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ralph peters

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.

  • Who will be the next to fall?

    In 1982, Muslims in the city of Hama rose up against the Syrian dictatorship. “President” Hafez al-Assad, the father of today’s Syrian strongman, sent in his military. At least 25,000 civilians were massacred. The media...  

    February 06, 2011 3:10 AM
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    The new Wiki warfare

    The recent WikiLeaks debacle, which will result in American, allied and Afghan deaths, drives home how inadequate our antique laws on war are in the new millennium. We live in a lawless age, when it comes to our...  

    August 27, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Will the win endure?

    As the soldiers of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division crossed the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, our combat mission in Iraq came to an end. Sort of. A full 50,000 combat-capable troops remain...  

    August 21, 2010 12:00 AM
  • Pakistan drowning

    Thirty-five million Americans as homeless refugees: That would be a disaster proportionate to the horrific -- and worsening -- situation in Pakistan. This time, that forlorn country isn't threatened by Islamist...  

    August 18, 2010 12:00 AM
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    The right defense cuts

    On Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a common-sense plan to cut Pentagon fat to preserve battlefield muscle. He'll be damned for it. Gates is breathtakingly willing to take on poisonous political...  

    August 11, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Scorching Putin

    Red-headed spy Anna Chapman is no longer the hottest thing in Russia. Now it's the 500 out-of-control wildfires devouring thousands of square miles of the countryside. This conflagration makes California's annual...  

    August 07, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Will Bam lose Iraq?

    One president gave his premature "Mission Accomplished" speech about Iraq on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Now another has given his own version as part of a Chicago-ward-politics sales pitch to disabled veterans....  

    August 03, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Forgotten soldiers

    If we needed yet another example of Washington's self-absorption, we sure got it with the WikiLeaks dump of classified data on AfPak. Government officials promptly freaked about the political consequences. The rush...  

    July 29, 2010 12:00 AM
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    America plays the fool in Pakistan's double game

    The treasure trove of 91,000 classified AfPak documents posted by WikiLeaks suggests that our government's been deceiving us about Pakistan's murderous behavior. But the situation's even worse than that: Our...  

    July 27, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Dumbing down Intel

    The fundamental problem with our national intelligence system is that it assumes that quantity can substitute for quality. The result is a vast, expensive network that's far less than the sum of its parts. It's as...  

    July 21, 2010 12:00 AM
  • The coming crusade

    The Islamists have it wrong: Islam isn't the world's fastest-growing religion. By birth numbers and convert tallies, it's Christianity. And Africa's at the forefront -- a fact that's going to body-slam Muslim...  

    July 19, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Pick your tribes

    It's heartening to hear encouraging news from AfPak, after a year of meandering and malaise: Gen. David Petraeus has hit the ground running. Since taking command in Afghanistan, he's begun to review our suicidal...  

    July 15, 2010 12:00 AM
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    The 'warrior monk'

    Nominated last week to replace Gen. David Petraeus as the head of the US Central Command, the Marine Corps' Gen. Jim Mattis may be the finest four-star on duty in any service today. He's certainly the humblest. And...  

    July 13, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Afghan turnaround

    Gen. David Petraeus has an unprece dented opportunity to seize back the momentum in Afghanistan: Neither President Obama nor Congress wants a confrontation with this general. During his honeymoon, he can write his own...  

    July 08, 2010 1:14 AM
  • Where the Germans get it right

    Germany's governing coalition is on the verge of collapse, but the country isn't. Berlin's the one major capital likely to survive the global economic plague in strapping health. In the past, I've written...  

    July 05, 2010 12:00 AM
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    The Petraeus challenge

    We're failing in Afghanistan. Confirmed yesterday as our new commander there, Gen. David Petraeus has the unenviable task of producing something President Obama can call a success. If Petraeus can salvage the...  

    July 01, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Cynical butchers

    On Friday, Kyrgyzstan's interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, flew to the site of this month's ethnic violence -- and raised the estimate of the dead to 2,000. Some 400,000 ethnic Uzbeks have become refugees, with 100...  

    June 19, 2010 12:00 AM
  • The trillion-dollar Afghan battlefield

    Afghanistan just got its worst news since the Soviet invasion three decades ago: American geologists have charted as much as a trillion dollars' worth of mineral deposits in that tormented landscape. Up to now,...  

    June 15, 2010 12:00 AM
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    The 'wikileaker' and the White House

    Yesterday brought the welcome news that a 22-year-old soldier had been busted for passing classified gun-camera tapes and documents to Wikileaks. If proven guilty, Spc. Bradley Manning needs to do serious prison time....  

    June 08, 2010 12:00 AM
  • DC's Turkish denial

    AS the Irish-flagged "aid" ship Rachel Corrie heads for Gaza and Act Two of this made-in-Turkey crisis looms, Washington still can't bring itself to accept that the entire script was written in Ankara. Fourteen...  

    June 04, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Turkish (blood)bath

    Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel. It was about Turkey's determination to position...  

    June 01, 2010 12:00 AM
  • Bam's border bungle

    I fully agree with Ralph Peters' perception that this administration's strategy remains stagnant ("Security Charade," PostOpinion, May 28). At best, President Obama offers virtually useless gestures, as he has with...  

    June 01, 2010 12:00 AM
  • What we owe our troops

    Each Memorial Day, we’re treated to countless columns thanking our men and women in uniform for their service and honoring those we have lost or who suffered wounds. The rhetoric’s well intentioned. But it isn’t enough....  

    May 30, 2010 5:19 AM
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    Security charade

    President Obama may have Katrina'd himself this week over the Gulf oil spill -- but at least it distracted attention from the fact that he also got caught using the National Guard as lipstick on a cactus. Anyone...  

    May 28, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Just another act of deadly treason

    Yesterday, The New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and...  

    May 26, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Nukes gone wild

    The world changed this week and we yawned. Our government and media utterly failed to grasp the meaning of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey nuke deal. Undercutting the sanctions-lite bargain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...  

    May 21, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Dumping Israel

    'It's those damned Jews." That's the muffled message I hear when, pretending to represent our national interest, voices call for the abandonment of Israel. We've heard it from agenda-driven scholars who write that...  

    May 17, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Why Karzai's doomed

    President Hamid Karzai is doomed. During his strategic shopping trip to Washington this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pronounced his epitaph: "We will not abandon the Afghan people." In DC doublespeak,...  

    May 13, 2010 12:00 AM
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    Obama wakes up

    Something big is happening. Big enough to alarm the White House. So big that the administration did an abrupt about-face regarding terrorism. Terrorism's serious now -- driving major policy reversals. The...  

    May 11, 2010 12:00 AM
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    The smell of our fear

    Appeasement doesn't work. It doesn't work with dictators, and it doesn't work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing was yet more proof. We've allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say,...  

    May 05, 2010 12:00 AM

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