“We’re not getting dumber.”  This is what I say to myself late at night when the demons come, when I’m facing down the dark night of the soul that Fitzgerald spoke of; when my thoughts creepy-crawl towards the eternity that Blake described.  “…We’re not getting dumber,” I say to myself.  “It’s just that cable TV has twenty-four hours of programming to fill.”  MSNBC, CNN, Fox News — all of them; all of the unending “news” shows.  All of them, with all the constant talky-talk-talking.

And what is there to talk about? Nothing. It’s the middle of the summer. What is there to talk about? The Jonas Brothers?  Transformers 2?  Health Care, Part MCXXVI? Obama’s ugly jeans?  The horrible new sitcom starring Padma Lakshmi?  …No.  Nothing.  There’s nothing.  We should all be relaxing and chilling by the pool.  But instead we just keep at it, with the endless blah blah blah, like the morons that we are.

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And so, this is what I tell myself:  Human beings, as a whole, are just as stupid and incoherent as they’ve always been — but now that stupidity is being recorded on live TV at a greater rate than ever before.  We’re not getting dumber; we’ve just got more airtime.

…Which brings us to the topic of Fox News.  Yesterday, while discussing the topic of the U.S. solider in Afghanistan who has been captured by the Taliban, Fox had on its senior “Military Expert,” Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, so that Lt. Col. Peters could share his wise, wise, wise wise wise views on the whole issue.  And here’s a picture of the man himself.

For the record, Ralph Peters has never seen combat; has never been anywhere close to combat.  His “military service” consists of a stint in Germany during the mid-1980s, where he no doubt faced down the twin evils of disgusting sausages and horrible Euro-Pop.  After which, he worked for U.S. Intelligence, and wrote shitty spy novels with titles like “Flames of Heaven” and “Traitor,” while all the time never being within a thousand miles of an actual gun going off.  Then he got hired by Fox.  Which pretty much brings us up to date.

So of course, when a U.S. solider left his base and then got captured by the Taliban, Fox News brought Lt.  Col. Peters on to speak.  Peters started out fine, first saying, “I want to stress first of all that we must wait until all of the facts are in until we make a final judgment.”  Good point, Mr. Peters!  Because we don’t yet know how the solider got captured, why he left the base, or what really happened, or anything.  After making his wise call to avoid a rush to judgment, Peters then waited approximately 0.5 seconds before rushing to judgment, calling the captured solider a “liar” and a “deserter.”

Peters then continued—

I want to be clear.  If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him.  But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime, I don’t care how hard it sounds, as far as I’m concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

Yeah.  Got that?  U.S. soldiers who leave their base and get captured should be killed by the Taliban, because those soldiers suck, and because Ralph Peters really really knows what he’s talking about.

Here’s the entire amazing video.  (Note the increasingly panicked attempts by the Fox News hostess stewardess journalist to cut Peters off, because calling for the death of U.S. soldiers on live TV is probably bad for ratings.)

So.  Wow.  That’s just great. But hey, yeah!  Let’s all listen to Ralph Peters. Because he really knows what he’s talking about. And he’s been right about so many things before.  For instance…

—Peters was a strong supporter of the 2003 invasion of and ongoing war in Iraq. Defending the war from critics who claimed that Iraq was descending into Civil War, he authored a March 5, 2006 piece in the “New York Post” entitled “Dude, Where’s My Civil War?”, in which he wrote: “I’m looking for the Civil War that ‘The New York Times’ declared. And I just can’t find it.”

—By August 2006, Peters had turned more pessimistic on Iraq, stating in an interview with “Front Page Magazine”:  “Civil War is closer than it was…  The leaders squabble, the death squads rule the neighborhoods.”

—On November 2, 2006, he wrote in “USA Today”:

“Iraq is failing.  No honest observer can conclude otherwise. Even six months ago, there was hope.  Now the chances for a democratic, unified Iraq are dwindling fast.  …Iraq could have turned out differently.  It didn’t. And we must be honest about it.  We owe that much to our troops.  They don’t face the mere forfeiture of a few congressional seats but the loss of their lives.  Our military is now being employed for political purposes.  It’s unworthy of our nation.”

Oh, Mr. Peters!  You military expert, you!  Thank god that you provide a steady hand on the till, and aren’t just panicking or talking out of your ass or anything.  It’s not like you went from saying that everything was awesome in Iraq, to saying that okay, things might be going bad in Iraq, to saying “Oh, shit, people!  It’s all over!!” — in under seven months.  ….Except — okay, irony fails me here — that’s exactly what you did, you fucking moron.

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But of course, all of that is standard Republican “being wrong about every fucking thing under the sun” boilerplate.  No, where Mr. Peters really stands out is in his deviation from the norm.  You see, your standard Neocon just never changes his mind about anything, no matter what, ever:  thereby giving himself a 3% chance of being randomly right about something once every year or so.  But where Mr. Peters innovates is in constantly changing his mind about shit.  For example, the one thing that went sort of okay in Iraq was the troop surge.  Most Neocons supported it.  Ralph Peters chose that moment to change his mind again, three times, thereby making him wrong about the one thing he actually had a chance to be right about:

—Peters was opposed to what became the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 when it was first proposed.  In October 2006 he wrote, “The notion of sending more U.S. troops is strategic and practical nonsense.”

But then…

—By July 2007, he had changed his mind, writing that U.S. troops were making “serious progress against al-Qaeda-in-Iraq and other extremists.”

And then…

—In January 2008 Peters wrote:

“Determined to elect a Democrat president, the ‘mainstream’ media simply won’t accept our success…  And the would-be candidates themselves continue to insist that we should abandon Iraq immediately. …These are the pols who insisted that the surge didn’t have a chance. And nobody calls ‘em on it.”

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Oh, Mr. Peters!  You crazy rascal, you!  Has any “expert” ever been wrong about more things than you have?  But then, what should we expect from a military expert who’s never seen combat, and who writes for the hilariously-named “Armchair General Magazine”?

…So you’ll forgive me, Mr. Peters, if I don’t immediately rush forward to support you in your bold call for killing captured American soldiers.  …But fret not, Mr. Peters!  You haven’t always been wrong:

In a 2009 article for The Journal of International Security Affairs…  Peters advocated the ruthless use of United States military power.  ….Peters also raised the controversial possibility of directing the United States military to attack journalists.  Peters wrote, “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.”

…Now, Mr. Peters.  I’m no expert like yourself.  And I don’t wish to “rush to judgment.”  But I would like to agree with you that military attacks against the partisan media might actually be a good idea.  To simplify:  I think the U.S. Army should bomb the fuck out of you.  …Is there anything you’d like to say to that?

(Photos from TV Ark and Right Truth)

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