Why David Petraeus Must Not Be America’s Next Secretary Of State

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You should already know the top reason that General David Petraeus should be disqualified for the position of Secretary of State.

While problems in his marriage and his infidelities aren’t relevant to the role, and shouldn’t eliminate him from consideration for the job, the fact that his pillow talk with his mistress involved him unlawfully sharing classified information is demonstrative of someone who has serious errors in judgment.

If unlawfully storing classified information was one of the many things that disqualified Hillary Clinton to voters, personally sharing such information with your hand-picked “biographer” you were having an affair with should preclude President-elect Donald J. Trump from nominating Petraeus to the Secretary of State position. Who is to say a foreign spy agency wouldn’t use such knowledge to plant a female surrogate to seduce Petraeus and extract high-level classified information from him?

However, one major breach of security protocols isn’t the only disqualifier on Petraeus’s resume. Earlier this year, Petraeus teamed up with Mark Kelly to form the “Veterans Coalition for Common Sense”. In case you are not familiar with who Mark Kelly is, he is the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, and the two formed the gun control PAC “Americans for Responsible Solutions” in 2013. The group advocates tougher laws on guns, including more stringent background checks, secret courts to deny gun owners their rights without due process, and a renewed “assault weapons ban”, which only bans standard capacity magazines and cosmetic features on firearms.

And, in case you aren’t familiar with the practices of what Bloomberg-funded ARS does under the leadership of Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords, allow me to fill you in. Kelly was denied purchase of an AR-15 rifle after an Arizona store caught him lying about the reasons for purchase on his ATF 4473 form. Last year, ARS intentionally exaggerated claims regarding firearm-related deaths against car accident deaths.

The group also put forward “victims” who falsely claimed to be harmed by the shooting of Giffords by a nutcase in 2011. David Petraeus has thus aligned himself with a group that openly espouses gun control, which isn’t afraid to lie and distort facts as much as possible in its quest to restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Of course, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that ARS spends the majority of its funds on operating expenses and fundraising, with less than half of their total expenditures going to campaign activity.  Yes, this example of another special interest group with questionable business practices, wasting its contributors’ dollars, is just another Bloomberg-funded gun control group.

The subsequent rebuttal of Petraeus supporters can be expected:

“But Duane, the Secretary of State is just the President’s chief foreign policy advisor. He can’t do anything to strengthen gun control!”

Wrong.

In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry signed an anti-gun treaty at the United Nations, without authorization from the Senate, that could have left US citizens subject to strict gun control under the auspices of the UN. Fortunately, the treaty had been voted down before it was signed, making it effectively dead on arrival. However, that did not stop the Obama administration from pushing for its ratification just two months ago.

Thankfully we have the constitution, as ratification of the treaty would require a two-thirds majority in Congress, but the fact that it is even being put forward demonstrates that the Secretary of State has the power to negotiate and push for arms control deals that are in direct contradiction to the 2nd amendment. Don’t forget, a large number of the voters that elected Trump did so because of his staunch gun rights platform.

The fact that General Petraeus has aligned himself with the leader of a Bloomberg-funded gun control group, complete with all the falsities that they have put forward to advance their agenda, shows that he cannot be trusted to represent gun owners as the nation’s chief diplomat.

Already, we know that he cannot be trusted to properly handle classified information, much like Hillary Clinton did with her private email server. The fact that he was so successful as a military officer is perhaps the only redeeming grace that he has, but under no circumstances does that alone make him the best option to be the next Secretary of State.

In the movie Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius says to Maximus, “Commodus cannot rule. He must not rule.” Today, the same holds true of David Petraeus. For the sake of this country and the gun rights supporters who elected Trump, he cannot be Secretary of State. He must not be Secretary of State.