Ralph Peters on Photos of U.S. Soldiers With Maimed Suicide Bombers: Stop Blaming the Troops – Blame The Generals, Cowardly White House, and Establishment Media

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters joined Megyn Kelly on FOX News, yesterday,  to discuss the publication of photos of U.S. soldiers posing with the bodies of suicide bombers. His reaction was one of outrage – but not at the soldiers, he was fuming at “the generals whose strategy has failed, the cowardly, cowardly White House just trying to kick the can down the road to November, and blame the establishment media that really loves, loves to trash our soldiers and Marines.”

Peters: My take on this is that there’s a terrible scandal here Megyn, but it has nothing to do with our troops in combat. Those troops escaped a suicide bomber, bad judgment, took some dumb pictures, and no terrorists were harmed in the taking of those snapshots. The real scandal is that the LA Times, desperate to survive, creates a scandal, publishes the pictures over the Pentagon’s objections. The real scandal is that the establishment media leaps on another chance to trash our troops. The worst of the scandal is that our leaders, in and out of uniform, rush to condemn our troops. No explanation, no context. And I suggest that White House Spokesman Jay Carney join the military and see what it’s like himself before he condemns our troops.

I’m especially appalled that those in uniform, Gen. Allen, our commander in Afghanistan, just jump to trash our troops. Look, he needs to put it in context. Megyn, the “greatest generation” sent Japanese skulls home to their girlfriends. I’m not condoning it, but I’m trying to make the point that our soldiers out on the front line, and our Marines, are under tremendous stresses. War is not a ladies auxiliary tea party, and it’s all too easy for people comfortable in Los Angeles or New York or the White House to condemn the troops without context. Those troops should be given company level letters of reprimand and moved on.

And, by the way, if our strategy and doctrine is so pathetically weak that it can be derailed, destroyed, shattered by a few burning Korans or a few photographs — the dead body parts of terrorists — well that’s not much of a strategy or a doctrine. So, I’m furious, not at the troops who did something dumb, but I’m furious at the moral cowardice of military leaders who never stick up for our troops but protect their own careers. Do I sound angry? As a 22-year-old former Army enlisted man and officer, I’m angry as can be because Gen. Allen needs to get it through his head that a leader is responsible for everything his troops do or fail to do. That’s the military code. Don’t blame the troops out doing the tough work. Blame the generals whose strategy has failed, the cowardly, cowardly White House just trying to kick the can down the road to November, and blame the establishment media that really loves, loves to trash our soldiers and Marines.

Watch the video at RCP.

This picture, taken by AFP photographer Massoud Hossaini, 30, won the prestigious US journalism prize for his “heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber’s attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul.”

Pic, via Jawa Report

Tarana still cries sometimes when she remembers that day, but she managed an occasional shy smile in an interview with AFP at her modest home on Tuesday, as she cuddled her sisters, who were both wounded in the blast.

That her picture has been featured on newspaper front pages around the world means little to her, she says, with a small shrug and a fleeting smile.

The soldiers seen in the unfortunate pictures the Obama administration is apologizing for, had just narrowly avoided a similar fate.

Please tell me that the  apologies are not directed toward the Taliban, who also, by the way, recently poisoned 150 school girls for having the temerity to go to school.

Please tell me, that just because we’re actually “negotiating” with those animals, and we’re “better than them” (NO KIDDING), we don’t feel the need to actually apologize to the Taliban when our soldiers celebrate not being blown up by them. Let’s hope and pray that the apologies are simply a matter of  obligatory diplomacy toward the Afghan people as a whole, and not meant to appease savages who will never be appeased.

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