TO INVADE IRAQ: SEND IN THE 'EXPERTS'!

we still have too many defeatist generals and admirals whose motto is "Just say no."

Bush is in illustrious company: Abraham Lincoln had his share of timid generals.
He fired them when it became obvious they were not warriors; Bush should do the same.

Ralph Peter's latest book, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World, is getting rave reviews on amazon, such as:

Beyond 5 Stars--Leaves One Breathless from the Sparks

Robert D. Steele (see more about me)

I am not given to Valley Girl forms of praise, but this book left me breathless and in awe of the author's gifted rendition of his insights. There is real poetry and deep philosophy in all that he offers.

Ralph Peters is a man of the people, a man of humble origins whose global travels, military service, and literary accomplishments make him a national treasure--not to the government that would seek to disown him and silence him, but to the people.

He is caustically critical of the corruption in the U.S. as well as other governments that stem from oil company fortunes in bribery and illegitimate influence; he is brutally on the mark when criticizing the useless and very expensive military systems we procure with the taxpayer dollar, only to see them irrelevant in the war on terrorism; and he is chillingly prescient when he forsees the growing gap between the American people and their own government, a government unwilling to make available to the people all of the information is has in hand with respect to terrorism and what we need to do to root out terrorism--including terrorism funded by Saudi Arabian rulers desperately holding on to power with American support.

Among his most brilliant pieces are those on hucksters in uniform, on the black art of intelligence, and on the greatest threat to all mankind, the diverse manner in which information will be available or exploited or ignored by distinct cultures and social classes.

This book, this author, are unique. Any citizen, any elected official, any foreigner interested in the most advanced thinking and deepest insights on America, the world, and terror, will be very well served by carefully absorbing every line that Ralph Peters lays down, each line a guantlet--one can almost hear his body armor clank as line after line comes down hard on the table--slam...slam....slam.... This Lawrence, this Don Quixote, this soldier-poet of the people, has my deepest and most profound regard.

dandy idea, but I hope they'll wait until the Turkish armor force finishes refitting itself and upgrading to their new tank, whether it's a Turkish-manufactured version of the Israeli Merkava IV or the M60/2000 upgrade of the now-standard M60A1 tank with a General Dynamics Abrams Tank turret with 120mm main gun.

If US or even a coalition force moves on Baghdad from the sounth and west while the Turks roll on them from the north, that'll give Saddam two different sets of problems to worry about. Add in a serious air war, and he could have more trouble than he can juggle at once....

Ralph Peters is our Lawrence of Arabia, but with the erudition of a Robert Kaplan, the chilling calm of a Robert Young Pelton, and the poetry--yes, the poetry, of a Robert Frost.

Well, T.E. Lawrence himself was in no way less than erudite and calm [his recitation of Ernest Dowson poetry during a camel charge comes to mind] and was no slouch as a poet himself...as well as a fine scholar and archeologist. But I think for the project at hand, the touch of a latter-day Ned Lawrence is more called for than that of Robert Frost or Ralph Peters, though I look forward to Peters' after-action analysis of the events that are yet unfolding.

"I loved you,
so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars.
To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me.
When we came."

(dedication of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1926.

More good Ralph Peters stuff. Good old google says it found the follow article at http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/41029.htm. The NY Post no longer had it there, so I dug it out of Google's cache.

Notice the part near the end of the article that I emphasized. They nicely resemble the events that would unfold over the three months of April, May and June 2002 following his publishing this article.

By RALPH PETERS

April 5, 2002 -- LISTENING to President Bush deliver his heartfelt statement on the Middle East, I felt weathered and old. This is a president I have come to admire enormously, a man who has begun to seem a great wartime president, and I felt protective toward him. I do not want to see him embarrassed by liars, killers or fools. I want our president's new initiative to succeed, as do all sensible men and women. Who, except terrorists and Middle Eastern despots, would not want to see peace between Israel and the Palestinians? But I could not break free of my cynicism about Secretary of State Colin Powell's prospects in a region that devours good intentions without a trace.

I hope, unreservedly, that the Bush administration will achieve what all others have failed to do. But I cannot help believing that, at most, we will see a truce disguised as a prelude to peace, whose ultimate effect is to let surrounded terrorists survive to kill another day.

I could not help feeling that, once again, a president had been led down the primrose path by those whose maps of ideas are as useless as they are out of date. The traditional wisdom is that America must contribute to a just peace, but I am wary of a false peace without justice - especially justice meted out to terrorists.

I see new motion, but not new thinking. Is the Middle East a better place, after all our meddling? Have we prevented some fatal tragedy, or only prolonged the patient's agonies? What if there is no solution, only the willingness of enemies to endure?

President Bush spoke inspirationally and, no doubt, sincerely. He is a man who believes in possibilities - a man possessed of a distinctly Protestant temperament, almost an archetype. But idealists fail when they underestimate the darkness in the human heart. And the Middle East, not Joseph Conrad's Congo, is the true heart of darkness.

I'm not so concerned that our president is taking a risk on a ferociously-difficult, if not impossible mission - after all, we're better off with a president willing to lead and take risks in a good cause than with one who relies on polls and worries only about his image.

But I do worry that President Bush is undercutting his credibility by avoiding the choice he posed to the rest of the world: You are either for us in the fight against terrorism, or you are against us. In the Middle East, at least, President Bush seems willing to compromise with terror, to want to have it both ways.

Consider these dangers:

By intervening now and interrupting Israel's counter-offensive before it can root out the key terrorists and their sympathizers - surrounded, at present - President Bush is unintentionally protecting terrorists.

Any compromise forced on Israel, no matter how justified it may appear in the greater scheme of things, appears to reward the suicide bombers and their infernal masters. Expect more suicide bombings.

American intervention appears to bow to the will of the frankly-impotent "Arab Street." No matter what we believe, the populations of the Arab states will convince themselves that their demonstrations frightened the United States into cracking down on Israel. Expect more demonstrations.

Nothing Israel can give up will ever satisfy the Arab hardliners. Immediately after the president's generous speech, Palestinian spokesmen criticized it for not going far enough and for implying that Yasser Arafat is imperfect. The Arabs in positions of authority are bullies to a man, and bullies can never be satisfied through appeasement.

With the best of intentions, our interference may only prolong the current terrorist campaign, while doing even more to convince the Arabs that we are Israel's master - and that we are, indeed, to blame for Israel's successes. You cannot make friends through demonstrations of weakness, but that has been our consistent policy in the Middle East, no matter which political party is in the White House.

I hope that I am wrong and that lasting good will come of this new initiative. But even if it fails, an unexpected advantage may emerge, just as the paradox of the tragedy of Sept. 11 was that the terror attacks unified and strengthened America.

Should Secretary Powell fail - and failure may not be evident immediately - we may at last see a bit of realism in the Powell State Department, which consistently has been the weak link in our immediate struggle against global terrorism and in our long-term need to be open to strategic change.

It may do Secretary Powell good to negotiate firsthand with Yasser Arafat, to return to Washington with a piece of paper guaranteeing peace in our time, then to learn personally how meaningless a terrorist's promises are.

Perhaps President Bush, who clearly has been influenced by Arab potentates and dictators he persists in calling our friends, will begin to see at last how deceitful and hate-steeped their regimes and populations really are.

Finally, our president is absolutely correct in insisting on dignity for the average Palestinian. But he needs to address his message first to the corrupt, brutal, dictatorial Palestinian terrorists and warlords who have been the primary enemies of the emergence of a decent, rule-of-law Palestinian state. The crassness of a young Israeli soldier at a checkpoint is nothing compared to the theft of hope and dreams committed against their own people by Palestinian demagogues.

Perhaps I've been around too long and have grown too cynical. Maybe it's possible to have seen too much of the world - at over 50 countries and counting, it's easy to fall into a weary, "Round up the usual suspects" mentality. But I do have a few unshakeable beliefs I've developed over the years:

You cannot compromise with evil.

Concessions to bullies are always counterproductive.

And world opinion isn't worth a damn.

I join my fellow Americans in wishing Colin Powell bon voyage.

So quick we are to condemn military leadership. In this case, it is not cowardice, but facing reality. The generals said an operation to topple Saddam would take 200,000 troops. Very well. And the generals saw quickly that we do not have the assets or the manpower for that mission.

We simply don't have the ground combat divisions or air wings we had a decade ago. And until the arm-chair strategists and politicians realize that, we are not going to muster enough for a full-scale invasion of Iraq. As the military leadership knows, we have maybe 1/3 the manpower, equipment, and weaponry we did a decade ago. Ten years of decay are not corrected in a year's defense spending.

Of course, there is an solution: the draft. I'm all for it. I've already laid my life on the line and taken the oath. We'll see how many of these armchair strategists are willing to let their sons and daughters get drafted without complaint.