Ralph Peters: Gitmo Cocktail

THE demands to shut down our Guantanamo lock-up for terrorists have nothing to do with human rights. They're about punishing America for our power and success.

From our ailing domestic left to overseas America haters, no one really cares about the fate of Mustapha the Murderer or Ahmed the Assassin. The lies told about Gitmo are meant to undercut U.S. foreign policy and embarrass America.

The Gitmo controversy is about many things, from jealousy of the United States and outrage that we refuse to fail, to residual anger that we won the Cold War and exploded the left's great fantasy of a dictatorship of the intellectuals. But the one thing the protests aren't about is human rights.

Torture? Who and when? Koran abuse? I'd rather be a Koran in Gitmo than a Bible in Saudi Arabia. Illegal detentions? Suggest a better way to handle hardcore terrorists. Maltreatment? Spare me. The food the prisoners receive is better than what I had to eat in the Army.

Another thing: Would it be more humane to incarcerate the declared enemies of civilization in northern Alaska, rather than on a Caribbean beach?

Has the Bush administration made mistakes regarding Guantanamo? You bet. The biggest one was attempting to placate the critics. By launching a new investigation every time a terrorist had a toothache, our government played into the hands of its enemies.

The truth is that the terrorists and their defenders have something in common. It's not courage, which is one quality violent fanatics don't lack. It's that neither can be appeased.

Any concession only increases their appetites. The Clinton administration's reluctance to respond to terrorist strikes encouraged al Qaeda. If the Bush administration closed the Guantanamo facility, any alternative holding center would be attacked just as rabidly and dishonestly.

If we put our captives up at the Four Seasons, we'd be condemned because somebody smelled bacon at breakfast.

You can't negotiate with terrorists. And you cannot reason with ideologues — whether they're Islamist fanatics or pathetic old lefties fishing for a cause to give meaning to squandered lives. Terrorists, French and German neo-Stalinists, and our own democracy-hating intelligentsia aren't interested in facts. It's all about the comfort of belief.

Let's get this straight: Nothing we could do would appease those who feel a need for our country to fail. We must stop trying to satisfy them.

There's a military maxim that applies to all the nonsense about Gitmo: Don't let the entire battalion get bogged down by a sniper. By attempting to respond to the wild charges leveled by those who offer no solutions themselves — who have no interest in solutions — we've allowed anti-American basket cases from Harvard Yard to the German parliament to create an issue from nothing.

Oh, and thanks to the "mainstream" media for assuming that our country's always wrong.

There is a culture of torture in the world. Blessedly, America isn't part of it. When a few of our troops make mistakes, they're punished. Given the magnitude of our task and the unprecedented conditions we face, it's remarkable our errors have been so few.

What should enrage every decent citizen is that the real torturers — from Zimbabwe to China, from Syria to North Korea — get a pass from the political left. If terrorists behead defenseless captives on videotape, it's simply an expression of their culture. But if a handful of U.S. troops play an ugly round of Candid Camera, that's a new gulag.

As someone who takes human rights seriously, I'm appalled by the lack of sympathy the left feels toward the victims of any regime other than the Bush administration. Let's shout it to prisoners everywhere: If you're not harmed by an American, your suffering doesn't count.

The left's hypocrisy is immeasurable. The grandchildren of those who defended Stalin are mortified that Saddam Hussein will stand trial. By taking such irresponsible voices seriously, we grant our critics a strength they otherwise lack and simply help them keep their lies alive.

No matter what our country does, we will never please a global intelligentsia outraged that all their theories came to nothing. We can't satisfy al Qaeda, and we can't please those discontented souls who need to blame the United States for their personal inadequacies. It's time we stopped trying.

What should our nation's leaders say about Guantanamo and our treatment of captured terrorists? A lot less.

When comments are unavoidable, try this: "We're human. We make mistakes. We fix those mistakes. And we move on. Nothing will divert us from our mission of defeating terror and keeping our country safe."

Ralph Peters' next book, "New Glory, Expanding America's Global Supremacy," is due out in August.

Saw a roundtable where Col. Peters declared the media has assumed the posture of an enemy and the Pentagon has to find a way to deal with it.

The Pentagon should have its own TV network and wire service. They should be fair, balanced and non-ideological. Given the communication capabilities of the US military, they will be head and shoulders above the MSM. They will have standards and those standards will be enforced.

Once they are in place there's no reason for embedded reporters or press conferences. They are the enemy. Let them exploit the hospitality of our enemies. Do you think a lot of them would be willing to risk their lives to feed on the lies of a Baghdad Bob?

This would work because the American public trust the military more than any other organization they've been asked about. Journalists are down near the bottom.

This might fit in here with Mr.Peters piece.
This is a post I made on one of the Durbin threads.
Let me know what you think.

I was thinking about this today.
There were TWO lessons to be learned from the Vietnam war.
One, we learned that to be half hearted in the defense of
our armed forces could lead to failure in spite of their
skill and sacrifice, that a timetable only enabled the
enemy, that withdrawing support for an ally only means
their defeat when up against an enemy supported by allies
at a cost of millions of lives.

So we have done our best to support our troops and leaders
to make that support vocal so that they know they have our support while they are engaged and after. We have taken a
long term view with victory as our goal, nothing less. We have refused to cast our allies to the jaws of the terror
sharks. And finally we have confronted and continue to confront those who learned the second lesson of Vietnam.

The second lesson is the one the liberal/democrat/socialists
learned, that misrepresentation of the situation can cause
support for the troops to wain, that gullible young minds
can be led to turn on their own nation, that by burrowing
deep within our own government these same people can multiply the effect of their disruption and can bring about
the further loss of respect for our nation around the world.
That by their constant drumbeat of criticism, and opposition
they can wear out the patience of the people in support of
their OWN fellow citizen soldiers.

Now we hear the canard of a "timetable for withdrawal", an
"exit strategy" either one the death knell of defeat and
further loss of life.
The same people who did their best to cause the fall
of South Vietnam and the resultant slaughter in Cambodia,
now want to apply the winning tactics they used then, today.
One only needs pay attention to the play book, and the roster to see that what I am saying is true.

We as a nation cannot afford in this perelous time to suffer
the same strangling, binding, loss of will as we suffered in
the years after Vietnam. The stakes are too high now, being
the very survival of our nation as a people.
Consider the divisiveness of "Diversity" no longer are we united by a common language, our children are no longer taught to consider themselves "Americans" but as bits of
co-equal gender and ethnic subsets.
When one considers the monolithic mindset of Islam, what
we must do to view ourselves as a united body to stand against their naked attempt at world domination is perhaps
not possible.
It certainly isn't possible with the internal opposition we
face at home.

Sorry got carried away, but the lessons of Vietnam were viewed and acted upon in such different ways, looking back
we should be able to learn, and I think WE have, that the
price of vacillation, and cowardice is too costly to pay.
A price beyond mere lives, it took almost thirty years for
this nation to be in a position to project power internationally after the political debacle of Vietnam.
Can we afford to be in a position, say after a failed
timetable, and the fall of new democratic arab states,
where we are NOT able to project power around the world
FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS.

Think of the enemies we face even now, China is building
a military, one which due to the nature of their birth
doctrine, will be massively provided with male soldiers,
and the finest technology they can pirate or develope.

Russia....may be our friend or ally but the spector of
communism is far from dead even there.

Islam, is our greatest threat, our whole nation is already
seeing the efforts they produce to turn our institutions
to the profit of their "religion". They say the "fanatics"
only number a mear percent or so of their number but that is STILL a million or more zealots who whole heartedly wish
to die destroying us.

Can we allow those same people who pulled the props out from
under us in Vietnam, the same ones who said we should "work" with the communists, that they were no threat to us, that our OWN government was the problem, that WE were the cause of our defeat, to again put us in the position that we should FEAR OUR OWN GOVERNMENT, that
self doubt and national self loathing should tie our hands
when we are faced with such a future?

IMO We are at a crossroads. In one direction lies the end of our republic. That appears to be the easy path as it has been made easy by those who hate our nation and who had the practice of deriding our nation during Vietnam.

They learned many lessons during that time. How to lie, what to say as a lie and who to tell the lie to. They also learned how best to disseminate their lies, by controlling the press and the academic bodies.

They prey on the gullible, the naive, the class envious, the lazy, and the rebellious.

The other path can only be traveled by returning to the concept of the republic our forefathers envisioned, created, and gave us stewardship over. This path is much much harder to travel as it will require a resolve that I doubt we as a people have. To return to what our forefathers intended would require that we return to the moral, philosophical, and yes even religious values that our forefathers held. It also means that we would have to take back our republic from those who wish to twist it into their own vision. This in itself could rip the country apart. It is my belief that we are now in the beginning stages of a cold civil war. I just hope it doesn't turn into a hot one ... but I don't hold much hope for that. I truly fear for our republic ... but I know I would fight to the death those who would seek to destroy it. I don't wish to consider ever single liberal an enemy ... but they aren't making it easy

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