Ralph Peters Debunking "Lies" of the GWOT

As usual, Ralph Peters swings a big stick in a wide arc, and while he occasionally hits the piñata, he occasionally breaks the shin of a bystander with a completely-off-the-mark swing.

Still, his 'historical analysis isn't all bad. Check out this excerpt from the blurb his exposition about "If we kill terrorist leaders, terrorists will take revenge."

We’ve heard the same nonsense many times before. When our forces in Iraq finally cornered and killed Abu Musab al Zarqawi—perhaps the cruelest terrorist of the decade—we were warned that the only result would be to make him a martyr and spark retaliation. Didn’t happen. When Osama bin Laden was finally killed last spring, the same voices warned that he’d become a martyr around whom the forces of terror would rally lethally. Hasn’t happened. There are no “Remember Zarqawi!” or “Osama Lives!” movements parading out of Friday mosques anywhere in the Islamic world. Al Qaeda continues to be a great slayer of its fellow Muslims, but the threat to the USA has collapsed down to schemes to fly model airplanes into the Pentagon—a long way downhill from 9/11’s complex aerial ballet of jetliners loaded with passengers and fuel.

On the other hand, review what happened when our generals heeded the voices of caution: In the spring and summer of 2004, our troops were being killed at the command of Shiite thug Moqtada al Sadr, who ran an Islamist mafia largely confined to the slums of eastern Baghdad and a few other cities in southern Iraq. We had the legal justification and the means to take out al Sadr. Timid leaders decided not to do it, since his death might have caused riots. Well, yes. There would have been several days of riots. Bloody ones, too. And then it would have been over. Instead, Moqtada al Sadr has gone on to build out his organization to become a crucial, ferociously anti-American power-broker in Iraq—and Iran’s most-important ally in the country (he still runs his mafia from his safe haven in Qom in Iran). Had we killed him when we had just cause to do it, Iraq would be a far different—and more hopeful—state today.

I'm still pretty sure I don't like his comments about the Hellfiring of Anwar al-Awlaki. Any US citizen deserves the right of due process from the US, even if the result is a foregone conclusion. And yes, I have a double standard for US citizen and everyone else.

By: Brant