Future Military Commitments

“Preemptive or not, future military commitments will be diverse.  Counterterror operations will include tactical raids of strategic consequence, some involving special operations forces, others executed by standoff weaponry…and those greatest in scale deploying multiple services and putting boots on the ground long enough to purge a targeted area.  The art of the raid will be an essential study for the rising generation of soldiers.  Especially where we have no abiding interests, or where local hostility is especially pronounced, we will need to strike hard and then leave before becoming entangled: global reach, local strikes, strategic results.” – Ralph Peters, New Glory, p.82. 

Rev. John Armstrong’s Three Considerations

Reformed pastor, Rev. John Armstrong points out three basic issues that are important to him as he considers whom to vote for the next president.  Look here.

Asinine

Recently, the Straits Times, the Singaporean Newspaper, published a forum article in which an American praised Singaporean hospitality.  You can find that article here.  What I found amazing were the comments that followed the article.  Consider this one: “Welcome to Singapore and glad you like the experience. Hope you can go back to your country and tell US customs to be more polite.. I’ve been to US several time and they are rude and treated everyone as though we are criminals…just because we are not ang mo [caucasian]?”  Now, here, we have a typical, controlling assumption that many people outside the U.S. have: that racism is still dominant in the U.S., or that racism is always the deciding factor in how Americans treat people.  Why?  Why do people continue to live under such pathetic assumptions and allow themselves to be stirred up into resentment like that?  Take a look at this other comment.  The writer is addressing another commentator who has said that she has not experienced any rude immigration officers: “You have not experienced a rude immigration officer in the US? I find this incredulous!  I have encountered rude, racist, smirking & condescending immigration officers in the US (probably because I am Asian), & I have travelled there on numerous occasions for both work & leisure.  Are you sure you are not looking at White Americans through rose-tinted glasses?”  Now, the writer of this previous post almost always seems to have something negative to say about westerners in general (I’ve seen other postings he has made for other articles and the white guy is typically always the bad guy).  Just as he wonders if the person to whom he is responding sees through rose-tinted glasses, I wonder if he sees everything through jaundiced lenses!  My point is this: it’s all in the interpretation.  How do you interpret what you come across?  Do you allow other factors to inform your interpretation?  Yes, racism is always a possible factor.  But so are others.  Perhaps immigration officers are exhausted.  Perhaps they are tired with dealing with long lines of people who cannot understand what is asked of them (that’ll be frustrating, just try it some time).  Perhaps they are just blunt and forthright (a quality which Asians tend to equate, too quickly, with rudeness).  There are so many factors to consider.  Please, for the sake of sanity and peace, don’t jump to conclusions so quickly. 

Now, speaking for myself, most of my experiences with U.S. immigration officers have been okay.  I would not say that the immigration officers I’ve come across are friendly.  I think that there may even have even been some rude ones.  But for the most part, I would consider them to be forthright and efficient.  Not necessarily rude, but simply forthright and efficient.  And I think they treat everyone–including Americans–in this way.  They are, after all, immigration officers, not hotel staff.  Of course, I wish they would smile more.  But then again, there may be a reason not to.  What I would not do is jump to the conclusion that rudeness or lack of friendliness is always due to racism.       

Terrorists Then, Terrorists Now

“The new terrorists are vastly more dangerous, more implacable and crueler than their predecessors.  The political terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s used bloodshed in attempts to reach finite (if often unrealistic) goals.  Religious terrorists approach mass murder as an end in itself, as the deserved punishment of the wicked, as a purifying act that cleanses the world.  They do not place their bombs solely for political leverage but to kill as many human beings as possible.” — Ralph Peters, New Glory, p.156.

In Case of Failure…

“If Iraq ultimately fails to gel as a rule-of-law democracy, America can go home.  Washington will eat a few plates of humble pie, then work it off in the strategic gym.  But the Middle East would be left with a terrorist homeland at its heart and the Arab world would have damning evidence that it can’t compete in the race for the future, that authoritarian regimes remain its only choice.  That hopelessness would leave millions more unemployed young Muslim males as prey for terrorist recruiters.  Operation Iraqi Freedom did not so much create a wave of new terrorists as it drew out the legions of dead-enders bred during the West’s long neglect of the extremist menace.” – Ralph Peters, New Glory, p.224-225. 

The Nature of Anti-Americanism

“Anti-Americanism is at base a totalizing, if not totalitarian, vision.  The peculiar blindness of fanaticism can be recognized in the way it seizes on a certain behavior of the hated object and sweepingly condemns it, only to condemn with equal fervor the opposite behavior shortly after–or even simultaneously….According to this vision–in the sense that Littre confers on the word: a ‘phantom projection, a credulous fantasy of fears, dreams, delusions, superstitions’–Americans can do nothing but speak idiocies, make blunders and commit crimes; and they are answerable for all the setbacks, all the injustices and all the sufferings of the rest of humanity.” — Jean-Francois Revel, Anti-Americanism, p. 143.

Being Anti-American Vs. Being Critical of the U.S.

“There is a big difference between being anti-American and being critical of the United States….critiques are appropriate and necessary, provided that they rest on facts and address real abuses, real errors and real excesses–without deliberately losing sight of America’s wise decisions, beneficient interventions and salutary policies.  But critiques of this kind–balanced, fair and well-rounded–are hard to find, except in America herself…” — Jean-Francois Revel, Anti-Americanism, p. 143. 

A Wise Foreign Policy

“We must always be on guard against the rise of a Hitler; but must avoid hysterical fears of democratically elected leaders we simply don’t like.  We never quite seem to realize that our blatant opposition to a popular choice only strengthens the support for those foreign leaders we try to bully out of their presidential palaces.  We need to be more calculating and less childishly spiteful: Stalin no, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela a provisional yes (in time Chavez will overreach and fail).  Let immature electorates live and learn–don’t try to stop the projector in the middle of their movie.  Don’t behave so stupidly–as we did with Castro, Mossadegh, and others–that we become the excuse for another country’s failures.” — Ralph Peters, New Glory, p. 140.

Why Bother With Freedom And Democracy?

“If freedom and democracy are so difficult, why bother?  Because no matter how challenging freedom may be it remains the most desirable human condition.  And because despotic regimes, however attractive they may appear to multinational corporations or diplomats craving order, do not last.  Their stability is an illusion.  They either behave aggressively to divert domestic attention from their failings, or they collapse–often suddenly–into civil war and havoic.” — Ralph Peters, New Glory, p.140.

A Tale Of Two Freedoms

“European freedom is essentially passive, protective.  American freedom is much closer to liberty.  Europeans accept limits achievement in the interests of personal security and the general welfare.  Americans believe instinctively that the general welfare is best served by fostering personal achievement.  Europe imposes limits on the individual for the common good.  We believe that the common good is best served by individual opportunity.  We look at European lives and see their limits.  Europeans regard our freedom to succeed as little more than the freedom to fail.  Despite the chronic gloom of our domestic intelligentsia, we are the world’s optimists.  Europeans are pessimists.  And even if their pessimism occasionally proves well-founded, it’s still the optimists who change the world.” — Ralph Peters, New Glory, p. 136.