I have been reading Ralph Peters latest book, Never Quit the Fight. Peters is an ex-US Army intelligence analyst who has written a number of books about the War on Terror and transforming the US military to meet today's and the future's challenges.* In fact so far from reading this book Peters has perfectly described Hezbollah's tactics against Israel fairly closely despite writing the book before the latest conflict.* Hopefully in this book he provides his insights into the North Korean nuclear issue as well.


As I read this book I am going to blog some quotes I have found interesting from this book as I go along. Here is the first quote:


"Even those that despise religion had best pay attention. The issue of God's will, as interpreted by discontented human beings, will reshape the governance of continents in the coming decades.* We insist that our wars are not religious wars. But they are. Because our enemies believe them to be so."


I agree with Peters that even if you have no interest in religion you best study and understand it. I wished I would have studied Islam more before I deployed to Iraq, though Iraq turned out to be quite a classroom to learn about it. Religion is continuing to play a role in the current crisis in Lebanon and will play a further role in the looming crisis with Iran which has even more religious complexity due to their Shiite brand of Islam.* Plus you can even look at my own country the United States and see how religion plays a role in the American government. The controversy over the stem cell research is a perfect example.


Here is some more food for thought:


"We are learning that many beings prefer certainty, no matter how oppressive and primitive, to the risks and responsibilities of freedom."


This is also a very true statement we are finding out the hard way. Not every country has Jefferson's, Adam's, Washington's mobilizing people to seek freedom.* Instead in the Islamic world you have Bin Laden's, Nasrallah's, and Zarqawi's mobilizing people to oppression and death and many people are willing following them.


Here is my favorite quote I have read so far:


"Of course, we shall hear no end of fatuous arguments to the effect that we can't kill our way out of the problem.* Well, until a better methodology is discovered, killing every terrorist we can find is a good interim solution.* The truth is that even if you can't kill yourself out of a problem, you can make the problem a great deal smaller by effective targeting."


The point Peter's makes here is that the media and the international community is trying to create the paradigm that all killing is bad, even killing your enemy. Just look at the crisis in Lebanon to confirm this.* Peter's makes the case that US government's decision for precision bombings and the reduction of casualties even against Iraqi military units during the initial war came back to haunt the US when Sunni Arab areas in Iraq never felt defeated after the war because they were not leveled or immediately occuppied by US troops.* Possbily today's insurgents could have been killed during the initial invasion if the US military used it's fire power to inflict maximum carnage on the Iraqis followed by a swift and overwhelming occupation..


That is one of the things that has frustrated me about the Iraq war. The perception was that the US military flattened Iraq during the war in 2003 when in fact many areas of Iraq you wouldn't even had known there was a war going on. The US military didn't just mindlessly blow people away like the left wingers would have you believe. Bus and taxis were running in some areas we went through, people working in the fields, and the infrastructure was largely intact; it was kind of surreal in a way.* The Shiites in Iraq were already living back in the stone age, but maybe bombing the much more afluent Sunnis areas in Iraq back to the stone age and inflicting maximum carnage on them may have reduced the violence we see now in Iraq?


I think Israel has been paying attention though to the lessons learned from Iraq and they seem intent on bombing Hezbollah back to the stone age and finishing them off once and for all, no matter how much the international community complains. We should find out over the coming months if that strategy actually works


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