Posted on 03/04/2003 8:40:42 AM PST by Valin
A soldier-historian looks at how the world has changed in the past decade and finds that America is both hostage to history and likely to be saved by it
An Interview With Ralph Peters by Fredric Smoler
Military historians sometimes write biographies of people they call military intellectuals. Such people are interesting because they can have a vast effect on history, and also because they combine in one career two modes of life normally considered incompatible, the life of thought and the life of action.
Lt. Col., Ret., Ralph Peters is a military intellectual, and his career makes surprising reading. He enlisted in the Army as a private in 1976 and served in a mechanized infantry division. He was commissioned in 1980 as a second lieutenant in military intelligence and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel by 1998. Along the way he took a master’s degree in international relations and published eight novels, typing out the first one while still a sergeant stationed in Germany. He also published a remarkable series of essays, many of which first appeared in Parameters, the theoretical journal of the U.S. Army War College. These essays are some of the most radical writing I have ever read on the recent revolution in military affairs. They began appearing at the start of the last decade, they are beautifully written and intellectually exciting, and they have proved startlingly (and sometimes grimly) prescient.
This prodigious intellectual and literary output began while he was pursuing a dramatic and varied set of military careers. Some of his assignments informed his novels: Red Army, a cult classic within the Army before the fall of the Soviet Union, describes a successful Soviet breakthrough on NATO’s central front and was inspired by a stint as chief intelligence analyst for the 1st Armored Division, as well as by a job as the chief of the Intelligence Production Section for III Corps. Other books grew out of assignments in Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. Some are set in the wreckage of the Soviet Union, in its successor states, and in Central Asia, all places where Peters has spent a great deal of time. These novels share a theme with many of his essays on strategy and international relations, the idea that a world ended between 1989 and 1991. Our new situation is chaotic, its politics were generally unforeseen, it is extremely dangerous, and in many ways it is extremely sad. However, the United States faces its new threats with historically unparalleled strengths. Over the course of his career, Peters served in or visited more than 50 countries, on every continent save Antarctica, and the experience has made him a patriot and an optimist.
In 1999 Peters retired from the Army to write full-time, and soon produced, beginning with Faded Coat of Blue, a series of highly acclaimed Civil War novels under the pen name Owen Parry. I interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Peters in his house in northern Virginia, surrounded by Russian and German books—he is at least trilingual—and a wonderful collection of contemporary Russian paintings. We spoke about his essays, two volumes of which have been collected and published—Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World and Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?—and about what history, both recent and ancient, tells us of the challenges and possibilities America faces around the globe.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanheritage.com ...
Bingo.
Amen.
Interesting point, here.
Good post.
After the Battle of Mogadishu, which we won overwhelmingly, we made things worse by cutting and running. The failure of nerve of the Clinton administration encouraged our enemies to believe that whenever you kill a few Americans, they’ll run away. Osama bin Laden talked a lot about Somalia.
Bill Clinton's legacy.
Amazing how we have to keep cleaning up after liberals. Even Peters says that we are dealing with Wilson's legacy.
I was watching a special about Black Hawk Down on the history channel. Apparently, when the Rangers got back they were ready to go back out in force and level the city block by block. Clinton nixed it-Osama thought we had no balls and came after us. The filmakers of Black Hawk Down laid 9-11 directly at Clinton's feet but apparenty Hollywood edited that part out.
I could go on and on-during the bay of pigs Castro held his forces back because he was afraid of the U.S carrier parked off the coast. When it became apparent that we were going to abandon the Cuban freedom fighters, Castro wiped them out. The Admiral on the carrier was literally crying and begging with JFK for "just one plane"-JFK nixed it and the Cubans have lived in misery ever since.
Let's hope GW gets around to Chavez eventually.
Let's hope GW gets around to Chavez eventually.
I hope so too, but I'm not counting on it.
Thanks for the thread Valin....
Ya'll Stay Safe !
I think we all missed it. It never ceases to amaze me how very bright people can be liberals. If I had to guess, I would say it is because they are more interested in how legislation sounds rather than in the results it produces. For example, despite every intellectually honest economist saying that tax cuts are good for the economy, a simple "Tax cuts just benefits the rich" causes liberals to gnash their teeth.
Affirmative action is a sad and politically correct byproduct, but those who 40 years ago said it was none of gov't's business were wrong.
By the same token, Peters in this interview stoutly affirms that the movement for women's rights and equality, much of which was sustained by government, is the one modern factor that most elevates our society over the 12th century barbarism of the Islamic world. Gov't sustenance of the idea of equality of women would be another area where so called liberal ideas have been beneficial.
Like affirmative action there have been extravagances, abortion being the most egregious, that should not have been part of the original concept, but the concept was right and just, and those who stood against it were wrong. After all without civil and women's right we would be unlikely to have the talent of Condaleeza Rice.
"Listen to our enemies’ rhetoric."
"They’re in love with their myths of themselves, both old myths and relatively recent ones, and they’re myths of self-justification."
In short....they're ignorantly and dangerously delusional....
A unique insight -- I haven't heard before...
Does France, Germany, much of the Arab world and North Korea come to mind?
We have much work ahead of us...
Semper Fi
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