by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

On Friday, Kyrgyzstan’s interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, flew to the site of this month’s ethnic violence — and raised the estimate of the dead to 2,000.

Some 400,000 ethnic Uzbeks have become refugees, with 100,000 safely across the border in Uzbekistan and 300,000 trapped in Kyrgyzstan. Their homes have been burned, their relatives beaten, raped or slaughtered.

The Kyrgyz military and police stood by and let it happen — or pitched in. The interim government couldn’t control them, once the ethnic cleansing began.

And it matters to us. Remote Kyrgyzstan has permitted our forces to use Manas air base (named for a Kyrgyz warlord) to shuttle troops and supplies into Afghanistan. The base is vital, but our continued presence was already iffy. Now the Yankees may be told to go home.

This latest bout of butchery also matters because it fits in with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s strategy of re-establishing Russian hegemony over Central Asia. That’s why he denied a Kyrgyz request for Russian peacekeepers.

Russian soldiers may show up eventually — but not until the situation worsens. The Russians, too, have a base in Kyrgyzstan, but their troops have been under lockdown. Putin’s waiting for the other Central Asian states that belong to his Collective Security Treaty Organization to turn to him and beg. Putin wants a cloak of legitimacy, a mask of collective action.

He also wants an end to US use of that air base. But he needs the Kyrgyz government to appear to make the decision on its own. There’s going to be a lot of backroom poker.

Putin’s long-term vision keeps the Chinese out and keeps the region’s gas reserves flowing through Russian-controlled pipelines. He seeks a cut-rate version of the empire of the czars. And he’ll do whatever’s necessary to get it.

But why did neighbor suddenly turn against neighbor? With an ax?

In April, an uprising in Kyrgyzstan deposed a would-be dictator, Kurmanbek Bakiyev. He fled to Belarus (Cuba with really bad weather). But Bakiyev and his clan still had support in the country’s south, around Osh, where an influx of Uzbeks had the locals simmering.

(I’ve been to Osh. It’s a dusty, low-rise place with a struggling hospital, a few glitzy car dealerships for gangsters, and patchwork neighborhoods that were mostly ethnic slums.)

The Uzbeks are more aggressive and ambitious than the Kyrgyz, thus more successful. And Osh sits at the edge of the prized Fergana Valley, where Stalin redrew borders to dilute local power: He thrust hostile population groups together, while dividing others, leaving the Kremlin as the only effective arbiter. That valley’s been the scene of bloody eruptions since the Soviet Union collapsed.

From exile, Bakiyev used his clan and gang connections to ignite a revolt fueled by ethnic cleansing. He hoped to make Kyrgyzstan ungovernable and disrupt upcoming elections. He wanted to show that only he could guarantee peace in the valley.

The degree to which Putin’s henchmen were involved remains unclear. But only Russia benefits in the end: The weaker Kyrgyzstan becomes, the more it needs Russian protection.

Neighboring Uzbekistan — a bigger, tougher state than Kyrgyzstan — has been uncharacteristically passive, acting only to close its border against additional refugees. Why? Because the Tashkent government wants Uzbeks to stay in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan believes it should own the entire Fergana Valley. The refugees are pawns.

Uzbekistan could intervene militarily to protect them, but a broader conflict would give Russia an excuse to come back in force. Everybody’s waiting everybody else out.

The region’s hatreds always have been deep. Now they’re deeper. Beyond the dead, lives are shattered, neighborhoods burned out, and a weak economy’s gutted. And our diplomats are at a loss.

According to our State Department, ethnic violence is an illusion. Yet it’s stunningly easy to get men to slaughter their neighbors, if the neighbor’s dialect sounds odd or there’s a subtle difference in skin tone.

A short flight from Osh, in Afghanistan, the hatreds go deeper still.

Meanwhile, we don’t know if this pogrom was a one-act play, or if it’s only intermission. And there’s nothing we can do to make a difference. ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

Afghanistan just got its worst news since the Soviet invasion three decades ago: American geologists have charted as much as a trillion dollars’ worth of mineral deposits in that tormented landscape.

Up to now, Afghanistan’s internal factions and neighbors have been fighting over worthless dirt, Allah and opium. Assigning the battlefield a trillion-dollar value is not a prescription for reconciliation. Expect “The Beverly Hillbillies” scripted by Satan.

Even were Afghanistan at peace, its endemic corruption would generate a grabocracy — a Nigeria, not a Norway. Throw in inherited hatreds and the appetites of its neighbors, and Afghanistan may end up more like eastern Congo, a playground for state-sanctioned murderers and looters.

Beyond reportedly vast deposits of rare minerals (lithium, etc.) essential to popular technologies, there’s copper, cobalt, iron and gold in them thar hills. Afghanistan never before offered so much to fight over.

Instead of making life easier for our troops, the finds will make it harder to disengage. Washington will succumb to arguments that we need to preserve access to these strategic resources, even though it’s far cheaper to buy them than to prolong a military protectorate. (US firms won’t get the good contracts, anyway.)

We already provide strategic security for Chinese mining interests in Afghanistan — having been chumped by the Karzai government out of the gate. Now the Chinese will arrive in hordes, bribing and smiling.

The Russians will also take a renewed interest. And the Iranians have already crept into western Afghanistan (where key deposits are located). The potential for violence spilling across more borders — including into unstable Central Asia — will be enormous.

But the gravest danger of an all-out shootin’ war comes from Pakistan and India. Until the revelation of these finds, Islamabad (which continues to support the Afghan Taliban) just wanted strategic depth in the event of a war with New Delhi, while India had engaged in Afganistan just to frustrate Pakistan.

Now Pakistan, a country in which the powerful have already stolen all there is to steal, will develop delusions of grandeur about controlling Afghanistan’s subsurface wealth. And India’s swelling economy will develop a sudden hunger for Afghan minerals.

China will side with Pakistan, exploiting Islamabad as a proxy. Iran may line up with China and Pakistan, as well. Pakistan will turn up the heat in Kashmir. The “Great Game” of yore is about to become Monopoly played with corpses.

Afghanistan’s one hope was that, eventually, outsiders would leave it alone. That hope’s gone now. Development of a full-blown mining industry will take decades, but that just means decades of violent competition.

Back in the happy-face United States, optimists insist that these Afghan finds will fund good government, security and development. Ain’t gonna happen. A country living on aid and opium won’t go Harvard Business School when megawealth floods in (the opium trade won’t disappear, either). And the environmental damage will put BP to shame.

Meanwhile, we can’t manage the war we’ve got. The CIA, at least, keeps killing al Qaeda terrorists across the border in Pakistan. But our troops, in the words of one fighter on the ground, just “patrol, patrol and patrol, making themselves IED magnets.”

Afghan National Army training is showing progress, but President Hamid Karzai just dumped his two most pro-American ministers, and our ballyhooed Kandahar offensive — delayed yet again — has begun to seem like “Brigadoon” with body armor.

It’s high time to ask ourselves the basic question about Afghanistan that we’ve avoided since we made the decision to stay: What do we get out of it?

“Chinese access to strategic minerals” is not an adequate answer.

ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

Yesterday brought the welcome news that a 22-year-old soldier had been busted for passing classified gun-camera tapes and documents to Wikileaks. If proven guilty, Spc. Bradley Manning needs to do serious prison time.

But that’s where the good news ends. Spc. Manning was only caught because he bragged about his crime to a former hacker, who turned him in to the Army. Our government still isn’t serious about plugging classified leaks in wartime.

According to Wired.com, which broke the story, the renegade soldier sent a chest-thumping message claiming that “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack” because of the large volume of State Department documents he claimed to have leaked.

Well, probably not. Don’t expect Ambassador Fuzzypoodle to show up in the cardio ward just yet. Judging by the gun-camera video from Baghdad that Manning handed over and Wikileaks posted a few months back, that young soldier may have had access to a lot of classified information — but not to the really good stuff.

The video, which made the Web rounds, shows an Apache helicopter crew dealing with terrorists. Anyone with the least objectivity or military experience recognized that the crew made the right call when pulling the trigger (after deliberating). Any “civilians” killed shouldn’t have been smoking and joking with terrorist gunmen.

Wikileak’s big revelation was weak on sound, low on fury and signified nothing — although the left tried to pretend it was the My Lai massacre on steroids. The phony fuss faded away.

That doesn’t mean that Manning’s alleged crime wasn’t serious. It was. If convicted, he should do hard prison time. Classified leaks in wartime constitute a potentially deadly breach of a solemn trust. We need to have a zero-tolerance, hang-’em-high policy for those who compromise intelligence, operational or planning documents.

The problem is that we don’t have such a policy. Spc. Manning was caught in a self-woven net. I’m much more interested in busting whoever leaked that sensitive special-operations memo Gen. Dave Petraeus signed off on, only to have it appear on the front page of The New York Times a few weeks ago.

Publicizing that memo may well cost American lives — and the lives of innocent locals. Leaking that document showed a cavalier disregard for the lives of America’s best and our national security.

But no source has indicated to me that there’s an intelligence dragnet out to catch that leaker. Because he or she apparently works in the White House or its environs (very few individuals in Petraeus’ Central Command headquarters even knew the document existed — it was very “close hold”).

So we’ve caught a copperhead by dumb luck — and let a king cobra slither back into the plumbing.

Pop quiz: How many White House or congressional insiders have gone to jail for compromising classified information since 9/11? Despite hundreds of leaks?

Make no mistake: Spc. Manning may be a clown, but he’s a dangerous clown. If the allegations against him are proven, he needs to wear a very special orange clown suit for several years (at least).

But when is our wartime government going to get serious about nailing the big guys and gals who are so confident of their own immeasurable importance that they think nothing of endangering our troops and our secret agents?

I don’t care if leakers of classified info are Democrats or Republicans, military or civilian. Leaking classified documents is treason. So is publishing them.

Either get serious about busting leakers, regardless of rank, or admit that that young soldier would fit right in at the White House.

ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

As the Irish-flagged “aid” ship Rachel Corrie heads for Gaza and Act Two of this made-in-Turkey crisis looms, Washington still can’t bring itself to accept that the entire script was written in Ankara.

Fourteen months ago, President Obama made his first stop abroad in Turkey, where he told his hosts that “Turkey and the United States can build a model partnership.”

ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

Yesterday’s “aid convoy” incident off the coast of Gaza wasn’t about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn’t even about Israel.

It was about Turkey’s determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East.

Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government — led by Islamists these days — sponsored the “aid” operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians.

And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react — and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated.

The lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, just happened to have an al-Jazeera TV crew on board to film Israel’s response. Ironically, the early videos would’ve been counterproductive, had world leaders and journalists not been programmed to blame everything on Israel.

Those videos showed Israeli commandos rappelling onto the ship with both hands on the rope (making it rather hard to use a weapon), yet activists claimed the Israelis opened fire as they descended.

Purely by coincidence, dozens of “peace activists” waited with sharpened iron bars, clubs, slingshots — and rifles. Of course, the nine dead in the melee were all Israel’s victims.

The first wave of Israeli commandos reportedly were armed only with paintball rounds for crowd control. Inspect those videos of maddened peaceniks assaulting the soldiers as they landed on deck. You don’t see any Israelis pointing rifles — they’re fending off blows.

But the claims of pro-terrorist “peace advocates” are given instant credence.

The US government’s initial response was restrained, but Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understandably canceled his meeting with President Obama, scheduled for today. Bibi’s got an emergency on his hands back home, as well-organized protests sweep the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Europeans and UN bonzes rage at Israel with unseemly relish, but ignore the luxury lifestyles of Gaza’s insider elite and the fact that no Palestinian’s going hungry. The Israelis had even offered to transfer the aid aboard those ships to the Palestinians — as long as they could inspect it.

But neither the activists nor the Turkish government wanted a negotiated outcome. This was a stunt from the start.

Now, as we wait to see if Hamas and Hezbollah up the ante, the world ignores Turkey’s decisive role in this fiasco.

The US and the European Union cling to the fiction that Turkey’s a “westernized Muslim democracy.” But Turkey’s moving to the east as fast as the Islamist leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) can drag it there.

Turkish leaders visit the West and sing, “Democracy, democracy, democracy!” We coo and clap. Then they go east and cry, “Islam, Islam, Islam!” And we insist they don’t mean it.

Then there’s Turkey’s unfortunate NATO membership. Since the rise of its Islamists, Turkey has been a Trojan horse, not an ally. What happens now if Ankara provokes a military confrontation? How would we respond, given NATO’s mutual-defense agreements?

The madcap agenda of Turkey’s current rulers is to create a 21st-century version of the Ottoman Empire. Turks even mutter about the caliphate — headed for centuries by the Turkish sultan. This is explosive stuff. And the Turks are playing with matches.

But we’ve obstinately ignored every warning sign. First, our “ally” stabbed us in the back on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, denying our troops their planned routes into Iraq. Then the Turkish media intensified its anti-American fantasies.

Headscarves became de rigeur for the wives of top officials in Ankara as the Turks made mischief in Iraq. Emulating the history-obliterating Saudis, the Turks began work on the vast Ilisu Dam — which will permanently submerge pre-Islamic and Kurdish archaeological sites of incalculable value. (The Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban were of comparatively minor interest to researchers.)

Then, just last month, the Turks moved to provide the Iranian regime with cover for its nuclear program. And we still didn’t get it.

The most dramatic transformation in the Middle East since the fall of the shah is playing out before us. And we can’t see behind the mask of the “plight of the Palestinians” (a key Obama administration concern).

In yesterday’s confrontation, Israel behaved clumsily. The peace activists behaved savagely. The Turks behaved cynically. The world reacted predictably.

And Washington scratched its head. ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

Each Memorial Day, we’re treated to countless columns thanking our men and women in uniform for their service and honoring those we have lost or who suffered wounds. The rhetoric’s well intentioned. But it isn’t enough.

In the midst of war, we owe our troops far more than an annual pat on the back. Those who serve on the front lines and the vast array of military members supporting them have immediate and vital needs. On several important counts, we’re letting them down.

Here are five areas in which our troops deserve better. And we’re going to give politicians and generals letter grades:

* Clear missions. Our military isn’t an all-purpose Band-Aid, it’s an instrument for radical surgery. Too often, our political leaders send in the troops because they’re out of other ideas. Military leaders receive vague, impractical or downright senseless missions. And the chain of command, from the Oval Office on down, tinkers with tactics in the absence of a strategy.

If the president cannot explain a military mission clearly and briefly, it doesn’t mean the mission’s too complex for the common herd to understand. It means the president’s clueless. A mission that can’t be articulated can’t be accomplished. Buying time with soldiers’ lives while hoping something miraculously goes right is not a strategy. (Grade: D for politicians, C for the generals)

* Appropriate equipment. God bless Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who’s fought to get our troops in combat the gear they really need. Most senior officers support his efforts. The problem’s overwhelmingly with politicians who insist on buying aircraft, jet engines, ships and other systems the military doesn’t want and can’t use. The defense industry has legions of lobbyists in suits no sergeant could afford — and that sergeant couldn’t get in a senator’s door. (Grade: D for politicians, A for the Gates Pentagon)

* Care for our wounded. Military doctors, nurses and field medics are incredibly dedicated — truly heroic. Our battlefield care does a magnificent job of keeping soldiers alive who would have died in any previous conflict. The problem isn’t with the hands-on caregivers, but with the military-medical bureaucracy, the same folks who insisted that Agent Orange wasn’t dangerous and that Gulf War Syndrome was all in the imagination of our veterans.

The most-important article written about our military this year appeared last Monday on Government Executive Magazine’s website (govexec.com): “Study Raises Questions About Military’s Brain Injury Assessment Tool.” Read it.

Bureaucrats have buried what appears to be the best program available for measuring the extent of brain injuries that result from roadside-bomb attacks. It falls into the old green-eyeshade pattern of doing everything possible to minimize long-term health-care claims that might drive up costs (although I wouldn’t rule out even shabbier explanations).

When the majority of our casualties now come from “improvised explosive devices,” shouldn’t we be giving those casualties the best treatment available? (Grade: Incomplete for politicians, F for the military’s medical bureaucracy)

* Basic human dignity. We treat service members and their families as infinitely renewable resources. They’re not. They’re thinking, feeling human beings. In today’s endless wars, our strategies need to take better account of the requirement for service members to spend some time with their families. The minimum standard should be 22 months at home station for every 14 months deployed. The generals get this one. Politicians blabber, but do nothing. (Grade: B for Pentagon, F for politicians)

* No political stunts. Few things make me sicker than seeing our troops used as political props. We need fewer campaign photo ops and more serious questioning of policies and strategies that don’t get the job done. When the president goes to a war zone, he shouldn’t just bask in the light of camera flashes in the rear area, but should share the risks of front-line soldiers for a day — to better grasp his role as commander-in-chief. (Grade: F-minus for politicians, A-minus for the generals)

This Memorial Day, the hot dogs on the grill may not be good for you, but the hot dogs in Washington are deadly. Instead of just praising our troops, let’s help them. ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

President Obama may have Katrina’d himself this week over the Gulf oil spill — but at least it distracted attention from the fact that he also got caught using the National Guard as lipstick on a cactus.

Anyone with military experience knew that the president’s earlier decision to send 1,200 National Guard soldiers to Arizona’s border with Mexico was a purely political move. But few realized just how cynical it was.

Troop numbers don’t matter as much as what the Guard is tasked and allowed to do. If the president doesn’t authorize those in uniform to track and apprehend illegal border crossers, their presence is worthless — the coyotes and narcos soon figure out that the troops are just decoration.

In the past, our troops have not been allowed to bust illegals — or drug smugglers. Even though the president has the authority to empower them to do so.

It was clear from the start that this deployment wouldn’t be any different. Nonetheless, the Mexican government threw a hissy fit. So, yesterday, our State Department rushed to assure the Mexicans that the guardsmen will only be allowed to do desk jobs and support work. The White House then confirmed it.

Boy, the border criminals are scared now . . .

Not only has the administration misused the guard for politics — the appearance of getting tough in response to Arizona’s popular distress-signal law on checking citizenship documents — it has now placed the appeasement of a foreign government over the welfare of our citizens.

Also yesterday, Senate Democrats defeated an attempt, led by Sen. John McCain, to spur the deployment of 6,000 more National Guardsmen to our southern border.

With all due respect to Sen. McCain, his move was political, too. He knows it’s not how many you send but what they do. We need go-get-’em patrols, not speed bumps in uniform. (And the Guard’s experience in Iraq and Afghanistan could be very helpful.)

Meanwhile, American citizens who live along our southern border are on their own. This administration isn’t going to risk offending a key voting bloc in its base just to protect American lives or property. The Republicans don’t want to do what’s necessary, either.

And Homeland Security top dog Janet Napolitano recently had the audacity (if not the hope) to assure us that our southern border has never been more secure.

Yoo-hoo, Washington! This isn’t about politics. Both parties should be working together to protect our citizens and our territory. That’s the basic function of government.

But Washington’s made it about politics. Those who view illegal immigration as politically advantageous resort to the code phrase “comprehensive immigration reform.” That means “amnesty.” And 10 million new votes for the party that does the most for illegal immigrants.

If someone breaks into our house, are we then obliged to put them on the deed? In legal terms, no issue of our time is more straightforward. “Illegal” means illegal. Yet when Arizona tries to enforce the law of the land, it’s deluged with lawsuits and dissed by our nation’s president.

The truth is that our southern border barely exists anymore. It’s become a zone of transition. We play a few cat-and-mouse games, but no serious border-security policy would have let 10 million illegal immigrants sneak into our homeland.

Instead of forging a serious approach to border security, we’ll take those 1,200 guardsmen away from their families, give them busywork in the general proximity of the border — and pat ourselves on the back. (Meanwhile, the administration was so proud of its new National Security Strategy that it released it on the eve of a holiday weekend.)

Even McCain’s 6,000 troops would be nothing more than fence posts without a fence — unless the president empowered them to intercept and arrest the foreign invaders pouring onto our soil.

Even that would only serve as an interim measure. The Guard can’t stay there forever. It’s not a standing force. We need to get serious about the manpower requirements permanently needed to protect ourselves from the violence of narco-traffickers and the economic (and environmental) devastation wrought by illegal immigrants.

The Mexican narco-insurgents who’ve now killed more than 23,000 people aren’t going to stay home, either. We should be preparing to face this burgeoning threat. Instead, we’re just staring at it like a bunny rabbit hypnotized by a snake.

This week’s embarrassment over ordering the Guard to the border, then admitting they won’t be doing anything, was just another political setback for a beleaguered president. But our bleeding border’s a tragedy for our nation. ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

Yesterday, The New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and such dubious friends as Iran, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Gee, thanks. We really needed to know that. The world’s a better place now.

Yet the Times‘ sin was the lesser one. The paper has long since given up any pretense of patriotism. (Ugh! Yuck!) Its editors are just publishing and perishing as citizens of the world.

It’s whoever leaked the document that bears the burn-in-hell blame.

We must be able to keep secrets in wartime. But we can’t. Because domestic political agendas trump national security in every administration nowadays.

Exposing that seven-page classified document warned our enemies (and pseudo friends) that we’ve expanded our efforts to uncover terror networks and potential targets. This not only increases the virulent paranoia in the region’s police states, but poses a mortal danger to agents, special operators and the innocent.

Our bravest men and women will face heightened risks and difficulties in executing their missions — and businessmen, tourists and (did the Times think this through?) journalists will also come under greater suspicion. Innocent people and regime opponents will be executed as spies. And does anyone think that publicizing this program will help those three hikers held for a year in Iran?

In fact, there’s a far greater risk of harm to blundering bystanders than to skilled operatives. The Tehran regime, especially, will use the revelation of this document as an excuse to imprison more democracy advocates — or kill them.

Think the jerk who leaked this order considered any of these consequences? What was the benefit in handing these classified papers to a journalist? It won’t help fight terror, save lives or end a war.

The document was handed over in a cynical attempt to score political points. There’s no other plausible explanation. Some party hack with a security clearance believed this order would show that the Obama administration’s doing something about Iran.

The only question is whether this betrayal was the act of an individual, or if it was orchestrated.

I’d hang the leaker by the neck, then cut down the body and give it a fair trial. But nobody’s going to be punished. High-ranking officials can get away with manslaughter, if not murder. An Army captain would go to prison. A political appointee can expect a promotion.

This disgraceful culture of leaks isn’t just a problem with Obama’s disciples, of course. The previous administration frequently leaked classified material for political gain. Leaking of classified information has become just one more tool of national politics. Neither party cares a damn about protecting our secrets — unless it can score against the other team.

As far as the actual Petraeus order goes, it’s just the sort of bureaucratic document required by our system to authorize commonsense activities against our enemies. I would’ve been shocked had the order denied permission to collect intelligence on our enemies and conduct lethal operations on hostile ground. This is what serious security establishments do. We should have done more of it earlier.

The problem with the security breach is that it alerts our enemies. The best black operations employ diversions to draw the enemy’s attention to another sphere. You want him looking east, when you’re working the west. Publicizing this document shines a spotlight on our efforts.

Even the sloppiness of the reporting is offensive. The Times’ reporter uses the adjectives “covert” and “clandestine” interchangeably. Yet they have profoundly different meanings.

A covert operation must be kept secret until the mission is accomplished. A clandestine program is meant to remain secret until doomsday (usually to protect sources and methods).

But accuracy doesn’t matter any more than does our national security. A journalist got a front-page byline. A political hack believes that he or she made President Obama look manlier in dealing with Iran. So what if our agents and special operators were betrayed?

People will die or be jailed and tortured because of this leak. And nobody on this end will be punished. Because nobody in Washington gives a damn. ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

by Ralph Peters [author, novelist]

The world changed last week and we yawned. Our government and media utterly failed to grasp the meaning of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey nuke deal.

Undercutting the sanctions-lite bargain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thinks she has with Russia and China was the least of it.

We’re so obsessed with the single (albeit important) issue of terrorism that we’re missing profound global realignments and the rise of grave new threats.

Iran’s “agreement” to ship a slice of its enriched-uranium pie to Turkey for reprocessing is pure gamesmanship. We expect that from Iran. The alarming part is that, this time, Turkey and Brazil are in on the game.

The ludicrous terms of this con-job have long since been overtaken by events. Brazil’s President Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan aren’t trying to stop Iran’s nuke program.

They’re eager to facilitate it.

What Brazil and Turkey just did wasn’t intended to impede Tehran, but to make it harder for Western powers to impose sanctions. Both countries want Iran to run interference for them.

Once Iran gets the bomb and takes the (slight) heat, Brazil and Turkey both intend to go nuclear.

Brazil wants vanity nukes to cement its position as South America’s hegemon, a regional alternative to the US. Turkey’s slow-roll Islamist government dreams of a new Ottoman age — as it turns from the West to embrace the Muslim states it ruled a century ago. After easing Tehran’s path to the bomb, Ankara will claim that it needs its own nuclear capability to maintain regional stability.

But the coming widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons will be profoundly destabilizing. Each Middle Eastern country, especially, that goes nuclear increases the probability of a nuke exchange exponentially.

As Western states fantasize about a “nuclear-weapons-free world,” their developing-world darlings are scrambling like mad to develop nuclear arsenals. And we don’t get it.

Which leads to the second problem with our asleep-at-the-wheel foreign policy (content to equate Arizona’s human-rights record with China’s): New alliances are developing that are already destabilizing our strategic architecture — even without nukes.

Let’s connect a few of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil dots:

* Iran and Brazil share close ties to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and support other left-wing movements in Latin America.

* Russia sells arms to Iran and Venezuela. Iran supplies weaponry to Hezbollah and Hamas. Venezuela equips Latin narco-terrorists and guerrillas — to which Brazil turns a blind eye — and backs Islamist terror.

* While artfully dismantling Turkey’s once-secular constitution, Ankara increasingly supports radical-Muslim causes abroad. Turkey’s new embrace of Iran is paralleled by a growing intimacy with Russia, as well.

* After flirting with Israel, Turkey chose Syria (whose regime also seeks nukes) as its neighborhood partner. Syria cooperates with Iran in support of Hezbollah and Hamas — and has deep ties to Russia.

* China’s working hard to strengthen its strategic ties with Brazil and Venezuela, and Beijing’s already Iran’s staunchest defender on the international stage.

* What do Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, Syria and even our “NATO ally” Turkey have in common? They’re all resentful of American power and want to see Washington taken down several notches.

In the depths of the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement was a sorry joke in which rhetorical grandstanding and leftist economics stopped development in its tracks for decades. Member countries hurt themselves far more than they annoyed us.

The emerging constellation of alliances will mean a lot more trouble. Not least, because so many countries will have nukes.

Several years ago, I wrote that, despite the end of yesteryear’s superpower confrontation, our military’s going to find itself on a nuclear battlefield, after all — either smack in a war, or running a gruesome cleanup operation. The odds of that happening will soar as proliferation worsens.

And we are not prepared.

Rising and troubled states alike are embracing nuclear arms, power alignments are shifting profoundly, and our national priority is to provide electricity to Afghan hovels.

The consolation is that Afghanistan, at least, will never be a nuclear power. It will simply be surrounded by them. ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.

‘It’s those damned Jews.” That’s the muffled message I hear when, pretending to represent our national interest, voices call for the abandonment of Israel.

We’ve heard it from agenda-driven scholars who write that our alliance with Israel is responsible for our problems in the Middle East. More worrisome still, I’ve begun to hear it from a minority of military officers, as well as from Washington types.

This latest, and sadly lasting, bout of moral cancer can be dated back to 2006 and the publication of an article that had sought a home for years, “The Israeli Lobby And US Foreign Policy,” by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

The book’s assault on Israel was welcomed by figures including President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski — a hoary Israel detractor. With their Ivy League credentials, Mearsheimer and Walt made anti-Israeli diatribes (semi-)respectable. Their effect has been lasting.

OK, let’s get one thing straight: There is no evidence that if Israel disappeared tomorrow, the Middle East would suddenly blossom into a pro-American model of justice, hard work and progress.

Nor is there any evidence that anti-American terrorism would slacken. In al Qaeda’s list of complaints, Israel barely makes the top dozen. A US turn away from Israel would only encourage and empower terrorists, convincing them of our cowardice and folly.

The grotesquely failed societies of the Middle East desperately need Israel and the US to blame for their self-wrought problems. Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are responsible for the Arab world’s pervasive corruption, stagnation, oppression of women and lack of creativity or a work ethic.

Neither the US nor Israel is to blame for the unprecedented squandering of wealth by Arab oil powers, for their failure to invest in human capital or productive infrastructure, for the absence of democracy and respect for human rights, or for the region’s mockery of the rule of law.

Given the vast homemade tragedy of the greater Middle East, it’s inevitable that Israel’s hated for its shining success amid the local squalor. Likewise, the US is hated for our might — and the seductiveness of our civilization.

But if that explains why Arabs, Persians and others would relish, but not reward, our abandonment of Israel, it doesn’t explain the American voices repeating Arab propaganda about devious Jews controlling our foreign policy.

I divide the dump-Israel movement’s leaders and fellow travelers into four groups:

Old-fashioned anti-Semites: It’s no longer socially acceptable to accuse Jews of sacrificing Christian infants. But it’s quite fashionable to blame Israelis for the suffering of Palestinian children. One doesn’t mention “Jews.” But calumnies against “Israelis” are the new, politically correct blood libel.

Academics: It’s more than simply the juvenile leftism that diseases liberal-arts faculties. This is also a financial transaction. Massive Arab gifts and endowments have turned many of our “leading” universities into intellectual brothels.

President Obama’s left-wing base: From the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s congregation to the administration’s “social activists,” this bunch long has accepted as gospel the notion that Palestinian terrorists are “freedom fighters” while Israelis are “fascists.” Don’t try to reason with them — this really is their “gospel.”

Military officers: I take this one personally. While only a sliver of the officer corps mumbles about Israel’s purported negative effect on our regional policy, this is nonetheless an alarming development. I read this uniformed lunacy as a schizophrenic reaction to a decade’s involvement in Iraq.

On one hand, extended first-hand experience of Arab culture has not filled our troops with respect for the same (any officer who had fairy-tale, Lawrence-of-Arabia notions about the region has had them extinguished, to put it mildly). Yet the daily drone of Arab complaints about Israel — blamed for every Arab misfortune back to the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols — has had a cumulative effect. Criticism takes the form of “A plague on both their houses.”

I ask the gripers categorized above for any evidence that our betrayal of Israel would have the slightest positive effect. The Saudis wouldn’t even drop the price of oil for 24 hours.

Go back to the bordello side of all this: Wealthy Arabs have bought a great deal of influence in Washington, lavishing money on think tanks, contracts on US firms and expensive gifts on individuals. (A few years back, one American “authority” on the Middle East delightedly told me that he’d been given five Rolexes.)

In contrast to these ingratiating, deep-pocketed Arabs, Israelis are brusque and dismissive, relying on American Jews to smooth things over. Well, sorry, Israel needs to rediscover public relations. With the global media rabidly pro-Palestinian, Israel had better get back in the information fight.

The recent attacks on Israel that masquerade as sober analysis boil down to the age-old anti-Semitic query: “Wouldn’t we better off without those Jews?”

My answer, as an American, is “No.” ExileStreet

courtesy NY Post / copyright 2010 NY Post

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization” His most recent novel is “The War After Armageddon,” is on the street. His most most recent non-fiction book is “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.” He is Fox News’ strategic analyst.

Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books, as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist for the New York Post and other publications.