02.21.11
The Heevahava
Jason at Armchair Generalist has a piece on Ralph Peters, a third tier security pundit seen most often on Fox News.
“Every now and then [Peters] gets to do an op-ed in a normal newspaper (e.g., other than the NY Post or Wash Times) or respectable journal (like the Armed Forces Journal) and he seems sane,” writes J. “He makes sense. And then he wigs out and starts foaming at the mouth again.”
“He’s done some truly graphic ranting at the Journal of International Security Affairs …”
That article is here.
Peters, if his wiki biography is accurate, is from Pottsville, PA, an old coal town that is Schuylkill County’s seat.
His message, not a unique one — you hear it everyday on Glenn Beck: The media are backstabbers. Children are too coddled. Our society has too many lawyers and lawsuits. Our enemies — and there are many — are destroying us piece by piece.
Anyway, I think that’s what he means when going on about not winning wars because we lack the resolve and necessary hardness to do so.
He writes:
We have cheapened the idea of war. We have had wars on poverty, wars on drugs, wars on crime, economic warfare, ratings wars, campaign war chests, bride wars, and price wars in the retail sector. The problem, of course, is that none of these “wars??? has anything to do with warfare as soldiers know it. Careless of language and anxious to dramatize our lives and careers, we have elevated policy initiatives, commercial spats and social rivalries to the level of humanity’s most complex, decisive and vital endeavor.
War as humanity’s most vital endeavor.
Or to paraphrase Vince Lombardi, I suppose: War isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.