Attack on Egyptian mosque targets civilization itself

By Ralph Peters

https://nypost.com/opinion/

November 24, 2017

The al-Rawdah mosque targeted by Islamic extremists on Friday

Friday’s bloodthirsty attack on a mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula during noontime prayers was a crime against all humanity. It wasn’t “just” an attack on Muslims. It was an attack on all of us who believe in civilization, tolerance and decency. At least 235 peaceful worshippers died, with more than 100 wounded.

One is tempted to call it the work of beasts, but no creature in the animal kingdom behaves with such avid, calculated cruelty.

Yet, the attack can be explained — though the explanation only makes it worse.

Islamist fanatics struck with bombs and automatic weapons, slaughtering first the faithful, then first responders. The reversed ratio of dead to wounded (usually more are wounded than killed) tells us how potent the explosions were and how carefully the attack had been planned and executed.

And it was no coincidence that the al-Rawdah Mosque was frequented by Sufis, the mystical, tolerant strain of Islam that finds joy, rather than a slavemaster, in its deity. Sufism has been the spiritual home of poets, such as Rumi or Hafez Shirazi. Sufi orders embraced music and even dance as expressions of faith. Sufis venerate saints, and some of their beloved figures quite liked wine. Sufi orders differ, as do Christian denominations, but none threatens the world with terror these days.

The greatest sheiks of Sufism had more in common with Catholic mystics, such as St. John of the Cross, or Protestants like Emanuel Swedenborg, than with the punitive, barracks-discipline Wahhabism funded by Saudi Arabia and enforced by terrorists. If you crossed a Quaker with an Episcopalian, with a soundtrack of Catholic plainchant, you’d get something like a Sufi.

In Judaism, the closest equivalent would be the Hasidim and the transcendent warmth they discover in God. Sufism at its purest yields exaltation, not the executions beloved of terrorists.

Naturally, the Islamic State, al Qaeda and their offshoots hate all Sufis, regarding them as heretics and enemies of Islam. Sufis focus on the inner relationship to God. Islamist fanatics focus on outward behaviors. With various Sufi orders practicing from Turkey to India, Sufism remains true to the humane undercurrent of a troubled faith.

Not that Sufism has a perfect history. As with all creeds, it’s had its highs and lows, ages of glory and eras of backwardness. But Sufism provides a path as close as Islam has come to that longed-for Islamic reformation of which we’ve heard so much superficial talk.

Friday’s attack was probably the work of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, the terror organization in the Sinai that pledges loyalty to the Islamic State. We’ll see what claims of responsibility arise, but, meanwhile, there’s more bad news.

Also on Friday, 16 Egyptian police officers were reported killed in a shootout with Islamist militants on the other side of the country, toward the Libyan border. All of this — along with countless attacks on Egyptian Christians — should alert us to the imperiled state of the most-populous Middle Eastern nation (96 million), the keystone securing the Arab world.

Nor is relief in sight. With the destruction of the Islamic State caliphate straddling the Syrian-Iraqi border, Islamist terrorists are looking for new homes and new targets. We’ll see still more terror in fragile or disordered states, just as the terrorists will continue to attempt to strike the West. But, as always, most of their victims will be fellow Muslims.

Religious fanaticism — not just from today’s terrorists — has touched every inhabited continent. Every great faith has spun off fanatical movements at one time or another. And religious fanatics cannot tolerate the least divergence from their rules. (Beware the man who tells you that he knows what God wants.) From Europe’s wars of religion to today’s persecution of Rohingya Muslims by Buddhists (yes, Buddhists), we humans have done and do unforgivable things in the name of faith. But it’s been a long time since we’ve seen the imaginative, merciless cruelty of the sort pursued by today’s Islamist butchers.

The Friday-prayers atrocity in the Sinai was an attack on every faith, on each innocent believer. If we possess any moral decency, we’ll condemn the attack as wholeheartedly as we do the attacks on our own soil.

Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

The coming Middle East crisis after ISIS is gone

By Ralph Peters

http://nypost.com/

March 12, 2017

Islamic state fighters © Medyan Dairieh / ZUMAPRESS.com / www.globallookpress.com

The Islamic State caliphate is dying a well-deserved death. This spring, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in what used to be Syria will fall. Across the summer, remaining outposts will be purged of the Islamist movement’s remnants. Isolated terror attacks will continue, but the physical caliphate will be erased.

And after ISIS itself, the biggest loser will be the United States.

Defeating ISIS is a worthy goal, but the rivalries of blood and faith that will poison the post-caliphate landscape are emerging. Turks alternately confront and accommodate Russia. Our most-effective combat partners, the Kurds, infuriate Turkey and worry local Arabs. Arab factions fight among themselves (as do the Kurds on occasion). Alphabet-soup minorities suffer and flee.

Russians kill and watch. Iranians kill and wait. Their client, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, has amassed a tally of war crimes that makes his survival “unthinkable.” Yet he’s likely to retain power.

With ISIS defeated, we won’t be needed. We’ll be shown the door — except, of course, for aid money.

Uneasy coalitions will collapse. Iran — a k a Persia — will have a client state on the Mediterranean for the first time since the Classical Age. Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dreams madly of a renewed Ottoman empire (which no Arab desires). And Vladimir Putin is set to reap a huge return on a minimal investment.

Fifty million Kurds, longing for independence and freedom, will be embattled on multiple fronts — and, perhaps, deserted by the United States to serve Foggy Bottom fantasies of preserving obsolete states (Iraq and Syria) that have outlived their old and unjust purposes.

Meanwhile, our military serves our enemies by applying our power against ISIS without a practical vision for the day the caliphate falls.

In the Levant and Mesopotamia, history’s the quarrelsome neighbor forever banging on the door. The Arab-populated expanse was ruled, brutally and incompetently, by the Turkish Ottomans for centuries. When that empire collapsed after World War I, control fell to British and French schemers. The British sought security for the Suez Canal, their lifeline to India. And they wanted that strategic commodity, oil.

The French wanted to keep up with the British. So the two powers split the Middle East, drawing artificial borders that ignored local demographics and old hatreds.

The Brits carved out Iraq and Jordan for their puppets and acquired the Palestine Mandate (where Israel would be reborn, a rare instance of justice). The French got control of Lebanon and Syria. The Kurds were cheated, the Armenian genocide ignored and the Shia overlooked, while lesser minorities didn’t even register.

The result was the emergence of phony states that crammed together peoples and confessions that hated each other while dividing groups (such as the Kurds) who yearned for unity, freedom and independence. And when the European empires faded, only dictators could hold the unnatural states together. By committing ourselves to the maintenance of those deadly, dysfunctional borders, the United States leapt flat-footed into the quicksand.

In 2003, in Iraq, we had the chance to begin dismantling those phony states in favor of justice and common sense, but inertia and short-term fears defined our diplomacy. We didn’t liberate Iraq — we perpetuated it. Now, 14 wretched years later, we continue to pretend that, magically, Iraq can achieve political health and that Syria should be preserved with a new head of state.

We have taken the side of dead empires and injustice.

What should we do? Discard our preconceptions for a start. Why shouldn’t dysfunctional borders change? In fact, they’re changing themselves. How many American lives is it worth to serve the vision of dead Europeans and grisly Arab dictators? We need not act to change those borders, but we shouldn’t stand in the way.

The destruction of the ISIS caliphate won’t end terrorism, but the Islamists will suffer a powerful practical and psychological blow. The terrorists eventually will adapt, but their appeal will be weakened: Angry young men want to join a winning team, not a bunch of losers.

Still, the rise of ISIS was unnecessary. Enchanted by the neocons, the George W. Bush administration made Iraq far harder than it had to be simply by not planning for the worst. Then President Barack Obama threw away our hard-won progress in Iraq and, tragically, cowered and prevaricated while the all-but-doomed Assad regime recovered its balance in Syria.

Now we face a new Iranian empire, an expansionist Russia, a treacherous Turkey, an Iraq lost to Iran and the prospect of years to come of ethnic cleansing, massacre and violent uprisings on which terrorists will again piggyback.

Can the Trump administration design and execute a Middle East strategy that actually works to our benefit and makes sense? If so, it would be the first since the Truman presidency.

Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

FILED UNDER ISIS ,  MIDDLE EAST ,  RUSSIA ,  TERRORISM ,  TERRORISTS ,  TURKEY

Trump couldn’t have made a better pick than Gen. Mattis

By Ralph Peters

http://nypost.com/

December 2, 2016

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (L) and Vice President-elect Mike Pence (R) greet retired Marine General James Mattis in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

I'm lucky enough to know Gen. James Mattis slightly. Just well enough to trust him unreservedly with our military and our nation’s security.

The president-elect could not choose a better man to be our next secretary of defense. Not just because Mattis is a battle-hardened Marine with a remarkable combat record. And not just because he has a mind of remarkable clarity and is, without question, the best-read general of his generation.

I trust Mattis because he’s a man of character. His public image is of one rough-and-tough Marine, but the man I’ve encountered is, above all, one of integrity. His code of honor is so out of fashion one has to reach back to a Victorian vocabulary: He has a noble spirit.

And he’s a genuine patriot, not a shouter with his eye on the next chance. He will do what’s right, not what’s expedient. And he will never go along with anything he believes might harm our country.

In addition to plenty of dirty-boots experience in the Middle East and a deep knowledge of history, Mattis has another great qualification: He wasn’t looking for a job. He was happy in retirement, studying, helping his fellow Marines and contributing thoughtfully to our national security behind the scenes.

The last time I heard from him — a bit before the election — he mentioned that he was glad to be west of the Rockies. A Washington, DC, post was not part of the plan.

This matters. In an age of sycophants and clawing ambition, it’s a splendid prospect to have a classic patriot who’s willing to sacrifice to serve (as Mattis already has for four decades in uniform).

Our most underrated president of the last century, Dwight D. Eisenhower, didn’t want anyone in his Cabinet who actively sought the position. He wanted successful men from various walks of life who would have to leave successful careers and contented lives to come to Washington and run a department ethically.

For Gen. Mattis, the position of secretary of defense wouldn’t be just another inside-the-Beltway badge to add to his resume. The greatest danger would be that he would prove too honest for DC.

Yet another quality Mattis would bring to the office — a vital one — is that he’s a superb listener. He’s not quick to speak, but when he finally does have his say, his words show command of the subject under discussion.

And he uses words with the same economy as a rifleman uses bullets: no wasted rounds.

What would the nation get with Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense? Integrity. Deep knowledge. Courage, both moral and physical. Humility. Decency. Vision. A steely sense of duty. Fiscal responsibility. A natural leader of men.

In short, character.

Inevitably, we’ve heard complaints from the left about the “danger” of generals in high government positions, with the suggestion that they’ll take us into wars. But it hasn’t been the generals who’ve gotten us into our recent conflicts or failed to resolve them.

For the last 16 years, we’ve seen civilians with no military experience launch ill-considered wars and impulsive interventions without considering the second- and third-order effects. Generals, by contrast, are reluctant to send our troops to war — they know the complexity and the cost.

Mattis has a long list of military accomplishments, but I suspect one of the experiences that cut deepest came in 2004, in Fallujah. After a week of brutal, successful combat his Marines stood within 48 hours of a clear-cut victory over a terrorist army. And the Bush administration lost its collective nerve, calling a halt just short of the finish line.

I watched the tragedy unfold from northern Iraq, where I was a guest of the Kurds. And we all said the same thing to each other: “We’ll have to go back and finish this.” And we did, in less than a year.

Having seen his Marines die, only to be denied victory at the 11th hour because the global media was howling, must’ve been terribly painful for Mattis. One of the many reasons he’s so widely respected in military circles is that he understands, contrary to academic pronunciamentos, victory is not only possible, but essential.

Mattis not only fights the good fight — he fights to win. With him as our next secretary of defense, the United States of America would win.

From FoxNews.com

FILED UNDER DONALD TRUMP ,  JAMES MATTIS ,  MILITARY ,  SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Obama and the Mockery of Honor

Benedict Arnold chose to put on the uniform, too. Did he serve with “honor and distinction”? 

By Ralph Peters

http://www.nationalreview.com/

June 8, 2014

President Obama speaks at a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of D-Day. (Photo: Win McNamee, Getty Images)

If a soldier who volunteered to serve in the military rapes or murders someone while in uniform, has he served honorably? Has Bradley Manning, who voluntarily joined the military and then betrayed his country by turning over hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, served honorably? Did Benedict Arnold, another volunteer, serve with “honor and distinction”?

According to the logic of our national-security adviser, Susan Rice, they all did. Merely because they volunteered in the first place. Lieutenant Calley of My Lai Massacre fame? “Honor and distinction.”

Ms. Rice is aggressively stupid, immaculately clueless, and a disgrace to our system of government, but one does have to admire her tenacity. Late last week, Rice tried to extract herself from her effort to sell Private Bowe Bergdahl as a hero who served, as she had put in on ABC’s This Week, “with honor and distinction.” (The rank of private is correct, in that his promotions were phony.) In her attempted walkback, Rice claimed that anyone who ever signed on the dotted line had served honorably: “What I was referring to was the fact that this was a young man who volunteered to serve his country in uniform at a time of war. That, in and of itself, is a very honorable thing.”

If this administration cannot embrace our military, might it not at least stop insulting those in uniform? No soldier is finally judged to have served “with honor and distinction” until his or her service is complete. There’s a glaringly obvious reason for that.

Of course, we’ve heard a series of increasingly ugly comments from White House staffers as their lionization of Bergdahl has collapsed. Administration hacks who have never served our country in any useful capacity stage-whispered that right-wing activists were “swiftboating” the reputed deserter. In fact, it was the other way around: The real character assassinations were launched from the White House, and they targeted soldiers from Bergdahl’s platoon who had, indeed, served with honor and distinction. Those courageous young men stood up for justice, refusing to allow the administration’s blithe betrayal of military values to prevail. In response, White House loyalists insinuated that Bergdahl’s comrades in arms might be psychopathic. This is Chicago politics leveled against truly honorable soldiers — yet more evidence of this president’s disdain for those in uniform.

Then, on Sunday, the New York Times front page — once again indistinguishable from its self-abusing editorial pages — snarked that Bergdahl’s unit was “known for its troubles” and that (Lord preserve us!) the soldiers in Bergdahl’s battalion, on dangerous duty at a harsh outpost, weren’t always properly attired. Well, ending the draft was great for our military, but dreadful for the country. Anyone who had served even a couple of months as a private at Fort Hood would grasp that soldiers sweating on sunbaked ground in eastern Afghanistan generally do not display the spit and polish of the Old Guard drill team performing in Washington, D.C.

And perhaps those bold reporters from the New York Times would like to criticize the imperfect field uniforms of SEAL Team Six or our Special Forces? To their faces?

Doubling down on its shamelessness, the same front page applauded Obama for personally ending a failed strategy in Afghanistan — without bothering to mention that the truly catastrophic, troop-killing “strategy” was Obama’s own. The revisionism is worthy of the heyday of Chairman Mao.

When it comes to Bergdahl, though, the administration does have a strategy. No one in the White House gives a damn about Bergdahl now. He’s a liability. But the rule is that Obama is never wrong. Apologies are out of the question; instead, the White House is determined to tough it out, as it has through myriad scandals. And the tactics to protect the president are clear.

First, the White House will pressure the military to deem Bergdahl unfit to stand trial. That stage is already being set. After doctors treating him declared Bergdahl physically fit to return home (guess he wasn’t dying, after all), they’ve kept him secluded in Germany, making it known that he is in their view mentally unprepared to return to the States. The administration is going to go with the defense that Bergdahl is unbalanced, was unbalanced, and will be unbalanced.

If military doctors refuse to play along, “impartial civilian experts” will be called in. If that doesn’t work and the “too crazy to court martial” defense flops, the next step will be to strong-arm the Pentagon to reduce any charge to the comparatively minor Absent Without Leave, or AWOL (although overwhelming evidence exists that Bergdahl deserted). Then Bergdahl’s lawyers could plead him out, retain some benefits (perhaps all of them) for him, and the administration can claim, “See! He wasn’t a deserter after all.”

If some unexpectedly ethical general refuses to play along and the case goes to a court-martial, the administration’s fallback will be to insist on a “thorough” reinvestigation that pushes any court-martial past Obama’s 2017 departure from office (one suspects that Team Obama would love to dump this in Mrs. Clinton’s lap).

But won’t the brass stand up for fairness, military discipline, and justice? The bitter truth is that they haven’t thus far. Our generals knew within days of Bergdahl’s abandonment of his post that the evidence was overwhelming that he had deserted (ask them, under oath). But they made the decision to keep it quiet. The initial reason General Petraeus gave to me just days after Bergdahl walked off was that the military wished to shield Bergdahl’s parents.

Here’s where it gets interesting and ugly. The “noble POW” story took off politically. Commander after commander played along (as did Congress). Worse, the Army itself tried to beatify Bergdahl as some sort of hero-martyr to the troops, printing up solidarity posters and even creating life-size pasteboard cutouts of Bergdahl. Naturally, the troops knew it was BS (you can’t fool Private Snuffy very long, and word soon gets around). The agitprop was amateurish but outrageous (majors put up the posters, and sergeants rolled their eyes). Every officer involved in that effort should be relieved of duty.

It’s time for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, to man up. He inherited this Big Lie, but he shouldn’t pass it on. It’s his duty to follow the legal orders of our commander-in-chief, but it’s not his duty to provide cover for the president’s political shenanigans. As for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, he’s clearly a lost cause on this case, with his claim that you can’t prove that any soldiers died because of Bergdahl, even though they were killed while the massive search for Bergdahl was underway and they died where they otherwise would not have been. (Dear Secretary Hagel: From one former sergeant to another former sergeant, show a glimmer of decency. You’re acting like some damned officer.)

As for President Obama himself, there’s far more news to tell. For all his pretensions about his regard for the troops, this man has lavished vastly more attention on the family of a deserter than any other military family has ever received from him (just as Bergdahl is getting more intensive medical attention than a genuine hero would). And you’re thinking, “Rose Garden,” right? But this has gone on for years, with a full colonel or brigadier general ordered to report to the Bergdahl family every three to six months with an update about their son. Has the White House taken so great an interest in the families of those who’ve been gravely wounded in the line of duty? Or of those who died? No, it has not. The White House fell in love with a family clearly several raisins short of a full bowl of granola. Not despite their son’s desertion, but because of it.

Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl, too, have been Obama’s pawns. Our outrage should aim at the president, not them.

Of course, Private Bergdahl himself is the perfect soldier for those whose concept of our military was formed by Oliver Stone movies. Reportedly disillusioned with the war, he just walks away, a model of nobility, to seek out the enemy and find common ground. Bergdahl is a hero — for everyone on the left who despises our military. It’s a shame Sean Penn’s too old to play the role.

Meanwhile, with a straight face, Obama and his fellow travelers in the White House and media caution us not to “pre-judge” Bergdahl. That would have been a more credible plea before the president and his advisers pre-judged Bergdahl as a hero.

In closing, let me paraphrase the words of a fine U.S. Army lawyer from the past: “Mr. President, have you no shame?”

— Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer, a former enlisted man, and Fox News Strategic Analyst.

Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash

The president and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. 

By Ralph Peters

http://www.nationalreview.com/

June 3, 2014

President Obama shakes hands with Bob Bergdahl during a news conference in the Rose Garden on Saturday, May 31. Jani Bergdahl stands at left. -- AP

Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military.

I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.

Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.

But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)

I actually believe that Ms. Rice was kind of sincere, in her spectacularly oblivious way. In the best Manchurian Candidate manner, she said what she had been programmed to say by her political culture, then she was blindsided by the firestorm she ignited by scratching two flinty words together. At least she didn’t blame Bergdahl’s desertion on a video.

The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release — as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.

Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.

But compassion, please! The president and all the president’s men and women are not alone. Our media elite — where it’s a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform — instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that “we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters.”

Uh, no. “Save the deserter” is a recent battle cry of the politically indoctrinated brass. For much of our history, we did make some efforts to track down deserters in wartime. Then we shot or hanged them. Or, if we were in good spirits, we merely used a branding iron to burn a large D into their cheeks or foreheads. Even as we grew more enlightened, desertion brought serious time in a military prison. At hard labor.

This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)

President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain’t a tribute to ZZ Top). How do you say “outrageous insult to our vets” in Pashto?

Nor, during the recent VA scandal, had the president troubled himself to host the families of survivors of those vets who died awaiting care. No, the warmest attention our president has ever paid to a “military family” was to Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl.

(I will refrain from criticism of the bumptious attempts to cool the flames of this political conflagration by Secretary Hagel: I never pick on the weak.)

What is to be done? Behind the outrage triggered by Team Obama’s combination of cynicism and obliviousness (Bergdahl was so ill we had to set those terrorists free immediately, without notifying Congress, but now he’s chugging power shakes in a military hospital . . . and all this just happened to come at the peak of the VA scandal . . . ), military members don’t really want to lynch Bergdahl. But they want justice.

Our military leaders need to rediscover their moral courage and honor our traditions, our regulations, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We need a fresh, unprejudiced 15-6 investigation (the military equivalent of a grand jury). We already know, as the military has known since the first 24 hours after Bergdahl abandoned his post, that sufficient evidence exists for a court-martial, but it’s important to do this by the numbers.

It’s hard to believe that the resulting court-martial would not find Bergdahl guilty of desertion (although there will be heavy White House pressure to reduce the charge to Absent Without Leave, or AWOL, status, a lesser offense). If he is convicted, I for one do not want him to go to prison. I’m sure he’s paid and paid for betraying his comrades, quite possibly suffering brutal sexual violence. But if he is found guilty, he needs to be formally reduced to the rank of private, stripped of all privileges and entitlements (the taxpayer should not pay for a deserter’s lifelong health care — Bergdahl’s book and film deals can cover that), and he should be given the appropriate prison sentence, which would then be commuted by the president. Thereafter, let Mr. Bergdahl go home and live with himself.

As for President Obama, how about just one word of thanks to the families of those fallen soldiers you sent out to find Bowe Bergdahl?

— Fox News Strategic Analyst Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and former enlisted man.

Putin’s plan to reclaim the old Russian empire

By Ralph Peters

http://nypost.com/

May 3, 2014

When I was a child and Soviet dinosaurs roamed the earth, a potato chip ad dared Americans “Bet you can’t eat just one!” That about captures President Vladimir Putin’s lip-smacking attitude toward his neighbors and any territorial snack that was ever “Russian.” Over time, he’d like to devour the whole bag.

What’s often misunderstood about Putin is that, while he pines for the vanished image of Soviet power, he knows that Communism didn’t work. Nor does he expect to re-establish the Soviet Union’s domination over Europe’s eastern half (as much as he’d welcome it). Putin has become a Great-Russian nationalist, a bigoted throwback to the days before the Bolsheviks arrived. His intent is to regain all the lands that once belonged to the czars.

When President Obama declared in March that Putin “has no ideology,” he betrayed his ignorance of both history and Putin. Who’s briefing this guy?

Putin’s ideology is nationalism, the only belief system that may have killed as many human beings as Marxism. And when a “post-modern” talk-talk America president faces a Russian leader who’s a man of action and whose concept of nationhood refers to the late 19th century, our cherished negotiations merely seal the deal on what Putin’s already taken (anyone really think he’ll give back Crimea and flee from eastern Ukraine?).

Obama talks, Putin kills.

And make no mistake, Putin truly believes he’s entitled to reclaim Ukraine and a great deal more. In his view, independent capitals from Warsaw (yes, Warsaw) to Bishkek are integral and natural parts of the Russian imperium. He regards them as property stolen from its rightful owner: Moscow.

The Putin Doctrine gives Moscow the right, in his view, to intervene wherever ethnic Russians or merely Russian speakers are “threatened.”

Here’s a look at the long-term framework in which Putin means to reconstitute Russia’s empire with “blood and iron”:

Modal Trigger

Photo:

The Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Like western Ukraine, these states are incontestably part of Europe, civilized, sophisticated and, incidentally, beautiful. But unlike Ukraine, they’re NATO members, a status that still serves as a deterrent to Russia. Putin would love to digest them, but even he’s reluctant to violate a NATO border — for now. But the coastline and ports remain attractive, as does the highly skilled workforce (Estonia may be the most “wired” state on the planet).

So what will Putin do? For now, he’ll exploit any opportunities to further divide the region’s Russian minorities from the indigenous majorities. And while Lithuania’s population is only 6% ethnic Russian (the Russian boot crashed down late), over a quarter of Estonia’s and Latvia’s citizens are ethnic Russians — and Putin’s invented claims that they’re abused.

Moscow’s playing a long game on this one, but, in the meantime, Putin doesn’t mean to let these states get too comfortable. For their parts, the local populations remember and hate what the Russians did to their countries — especially the Soviets.

Belarus

Hobbled by a dictator who knows he can’t afford to annoy Putin, Belarus, with its ethnic and linguistic affinities to Russia, is Putin’s when he decides he really wants it. Strategically, he owns it already, but without the hassle of paying its many bills. Only 8% of the population’s Great Russian, but the White Russian majority relates closely (“Belorus” means “White Russia”).

Poland? Yup, Poland.

The northeastern third, anyway, including Warsaw. The late czars ruled that stretch under one of the most cynical agreements ever wrought on the European continent. And Warsaw is, beyond question, a truly European city, a bridgehead to the West. Poland may be way down on Putin’s to-do list, but it’s there, NATO member or not. The bad blood spilled over centuries between civilized, European Poles and Russian barbarians (not least, the Soviet variant) has left some of the world’s most-profound hatreds. No country has suffered more injustice than Poland, and Russia has been the worst perp. As with Ukraine, for Putin this one’s personal.

Ukraine

Even in the three easternmost provinces currently under contention, ethnic Russians are not in the majority. But Putin is re-teaching the world the old lesson — which we’ve done our best to forget — that the fate of nations often isn’t decided by majorities, but by a determined handful of men with guns. Having seized Crimea with eye-popping ease, Putin is now beginning to gnaw at the rest of Ukraine.

He’ll take those eastern provinces when he’s ready, then expand along the Black Sea coast, building a strategic bridge to Crimea.

At his leisure, perhaps over years, he’ll snag the rest of Ukraine, too — including the far west that never belonged to Russia’s empire until raped by the Bolsheviks.

A key to understanding Putin is that he’s vengeful, a fiercely emotional man beneath his icy exterior, and he wants to punish Ukraine for derailing his initial plans. And we’ll let him do it.

Moldova

Putin will eventually want to connect Ukraine territory to the nuthouse pro-Russian separatists in Moldova’s breakaway “republic” of Transdniestria. Ukraine’s the main course, Moldova is dessert.

Armenia

Threatened by Muslim neighbors (yes, it was a genocide!), tiny Armenia, a fraction of what it was in its glory days, has long looked to Moscow as its protector and ally. If the dominos start falling in the Caucasus, Armenia will associate with Russia voluntarily — and gain territory from Azerbaijan for its loyalty. Few Russians, but plenty of ties.

Azerbaijan

Gas. Oil. Pipelines. Plus, Muslim (if liberally so). Azerbaijan serves as a pass-through for Islamist terrorists active in Russia’s neighboring and troubled state of Dagestan. Putin does not see yet just how to get it, but he certainly wants it — along with its southern border with Iran. Would the West stop him?

Georgia

Putin still has Georgia on his mind. When wrested from the Ottoman Turks over two centuries ago, Georgia became not only a vital outpost on Russia’s frontier but a loyal ally (and the birthplace of Josef Stalin). Outraged by Georgia’s new taste for independence, Putin has already dismantled part of the country through military action (and learned, in the process, that the West would do nothing but chatter). He’ll get around to the rest. Not many Russians left there, but Putin won’t care.

Uzbekistan

Putin would like to have it, but he just may decide it would be more trouble than it’s worth. As long as Uzbekistan toes the line and serves as a buffer north of Afghanistan, Putin may forego a second conquest. That said, Putin’s appetite could prove insatiable, and there’s a lot of history here. The daring, heroic Russian conquest of the savage emirates of Bukhara and Samarkand still resonates with Russians who know their history. Just when we were taming our Wild West, Russia was subduing its Wild East. And these are lands that conquerors have always found hard to resist.

Russians are under 10% of the population — and disliked, as I can personally attest, having been mistaken for one in a marketplace.

Kazakhstan

Even before he swallows the last of Ukraine, Putin is likely to turn east to Kazakhstan (before sparring with NATO over the Baltics). Almost a quarter of this vast country’s population is ethnic Russian, providing justification under the Putin doctrine — requiring only a few staged provocations — as well as a fifth column of agitators such as Moscow employs in Ukraine. Kazakhstan’s a tremendous prize, given its natural resources, the Baikonur space-testing ground, other defense facilities and a position that all but divides Russia’s west from its East. Kazakhstan will have even less capacity to resist than Ukraine, while the West will take even less interest in its fate.

Turkmenistan, Tajikistan & Kyrgyzstan

Turkmenistan has massive gas reserves, frontage on the Caspian, a border with Iran and 7% of the population is Russian —no doubt “endangered” in Putin’s mind. Look for Vlad to stir up trouble. Kyrgyzstan, also with 7% Russian population, already does Moscow’s bidding in important matters, so it might do as a mere satellite. Tajikistan is backward, raw, but useful if you have to deal with Afghanistan and parts south. Low priority for Putin, but he’ll keep an eye on it.

Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst and a retired US Army officer who specialized in Russian affairs.

Obama’s third war

The folly of striking Syria

By Ralph Peters

http://www.nypost.com

August 27, 2013

You might as well try to teach a snake to juggle as hope the Obama administration will think strategically. The “peace president” is about to embark on his third military adventure, this time in Syria, without having learned the lessons of his botched efforts in Afghanistan and Libya. He hasn’t even learned from the Bush administration’s mistakes — which he mocked with such delight.

Before launching a single cruise missile toward Syria, Team Obama needs to be sure it has a good answer to the question, “What comes next?”

If Obama does a Clinton and churns up some sand with do-nothing cruise-missile strikes, it will only encourage the Assad regime. But if our president hits Assad hard and precipitates regime change, then what?

AP

Sideshow: A UN inspector yesterday, gathering evidence at the site of a chemical attack in Syria — but the real issue is: What effective action can we take?

If al Qaeda and local Islamists seize Damascus, what will we do? The enfeebled “moderate opposition” we back rhetorically couldn’t dislodge hardcore jihadis, no matter how many weapons we sent (the jihadis would simply confiscate the gear).

What if we weaken the regime to the point where the fanatics rev up their jihad to drive out Christians and other minorities? What’s your plan then, Mr. President? After your night of explosive passion, will you still love the opposition in the morning?

Exactly which American vital security interests are at stake in Syria, Mr. President? Your credibility? Put a number on it. How many American lives is your blather about red lines worth?

Chemical weapons use? Horrible and illegal, a war crime. So is the mass slaughter of civilians. Is it really so much worse to be gassed than tortured to death by al Qaeda or burned alive in your church? Which is more important, the number of dead, or the means that killed them?

Islamist terrorists have killed tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, of innocent Muslims. Aren’t they the real enemies of civilization?

Mr. President, do you really think it’s wise to send our missiles and aircraft to provide fire support for al Qaeda? That is exactly what you’ll be doing, if you hit Assad.

Assad’s an odious butcher, filth on two legs. But in the world of serious strategy, you rarely get a choice between black and white. You choose between black and charcoal gray.

Employing our military assets to support either side in Syria would be a mistake. Employing them without a worst-case plan for what might follow would be criminal.

We just can’t seem to learn, though. Invading Iraq, the Bush team, egged on by ideologues who never served in uniform, refused to allow our military to plan for an occupation. That sure worked out. Then, in Libya, the Obama administration deposed Khadafy, but refused to plan seriously for the aftermath. Welcome to Benghazi.

There are wars worth fighting. It was essential to go to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 (although staying there was idiocy). There will be future conflicts that demand our blood to defend vital interests. But we’ve now had a decade of do-gooder wars that haven’t done much good.

For the record, I don’t regret getting rid of Saddam or Khadafy. I regret the ineptitude with which we did these things. When you propose a war, don’t ever expect a cheap date.

Now there’s an unholy alliance pushing for attacks on Syria. We have liberal zealots, such as our UN ambassador, Samantha Power, who believe that our military’s primary purpose is to protect people who hate America. We have a few Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who support any war, any time. We have a president who thinks that, “Gee, maybe, well, gosh, I said I’d do something, so maybe I should...” And we have elements in the defense industry who long for a return to our free-spending years in Iraq and Afghanistan and view a war in Syria as a great way to beat the sequester.

And the one thing every member of that bomb-Syria-now coalition has in common? Not one will have to fight.

Ralph Peters is a retired US Army officer and Fox News’ strategic analyst.