Peters on Europe and Islam: not only crazy, but dangerous

Ralph Peters, interviewed at FrontPage Magazine last week, illustrates his familiar two-sided persona: a rational and astute analyst of military affairs when it comes to the Iraq war (he gives the best one-paragraph summary of the U.S. failures in Iraq that I have seen); and a Europe-hating, white-hating lunatic when it comes to broader issues of politics and culture. Remember, it was Peters who described the leading Islam critics such as Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer (though he lacked the honesty to name them) as Nazi-like bigots eager to commit mass murder. In the FrontPage interview, he repeats his fixed idea that Europe is under absolutely no danger of Islamization, and that the very notion of Islam gaining power and spreading sharia in Europe is “nuts,” because the Europeans are natural-born mass killers who will wipe out the Muslims the moment they get really annoyed at them. So blindly hostile is he to Europe, that he cannot conceive of a real threat to Europe from Islam, because that would require that he view Europe’s situation with at least some degree of sympathetic understanding. (Worse, his ideas about Europe are now being treated respectfully by at least one prominent and respected neocon—see below.) Thus the following exchange: :

Question: This is, of course, all speculation, but if such a crackdown took place, what might it look like? How violent could it get? Perhaps most interesting, how might America and the rest of the world react? Could we face a stunning situation where one day America feels compelled to come to the rescue of persecuted Muslims in Western Europe?

Peters: I have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which American naval vessels and U.S. Marines are in European ports to evacuate Muslims expelled from their countries of residence.

He doesn’t actually say so, but his implication seems to be that the U.S. should take in the millions of innocent Muslims expelled by thuggish Europe, if the Muslim countries refuse to accept them.

* * *

Steven H. reports this morning:

Peters was just on the Bill Bennett show discussing those who espouse this nonsense about “Eurabia.” He then went on to explain that Europeans are the ones who have perfected the art of genocide. Not only did Bennett not say anything to dispute Peters but agreed with him.

This is the same Bill Bennett who also said recently that he would not have a problem voting for a Moslem for president if he was right on the issues. Sad to say that this is what passes for the cutting edge of today’s conservative thought.

LA replies:

I’ve disagreed with William Bennett on many things, but I’ve never regarded him as irrational. I find it truly disturbing that Bennett would accept without demur, let alone agree with, Peters’s lunatic view of Europe.

Here’s what Peters’s view comes down to: We shouldn’t care about Europe, because Europe is essentially evil and Nazi-like and is separate and different from ourselves. In particular we shouldn’t worry about the Islamization of Europe, because the Europeans, being so evil and Nazi-like, will kill the Muslims themselves (just as “they”—all Europeans now being Nazis—killed the Jews), or else drive the Muslims out.

All this is the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is, first, that Europe is our civilizational source and co-mate, without which we cannot survive civilizationally, and, second, that far from being Nazi-like, Europe is guilt-ridden, weak, and lacking the will to defend itself, and unless it turns around and starts to believe in its own essential goodness, it is doomed, and we with it. Peters thinks that because Europe is Nazi-like, its survival is assured. In reality, a Europe that has internalized Ralph Peters’s poisonous view of itself as Nazi-like is doomed, because it will feel that it doesn’t have the right to exist.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 09, 2007 10:06 AM | Send