Once Again I'm Proven Right About Humanity's Frothing Lunatics

Ralph Peters, a columnist for the New York Post, is one of America's premier frothing lunatics. He famously took a trip to Iraq earlier this year, after which he explained the situation there "is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe." Also, morale in the Iraqi army has "soared" and there's been a "surge in the popularity of U.S. troops." This wonderful news has been kept from us by the secular rootless cosmopolitan media.

Recently Peters wrote an article for something called the "Armed Forces Journal." (While it calls itself "the leading joint service monthly magazine for officers and leaders in the United States military community," it's actually owned by Gannett, not the government.) The article explained what REALLY needs to be done in/to the Middle East: a massive redrawing of every country's borders based on ethnicity and religion. Peters' suggested map of the future appears below. Sure, this would require staggering ethnic cleansing, but as Peters says, "ethnic cleansing works."

Now, when I first read this article I made a prediction to myself: this will be circulating among the mideast's frothing lunatics for DECADES. This is standard. The frothing lunatics in any society seize upon the statements of the frothing lunatics on the other "side," and scream incesssantly that these statements represent actual plans with actual power behind them.

GEORGE BUSH: If we don't stop them, Al Qaeda will create a caliphate across the mideast! After all, that's what Ayman Zawahiri said they'll do!

OSAMA BIN LADEN: If we don't stop them, the crusaders will invade our countries, kill our leaders, and convert us to Christianity! After all, that's what Ann Coulter said they'll do!

One amusing results of this is the statements by one side's frothing lunatics are sometimes far better known in other countries than their own. (E.g, that specific burst of Coulter's insanity may well be spoken of more often in Saudi Arabia than it is here.)

Certainly this turns out to be the case with Peters. His wee screed was likely read by fewer than ten normal Americans. Meanwhile, among his counterpart frothing lunatics in the mideast...

NEWSWEEK's Michael Hastings first heard the article being discussed at a dinner party in Amman, Jordan, while he was on his way into Iraq last summer. "I saw it next in a Sunni mosque in Baghdad," Mike wrote me over the weekend. "The imam had actually printed the map and put it up on the bulletin board with an article in Arabic attached explaining it was the American-Zionist plan to shaft the Sunnis." A couple of weeks ago, Mike was on the trail of the Kurdish guerrillas of the PKK (branded terrorists by Ankara and Washington), who are fighting to break off a big chunk of southeast Turkey. He found them holed up in the quasi-independent Kurdish portion of Iraq. "They were talking about the same map," says Hastings.

YES, I WAS OH SO RIGHT.

I love understanding the world, even when this understanding indicates that we're all going to die.