I thought this article was working its way up to some profound statement, then I read this. Petraeus represents everything wrong with the modern leadership caste of America. He was a brown nosing, social climbing, rat-faced paper pushing apparatchik who never served in combat, screwed up Mosul, screwed up the rest of Iraq, then took credit for our massive "success" there, and proceeded to "lead" the CENTCOM by issuing press releases his lizard overlords told him to. Then he proceeded to "win" in Afghanistan (note sarcasm since we're still bloody there), take over the CIA (overseeing one of the greatest intelligence disasters of a recent US history littered with them: Benghazi), and get caught with his dong in his nitwit hagiographer, exposing classified information while he was at it to boot. He never showed any character or depth of thought, but he was a genius at handling the media, which is pretty much exactly the primary "leadership" characteristic of the modern era. Bleauch. Patton was an American leader. Petraeus will be forgotten as thoroughly as Gideon Pillow, excepting as a cautionary tale of who not to hire to pacify foreign polities when your empire is in the late Brezhnev stage of decomposition.
Anyway, yes, I am pretty sure Napoleon and Alexander the Great took long walks, and thought about things deeply. I'm not sure I want such people around, but I sure as shit don't want to hear about ding dongs like Petraeus being worthy of emulation because the dude might have read a book once.