They can never beat our military, and now largely don't even try. They go straight for the political will.
I see Peters message being; -- we cannot reason with fanatics, either secular or religious , -- nor can we defeat them in the military sense.
Thus they must be defeated by political will.
-- This can only be done by putting our own house in order by waging a propaganda war for Constitutionalism, and against ALL types of fanaticism.
But see, if you READ the actual Army Docs (not to mention the Marines' docs) you will see that they emphasize "full-spectrum warfare," which includes political, information, military, social---it IS warfare across all fronts. That's why it's frustrating that someone who should know better---Peters---only has to look at "On Point" (the Army's history and "lessons learned" about Operation Iraqi Freedom) and you can see GOING IN that they knew what the score was.
Peters isn't making the point that Iraq can't be defeated militarily. We can do that. He's saying we can't defeat fanatics & fundamentalism worldwide.
Moreover, it is a MYTH that we "cannot defeat the terrorists militarily."
Muslims, communists, fascists, anarchists, -- fanatics of every stripe still abound in this world. We will never defeat such terrorists in a military sense.
This was the line used about Japan too, but in fact, when they run out of men, you have won.
Japan never ran out of men, it ran out of a will to fight.
No armed force in history---EVER has sustained the % level of losses that the Islamic "insurgents"/terrorists have sustained and won.
There are hundreds of millions of potential Islamic terrorists. Whats their percentage of loss?
There is also a new study of Japan ("Downfall," by Richard B. Frank, that uses Japanese documents) that shows that the A-bomb had several levels of effects. Yes, it had what we all know as a "diplomatic" impact, by convincing the Japanese that any further holding out would be useless. But he shows it also had a MILITARY effect, by showing that even their by-then dispersed military forces were helpless. They already could not get any more kamikaze volunteers. So there is a pretty good argument that when the bad guys all die, you have won "militarily."
All the 'bad guys' in Japan were dead? -- I'd grant that they lost their fanatical devotion to the cause, because we were ready to invade & kill em all; -- can we invade the muslim world & kill em all?
The Japanese ran out of kamikazes.
As I say, the new studies don't support you. SOME of the generals wanted to fight, but there was widespread understanding that the Japanese military was helpless. Note that Kurita and other admirals turned tail and gave up at Leyte Gulf rather than stage suicidal attacks on the U.S. forces. Hanson argues that, to an extent, the fact that the Japanese were trapped on Okinawa drove their strategy there, but even then, it was the first stage of trying to raise the casualty cost to such a level that we wouldn't pay it.
That's the point that Peters misses: Americans RARELY pay that cost because we quickly figure out other ways to achieve the objective without "dying for your country." Heck, Patton figured that out.
Moreover, the difference between a "fanatic" and someone who can be "reasoned with" can often be just one more casualty. I don't know the number, but at SOME NUMBER, Japanese "fanatics" decided they no longer would be kamikaze pilots. Many one-time Nazis ("fanatics") after the war later went on to be respectable Germans who led productive lives. In short, there is a marginal level at which remaining "fanatical" becomes less and less attractive. Yes, there will always be a handful of "bunker-types," who will commit suicide rather than surrender. But there is a much, much larger number of people who are less committed and who can, with consistent pressure be forced into not only surrender, but some pretty normal activities after the war.
The quickest way to defeat fundamentalism worldwide is to defeat it militarily, because fanatical Islam (not the relatively "average" American Muslims that I know) is a religion/code based on SHAME AND HONOR, and the most dishonorable thing a Bedoin can do is to lose a war. That's why I think Abu Ghraib actually HELPED us, because whatever we thought of those pics, it sent a message to the Islamofascists that if you cross the Americans, they will humiliate you, even to the point of having their WOMEN dominate you! Once you are winning militarily, you strengthen the (dominant and majority) peaceful factions of Islam and marginalize the small minority of violent whackos. This was EXACTLY the policy followed in the Filipino War in the early 1900s, with almost the same ratio of troops to terrorists, and with very positive results for us.