Petraeus heckled by anti-war students in New York

Footage uploaded this week to YouTube shows students at the City University of New York heckling former CIA director and retired four-star general David Petraeus as he walks through the streets of New York City.

In the clip, a group of CUNY students trails Petraeus, hurling epithets at the former commander of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The students call Petraeus a “piece of shit,” “fascist,” “disgusting imperialist” and “war criminal.”

They also chant “Every class, David,” and “Petraeus out of CUNY.”

Petraeus, 60, is teaching a weekly course at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College titled “Are we on the threshold of the (North) American Decades” as a visiting professor this year. The video was apparently from Monday, his first day teaching on campus.

According to liberal blog FireDogLake, the students were from the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY. According to CUNY Hunter College adjunct professor S. Sandor John, who is involved with the group, 100 students and faculty showed up to protest Petraeus’s course.

The same group of CUNY students is also protesting the reinstatement of the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the school, banned from campus since 1971.

As a senior commander in American wars in the Middle East, Petraeus has faced his share of attacks in the past. In 2007, anti-war group MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in The New York Times calling him “General Betray Us” and accusing him of “cooking the books for the White House.”

Petraeus found himself embroiled in a major scandal in 2012, when he was serving as CIA director, after the FBI discovered that he was carrying on an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. He resigned from the CIA shortly afterward.

His appointment at CUNY also made headlines when it was revealed in July that he was slated to receive $150,000 for teaching three hours a week at the public university, though his salary was to be funded by private donors. Petraeus soon volunteered to teach for $1 a year.

President George W. Bush sent Petraeus to Iraq in February 2007, at the peak of sectarian violence, to turn things around as head of US forces. He oversaw an influx of 30,000 US troops and moved troops out of big bases so they could work more closely with Iraqi forces scattered throughout Baghdad.

Some have credited Petraeus with paving the way for the eventual US withdrawal.

“His inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible – after years of failure – for the success of the surge in Iraq,” said Sen. John McCain.

After Iraq, Bush made Petraeus commander of US Central Command, overseeing all US military operations in the greater Middle East, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was relieved of duty in June 2010 for comments in a magazine story, President Barack Obama asked Petraeus to take over in Kabul. In the months that followed, Petraeus helped lead the push to add more US troops to that war and dramatically boosted the effort to train Afghan soldiers and police.

Associated Press contributed to this report.