Ralph Peters talks to Sean Hannity: “This is war, dude!”
A familiar critique of corporate media is that journalists too often avoid discussing one grim reality of US wars: the innocent civilians who die from American bombs and missiles. But one Fox News regular isn’t ducking the issue: Not only is he not afraid to talk about civilians deaths in Syria—he complains that there aren’t enough of them.
On the September 23 episode of Hannity, Fox News strategic analyst Ralph Peters said this:
Another thing we got to get over, this nonsense about there can’t be any civilian casualties! War is ugly, sloppy and messy, and sometimes there are civilian casualties, especially when your enemy uses human shields. If you’re going to go after ISIS, you got to suck it up and do what’s right! And by the way, civilian casualties—look what ISIS is doing, and it’s actually gaining them recruits as they slaughter civilians!
A week later (9/30/14), he was back at it:
The pinprick, popgun air strikes we’re doing are for political purposes. That’s political cover for Obama. We’ve been hitting empty buildings, hitting individual vehicles, an armored personnel carrier here, a pickup truck there, very expensive way to take them out, by the way, with precision weapons.
But my contacts within the chain of command, people involved in this operation, are furious that Obama’s put incredible targeting restrictions on them, doesn’t want any civilian casualties! This is war, dude! Civilians die! They’re going to die! You minimize the casualties, but people are going to die.
This is not exactly new territory for Peters; he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2002 (7/25/02) headlined “Civilian Casualties: No Apology Needed.”
Peters was an Air Force lieutenant colonel working in military intelligence in the 1990s. With his “contacts within the chain of command,” Peters is no doubt aware that the Obama administration, as Yahoo!‘s Michael Isikoff (9/30/14) reported, has decided that the “strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from US drone strikes will not apply to US military operations in Syria and Iraq.” Apparently even the loosened standards are going to leave too many civilians unkilled for Peters’ tastes.
FOX Channeling Curtis LeMay
” ” This is war, dude! Civilians die! They’re going to die! You minimize the casualties, but people are going to die.” ”
So true and the very thing that ISIS uses to recruit more fighters; the evil satan U.S. is killing us, so you need to join us and kill them.
For a military Officer, the man proves once and for all that “Military Intelligence” is an oxymoron, and he is just a moron.
So — anyone wanna bet that Ralph Peters is a jihadist plant? Likely he got called on the carpet on failing to reach his jihadi recruitment quota and he is calling on the U.S. to help him out. Of course, the U.S. is only too happy to oblige.
So we have Obama’s Special Forces #2 attacking Obama’s Special Forces #1 (ISIS).
Where is the wise Mouth of Mordor to help me understand how we’re not the people who only understand violence? This guy is an Uruk-Hai at best.
I wonder if Peters would feel differently if his loved ones were among the dead civilians…
Anyone notice how the talking points rapidly morphed from protecting Iraqi civilians to protecting the homeland? Having drawn that line, of course any target can be considered fair game.
Precisely the point fascist pig colleague of congenital liar Sean Hannity, to the tune of the Pentagon and security budget of this excuse for a nation of $1 trillion. To put that number in perspective, which buys every weapon down to the last bullet, included Homeland Security – oh Hitler’d love that one – intelligence (sic), the some $60 billion stashed in the Energy Department to “stockpile and maintain” nuclear weapons contrary to the NPT, but then a treaty wouldn’t be a dictionary definition thereof if the United States didn’t violate it, down to the last salary. And, the most reliable number I’ve seen of the Great Wall Street Theft of 2008, is $15 trillion. Count em on three hands. How is it homeland security when the mass of homeless people, not to speak of incarceration nation, don’t even have two twenty dollar bills to rub together? Scandalous is too good a word for such gibberish, and that Peters, You sure his name isn’t Rob Johnson, could without conscience call for a bloodbath makes you wonder if he too, like Ken Lay, is going to escape to the grave before he’s rectified by instant karma.
@ Mark Lungo: Dude, I was thinking the very thing that you wrote.