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Endless War: Middle-Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization

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Ralph Peters shows once again why he is today's most insightful strategist on global affairs in his latest "must read" collection representing his best columns and articles on today's most vitally important issue - the assault of militant Islam on Western civilization, values and culture. A retired U. S. Army intelligence officer whose globe-trotting has gained him valuable first-hand experience in over 70 countries (including Iraq and Afghanistan), Peters is the author of 25 acclaimed books, a regular columnist in newspapers and magazines, and a popular on-air media strategist. While most contemporary pundits seem to be "lost in the weeds," content to carp about battlefield tactics and troop levels, Peters demonstrates his firm grasp of the Big Picture, the fundamental underlying nature of the struggle between militant Islam and the West that began fourteen centuries ago and still rages. Endless War's superb collection of essays, articles and columns - each one carefully selected by the author - represents a priceless primer on the 21st century's defining conflict. Peters' superbly argued introductory essay, "History and Hysteria" -- a plea for the importance of reading and understanding history - is alone worth the price of the book. The author's well-known provocative, hard-hitting, "tell-it-like-it-is" prose style has never been more compelling and revelatory. Endless War should be read by America's political and military decision-makers and by the public at large - before it's too late.

I do not always agree with Ralph Peters, but along with Steve Metz and Max Manwaring, both at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army, I consider him one of America's most gifted strategists whose integrity is absolute. He simplifies sometimes (e.g. Iraqis turned against Al Qaeda because of the demand for marriage that was refused followed by the bloodbath execution of the family by Al Qaeda, not because of anything the US did) but that aside, Ralph is the ONLY person that reminds me of both Winston Churchill--poetry and gifted turns of phrase on every page--and Will Durant, historian extraordinaire. Ralph has a better grasp of history, terrain, and the military than Robert Kaplan, and deeper insights into our failed military leadership (no longer leaders, just politically-correct administrators out of touch with reality) than my favorite journalist-adventurer, Robert Young Pelton.

I have read and reviewed most of Ralph's books, and am proud to consider him a colleague and a fellow Virginian. Ralph is the only author whose books jump to the top of my "to read" pile, and I absorbed this masterpiece over the course of moving my own flag from Virginia to Latin America. US national and military intelligence have completely given up their integrity, and it resonated with me that the key word that Ralph uses throughout this book--a word I myself adopt in my latest book in carrying on the tradition of Buckminster Fuller on the one hand, and most respected mentor-critic Chuck Spinney on the other--is that very word: INTEGRITY.

My extended review at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog (PBI-PIB), has the totality of my notes, my selection of quotes from across the book, and links too numerous for Amazon's paltry ten-book limit. Ralph is, like me, acutely interested in history, and until I donated mine to George Mason University as part of clearing out of the USA professionally, has one of the best personal libraries in the tri-state area. Ralph writes commentary without footnotes, but it is a testament to his gifted study of history and his acute grasp of reality across time, space, and culture, that any one of his books easily leads me to connect the reader to 20 or more other books, one of my primary value-adds for the global community that follows my non-fiction reviews in 98 reading categories.

Buy this book; it is perhaps the only discourse to really look at our failures as a nation, as a government, and as a military, in the larger context of history where 1,000 year terms are the standard, not mere centuries and certainly not tiny little wars of 4-30 years duration.

Unusually for any book, I have fourteen "must share" quotes and I provide those in my extended review are PBI-PIB, along with all the links integrated into my summative notes.

This book is a compendium of strategic thinking, poetic memorable framing of core intelligence challenges, and a moral discourse as well. I share--deeply--Ralph's utter fury at the dishonesty prevalent with the most senior ranks of the military including specifically flag officers across all the services and flag officers responsible for the $75 billion a year cesspool we call national and defense intelligence.

There are multiple "ahas" in this book, and I am not at all reluctant to say that I learn from Ralph Peters with each and every book he offers up. I completely agree that the "elites" are out of touch with reality, with the public interest, and with the nuts and bolts of "doing" foreign policy, national security, and homeland development.

The author offers up several lists with explicatory text, I provide the lists in my full review at PBI-PIB.

Here I will link only to the still relevant earlier-era books of Chuck Spinney, Jim Fallows, and Tim Weiner and to my own new book, my personal game plan for the future of global intelligence, a game plan that will not only level the intelligence playing field, but will empower the public over the politicians.

Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch

National Defense

Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget

INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty

This series of essays form an excellent analysis of 21st century conflict and American's reaction to it.
Peters' Introduction sets the tone for his book by pointing out that serious study of history has, essentially, ceased in our schools. This has resulted in a divorce from the harsh realities of the world. We have little or no sense of historical reality to the point where bumper-sticker slogans, "War never Solved Anything," substitute for knowledge and clear vision.
He goes on to cover the history of Islamic success and failure. He points out that the failure of the societies in the Middle East is, according to academics, the media and the Muslims themselves, the fault of the West, especially Israel and America. There is no self-examination by those in the Middle East. And, our Politically Correct academics and media have lived in a self-satisfied shell for so long they are unable to do so.
Peters' incisively points out our political and military leader's constant refusal to recognize that the enemy is Islamicism. The religious aspect, in too many instances, is completely ignored.
This flawed view, again, stems from our academic and political elites cloaking themselves in Political Correctness which applauds denigration of Judaism and Christianity while demanding a "non-judgmental view" of other religions.
Both Peters and I agree that war is a brutal and barbaric enterprise; an enterprise to be avoided, but recognized as a significant aspect of human beings' makeup. We cannot substitute "talking" with people who believe that their God is telling them to kill anyone who does not believe exactly as they do.
We cannot bring up our children believe that everyone's rights, even monsters who think nothing of killing children in the name of their religion, must be protected:

"Yesteryear's fairy tales warned us not to trust the wolves, but today's well-brought-up children are expected to consider the wolf's needs and discontents.
Sometimes, though, the wolf still needs to be killed."

We have had a number of wake-up calls over the years: the 1993 Twin Towers Bombing, the USS COLE bombing, the African embassy bombings and, finally, 911. Unfortunately, those who make policy still need a further wake-up call. Just how loud does it have to be?

While listening to an interview with Ralph Peters on the radio or one of the cable
stations my attention was grabbed by a pithy, five-word description he made of our current President. That one, insightful word portrait convinced me I needed to buy this book. Peter's memorable sentence in that radio interview was, "Obama is beautifully packaged incompetence."
Wow, I thought, this guy doesn't beat around the bush, he tells you just what he thinks and he's certainly not much concerned with being politically correct. As his interview continued Peters came up with other equally shocking statements. I immediately ordered his book. It was packed full of amazing insights and observations that I've not heard anywhere else in the media. Here are just a few of what I'd call "Peters' Truisms" although that probably sounds too Biblical.
"...We embrace fantasies in preference to facts...History so threatens us that its serious instruction has been stripped from our schools, replaced by narratives meant to correct the social views of children."
"Our belief in `the goodness of humankind' is so discredited by abundant facts that, in holding on to it, we have trouble dealing with the world as it truly is."
"We cry that `All men want peace,' but some do not (few `peace activists' would care for a police-free world). One of our most-dangerous illusions holds that the `rights' of monsters in human form must be protected. And so, in our crusades to save terrorists and mass murders from punishment, we condemn the billions who do want peace to suffer the rule of the gun."
"We cripple our ability to understand when we pretend that all human beings have identical values, psychological needs and desires." According to the author, most people in the Middle East don't really want freedom in the American sense of the term. They don't want the responsibility that comes with it. They want the rules of life and conduct that come with their religion and traditions. Above all they want their own dreams. And their dreams involve a return to the imaginary time and golden age when Islam was supreme and all was heaven, paradise on earth.
"We just don't want to know what human beings, their societies, and their civilizations are really like."
"...Our enemies are fighting for dreams, and not the mundane more-bread dreams of Che Guevara, Leon Trotsky or even Gamal Abdel Nasser, but for faith-driven fantasies and nostalgia for lost greatness."
"Today's insurgents and terrorists aren't fighting for freedom, but for voluntary subjugation to a stern, even punitive regime. Freedom is terrifying."
"If suicide bombers plague us today, suicidal struggles by rebellious groups empowered by metaphysical visions have plagued civilizations since the murky dawn of history.'
This 273-page collection of articles, columns and essays are filled with thought-provoking statements usually carefully backed up with historical facts. Peters examines the first 1400 years of the endless war of Islam against all Infidels that is still going on. He points out that individuals can easily become mobs and then instead of a group of individuals, the mob functions by it's own rules. "Isn't it time we that we seriously investigated the ugly phenomena of mass behavior and the collective organism that devours the individual's conscience in times of stress and disorder? A mob is not a collection of individuals, but an organism with its own biological and psychological dynamics. If we continue to see humanity only as a collection of individuals, we will never understand war or insurgencies or terror--or even the popularity of "American Idol."
"The Liberal fantasies that `all men want peace,' that `war doesn't solve anything,' and that it's in the natural order for societies and civilizations to get along just fine all defy the historical and contemporary evidence."
"Those who deny history die of myth."
"The human being is a killer, and the human collective is a killing machine. The purpose of civilization is to civilize the hunter and maximize his latent abilities to contribute in other spheres, --ultimately strengthening the power of the collective...now we face an age in which entire civilizations are in advanced states of decay and breakdown--shutting down alternative human courses and releasing the killer again."
In his subchapter "Wars of Fantasy and Nostalgia, " Peters points out "People fight for different things. Americans pledge to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. We fight for national security and sometimes nebulous, but ever powerful, vision of freedom. Arabs fight for faith, family and turf--but not for constitutions."
"A paradox of today's American society is that our best educated citizens have the least sense of historical reality. When genial professors play pretend, students are only too glad to play along...assuring them that `war doesn't change anything,' how many students feel compelled to question the dispensation?"
"But in the real world--in which even academics perish--war often changes everything. The blood-drunk killer is rarely disarmed by the man who lives in books--or by the eternal adolescent clinging to the lie that all men want peace." Wars are often the only final solution to nagging and intractable problems that can't be negotiated.
"Our enemies are fighting either to stop the clock, to turn back the hands, or to make the clock irrelevant by achieving timeless perfection. The one thing they all dislike is American-style progress...Human beings have always been frightened by change. Today, most of humanity is terrified. And tens of millions, if not more, will fight for dreams that promise them an escape from the reality plaguing them with a sense of inadequacy and failure." They prefer the security of their culture and beliefs to concrete things such as new roads, water treatment plants, schools or hospitals.
Americans and Arabs have two different approaches to problems. Americans accept responsibility and simply roll up their shirtsleeves and go about whatever it takes to fix the problems. According to Peters, in the Muslim world they look for someone else to blame. The problems are always somebody else's fault. One civilization solves its problems; the other is only capable of excuses and blaming the problems on others. Those meddling foreign devils then become the focus of religiously inspired hatred.
Whee, reading this book makes me glad I was born and raised in America where none of our citizens or leaders reflect the Peters' theory that Moslems tend to deny responsibility, to give excuses, to blame others for everything, or to demonize and whip up extreme hate toward fellow Americans.
This review has barely touched the numerous topics so eloquently discussed in the book. By this point the reader is probably begging for more detail and proof of some of these controversial "Peters' Truisms." The section on the return of tribes is particularly interesting. Read the book. It's an eye-opener and let me finish this review with one more quote from the book.
"In an astonishing corruption of the historical facts, we ascribe a level of tolerance to Islam--a religion spread and maintained by the sword--that makes murderous caliphs sound like the merry leaders of hippie communes. After fighting in the Middle East for nearly a decade, we still don't know how we got there."
This book helps explain why a young Naturalized American citizen of Pakistan descent would want to commit mass murder by blowing up Times Square.

This is a superlative book, a must-read for anyone who takes seriously the national security challenges that our country faces, including a multi-front war, with major theaters of operation in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Southeast Asia, and vital sub-arenas at virtually every airport in the world. But this is Ralph Peters, so readers should not expect a "feel good" approach to this serious subject. In "Endless War," true to his soaring reputation for unvarnished exposition of our national defense's weak points, Peters has produced yet another volume of essays, some new, some from his growing portfolio, that reveal our foibles and call for serious corrective measures. As an author myself, and as a student of and an actor in national security affairs for more than forty years, I have always been amazed at the number of self-styled experts in this specialized field, armchair strategists who have usually never "been there" and never "done that," and how they manage to obtain prominence in their own journalistic and academic milieus. Peters describes such pretenders and pundits this way: "Whether new congressmen or novice foreign service officers, their lack of military service (or even of interest in things military) doesn't stop D.C.'s best and brightest from scheming how to employ our armed forces." It is folks like these, Peters tells us, who lead us into ill-planned and risky ventures, as happened in Iraq, and who, even when our inability to cope with the demands of an occupation are unmasked, (occupation techniques having become a lost art since last executed--brilliantly--in Germany and Japan), still have not recognized the vital need for service doctrine on occupation. "Endless War" is packed with insights like this, fresh thinking, and the kind of blunt, historically-based assessments that make Ralph Peters one of the few original thinkers out there, beholden to no one, valued by the more far-seeing strategists in the United States Marine Corps, and quietly admired by many true national security experts whose positions often do not permit them the luxury of Peters' candor. Don't buy this book if you are looking for politically correct pap, but if you are looking for insightful (and proven accurate) assessments of where we are and where we ought to be headed, "Endless War" belongs in your personal library. Academicians who bristle at Peters' blunt, un-PC-like style, and his often painful assessments based on sources in the military serving around the world have got it wrong. Indeed, Peters' strengths are his first-hand information, his own research, his mastery of history, and a near-continuous flow of information provided to him by confidential informants he can trust, eyes and ears whose reach extends from Kurdistan to Argentina. Peters has been a regular with the NY Post's readers for some time. He has been a strategic analyst for Fox News since 2009. This talented and prolific futurist has now published 25 books. His hard-hitting assessments are in demand by print and television media. His voice is repected by United States military strategists whose BS-filters can detect a phony on sight. And most significantly, his current level of exposure influences the electorate, versus inside-the Beltway policy wonks--a status that surely must make him the secret envy of more than a few academicians, those voices in the intellectual night who would covet the opportunity to square off with Bill O'Reilly, but who will never get the chance. "Endless War" is a mandatory read to any concerned citizen who wants to strip away the empty rhetoric that so often is accepted as national security commentary, and open the door to a real understanding of where our nation finds itself in 2010, and what we need to do about it. Stuart A. Herrington, Colonel, U.S. Army (retired)

I bought this book after hearing Michael Medved give it high praise on his radio show. The book is interesting and provocative, but not nearly as good as Medved's enthusiastic endorsement would indicate.

The book is a collection of short articles written over the last 3 years from various magazines and other sources. It's thesis, insomuch as it has one, is that the brief age of ideology extended from the French Revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union, and that we now have returned to humanity's normal state, conflicts based on tribal and religious differences. For Peters, "ideologies" are apparently the secular, political agendas such as those followed by nazis and communists, and the age of such movements is over. The thesis has some merit, but as Peters admits, even nazi "ideology" had a strongly racial and even quasi-religious element to it, so the distinction may be overdrawn. But Peters is at his best in arguing that we ignore deep-seated tribal and religious divisions at our peril, and that these forces will frustrate all attempts by western, post-modern types to turn us all into one big, happy, diverse family. He calls for our politicians and intelligence-analysts to be brutally honest about the realities of the world they face. To that end, three chapters ("The World after the 'Age of Ideology,'" "Dream Warriors," and "12 Myths of Twenty-First-Century War") are the best in the book, and the most provocative.

The book has at least three shortcomings.

1. It has no documentation for any of its many assertions. And considering what sweeping assertions it makes about religion, history, American policy, etc., this is a severe problem. I simply don't know whether his "facts" are right. For example, in "Better than Genocide," p.95, he argues that the Romans "had little taste for outright genocide" but preferred to relocate rebels, and he uses the diaspora of the Jews "following the rebellions of the first century A.D." as his example. By contrast, he says, Greeks were more apt to "slaughter rivals," and he claims Homer and Thucydides as proof. But is this true? Has Peters never heard of the Third Punic War, provoked by Rome solely in order to annihilate Carthage? Has he never heard of the brutalities of the Roman occupation of Spain, or of the Roman obliteration of the city of Corinth in 146 BC? As far as the Greeks were concerned, it is true that they could be brutal, and that they were especially brutalized by the prolonged Peloponnesian War. But genocide? Perhaps he is thinking of the Athenian edict to slaughter all the male population of the Mytilenians, but surely he knows that this decree was rescinded. For that matter, to get our facts correct, the war that led to the forced Jewish diaspora was the Bar Kokhba revolt of the second century; it was not the first century war of 68-70 AD. My point is not to defend the Greeks over against the Romans, or to quibble about Jewish history. But if Peters so overstates himself in an area I know a little something about, classical history, how much does he overstate and misrepresent facts in areas I know little about? In short, Peters is very breezy about the facts, and you should be careful about what he says.

2. It engages in moral equivalence rhetoric. In "Faith's Civil Wars," p. 89, he states, "extremists haunt both sides of the Israel-Palestine question and American Christians seek to legislate the behavior of fellow citizens." This suggests that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all basically the same and all equally culpable. Is this true? Again, Peters gives us no specifics; he is apparently appealing to the prejudice of the reader to nod and say, "Yes, I know just what you mean." But "extremists" on the Israeli side are a small minority and rarely engage in terrorism. Extremists on the Palestinian side (if wanting to kill all the Jews is extremist!) run the Palestinian governments and regularly practice indiscriminate attacks on civilians. And what Christian legislation does Peters have in mind? If he would tell us, we could debate the point. But again, breezy assertions do away with the need for facts. Does he seriously think that whatever Christian legislation he has in mind can compare to what is the norm in Islamic countries, where observation of Ramadan is enforced by law, where Muslims cannot renounce Islam on pain of severe punishment, and where clerics often hold veto power in the state?

3. The book has no real coherence. It is simply Peters' opinions on a bewildering array of topics.

This book is a collection of essays that appear primarily designed to stimulate readers to challenge their own assumptions about Islam, Israel, and most importantly the U.S. involvement in the World of Islam (Dar al Islam). It also provides a good deal of clarity on the concept of war that can be summed up in a cogent quote Peters uses: "War means fighting and fighting means killing."
Peters sees Islam as a whole as a failed society that began its decline several hundred years ago (1697 is one of dates he suggests makes the start of the decline). He argues that the Islamic World is using Israel specifically and the West in general as an excuse for this decline. He also has a very clear concept of what Afghanistan is and is not and makes a very persuasive argument that, strategically, Operation Iraqi Freedom made a good deal of sense.
Not all readers will agree with all the ideas that Peters's essays advance, but all will agree that he accomplishes his task of making them think again about the U.S. engagement with the Islamic World.

Ralph Peters' "Endless Wars" is a collection of articles and columns written by the retired Army intelligence officer and strategist.

Peters writes on a variety of related topics in "Endless Wars." He tries to place the current Global War on Terror in context with over 1000 years of military struggles between Islam and the West and emphasizes that, historically, religion has been one of the biggest driving forces behind war. He also argues that groups of people act differently than individuals and that war is a normal state for these people. Peters writes on COIN and the Iraq Surge. Finally, he has individual columns on issues such as: a recommendation for military retirees to continue to serve in uniform; trapping ourselves in Afghanistan; a plan for attacking Iran; and the need for occupational doctrine in the military.

While offering insight into modern geopolitical and military matters, the book suffers from the shortcoming of columns and short articles: no coherence, a lack of in-depth discussions, and offered facts and premises that he cannot (in the short space of a column) adequately defend.

Overall, this is an interesting and intriguing book to read for anyone interested in modern military and geopolitical affairs. It's just a shame that Peters didn't put some work into developing one larger, deeper book with cogent arguments, because this one merely scratches the surface on some interesting topic.

Ralph Peters is one of those rare pundits who has actually worn a uniform, can speak three languages, and has traveled (without an escort)in many dangerous places, such as the borders of the old Soviet Union and the Turkish-Kurdistan frontier. Unlike the poseurs on Senate sub-committees or the Pentagon desk jockeys bucking for another star, his loyalty is to the safety of our nation, and to responsible democracy world-wide. In his quiet, thoughtful way, he has warned not only against our mismanaged occupation of Iraq, but of the recent disaster of bad mortgages and worst loans. Agree or not, his essays always merit close inspection and generate deep thought.

Ralph Peters hit the nail on the head with every point. A great read. It got me to rethink many of my previous views.