Ralph Peters
Ralph Peters has been a Post Opinion columnist since 2002. He is also Fox News’ first Strategic Analyst. Ralph served for over two decades in the U.S. Army, as an enlisted man and officer, before retiring in 1998 to write and speak freely. He has experience in over 70 countries and is the author of 24 books, including novels, an adventure-travel memoir and works on strategy. While his home is at the Post, he also has editorial or contributor relationships with Armed Forces Journal, Armchair General Magazine and USAToday. He writes from the Washington, D.C. area, but remains, at heart, a proud coalcracker from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
This common sense article is great: (h/t Big Journalism)
“The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn’t work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Muslim radicals that we respect their views.”
Franklin Graham’s point regarding giving Muslim’s a pass – honor killings,etc
“Our counterfactual assumption is that, if we’re really, really nice, the fanatics will stop being grumpy and blowing us up. But Islamist extremists haven’t read our actions (or inactions) as an admirable exercise in tolerance. They read our bowing and scraping and apologizing as weakness.”
“The mean-dog law applies: Let that pit bull sense that you’re afraid, and you’re going to feel its teeth.”
“The dogs of terror smell fear. Terror’s response to our president’s Cairo valentine to fanaticism last year was the Fort Hood massacre, the attempted Christmas Day bombing, now the botched bombing of Times Square — and a swelling number of foiled plots.”
I’m not a “South Park” fan, but Peterson is referring to the recent censoring of Mohammed ridiculing jokes. South Park has ridiculed Christianity and Christ in past episodes.
“This matters. South Park may not embody all that I admire about America, but its irreverence is an important manifestation of our freedom of expression. What politically correct and cowardly madness have we come to, when we allow murderous Muslim fanatics to censor our laugh lines?”
“I don’t like gratuitous provocations directed at any religion. But freedom of speech applies: We can’t have an anything-goes rule for every other faith, and a don’t-touch rule for Islam.”
“The only thing we’ve done by caving in to every cultural demand from Islamist fanatics has been to encourage them to make more demands.”
The entire article is well-worth reading. I debated, but Mr. Peterson’s closing lines are such knock-out punches you’ve got to go read them with his article. I couldn’t bring myself to excerpt them here.