Ralph Peters and the Islamofascist Fort Hood boogeyman

Ralph Peters is at it again, this time with a nutty, fearmongering New York Post op-ed that’s full of conspiracy theory insinuation about how the President is a seekrit Muslim.

Peters, who you may recall for his loud death-wishing at missing American Soldier Bowe Bergdahl, (whose status remains “missing/captured”) has a recent book and it appears he is trying to promote it by preying on xenophobia and general free-floating fear in the wake of last week’s Fort Hood massacre. Completely peeing all over the many Muslim men and women who serve this country bravely overseas and at home every day, Peters weaves an islamofascist conspiracy so thick and colorful it made that Da Vinci Code writer guy jealous. True story.

Peters seems unable or, more likely, unwilling to connect the tragedy at Fort Hood to the countless other lone-nutbag shootings we see in America. He happened to be Muslim, but Timothy McVeigh happened to be white and American just like many other lone mass killers before him. Peters claims Obama is “unwilling” to call the act “terror,” “let alone the phrase ‘Islamist terror,'” instead cautioning Americans not to “rush to judgment.” Urging to think critically rather than tar a whole segment of the American population with a terrorism brush is, to Peters, an offensive level of inaction. Peters says:

Imagine if, instead of Fort Hood, the massacre had gone down at a mosque in Detroit — carried out by a maddened Christian or Jew. Obama would’ve been aboard Air Force One before the pilots had time to file a flight plan and he would’ve been on site before the gun smoke cleared, hugging and boo-hooing and dispensing stirring rhetoric for the evening news.

Okay, so we should assume instead if a Jew shot up a Mosque, Obama would come out with guns blazing against Israel because it was some kind of Jewish conspiracy? No, that would be crazy. Because Peters’ assertions are crazy. And offensive, and ugly and misguided and pandering to the portion of our population that thought we should melt down part of Saddam Hussein’s palaces to rebuild the World Trade Center. Understanding- truly understanding- who attacked this country on September 11th and why is far more important to national security than making tenuous connections between lone acts and real, large scale terror attacks.

Peters feels that the Army is colluding to obscure the fact that shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan was motivated by his Muslim faith. Newsflash, sir. Crazy killers are often motivated by faith, whatever faith to which they subscribe. They frequently have large delusions surrounding their significance in the world and feel that they and they alone can carry out God’s will on Earth. Muslim has little to do with it, aside from it coming in this flavor this time. Arrogance and religious fervor is the true culprit in many situations like this.

Peters asks:

How many more Americans have to die, at home and in war, before our president admits that there is, indeed, such a thing as Islamist terror? Will he ever admit that it played a role in the tragedy at Fort Hood?

Could it be- could Americans (and countless Iraqi and Afghani civilians) be dying because of an ill-conceived, totally misguided foray into a tumultuous region with no clearly defined goals and no exit strategy, and of course, no strong connection to the attacks they were carried out to avenge? Peters also mentions that President Obama didn’t “lose his fabled cool” when told of the attack. Yes, he sat in a classroom calmly reading The Pet Goat while the lower half of my city burned from the deliberate sacrifice of two crowded airliners. Oh no, wait. That was his predecessor.

To lay this tragedy at the feet of the current administration is deliberate self-deception at its very worst- if anyone sowed what we just experienced at Fort Hood it was most certainly during the preceding eight years and not this one. If Army policies of deliberate political correctness truly spawned this tragedy, wouldn’t those have been in place far longer than the ten months President Obama has been in office? Indeed, one criticism heard time and again of the Obama administration is that he hasn’t done enough yet. Are we to believe he’s quietly been working behind the scenes all this time to… facilitate a random murder of troops on our home soil?