently my post got deleted with the irrelevant posts:
Silencing General Petraeus by Andrew Napolitano