Lieutenant Colonel
and
author
. As a novelist he has sometimes written under the pen name Owen Parry.
Peters was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania
and grew up in Schuylkill Haven
. His father was a coal miner
and unsuccessful businessman. His wife, Katherine McIntire Peters, is a reporter for Government Executive
magazine (a property of National Journal
Group, Inc.).
Peters enlisted in the Army as a private
in 1976, after attending Pennsylvania State University
.
If there is a single power the West underestimates, it is the power of collective hatred.
We [Americans] choose not to understand the world on terms other than our own.
We [the U.S.] think nothing…of attempting to inflict upon other peoples forms of government ill-tailored to their needs.
The message of Vietnam is not that Americans will not take casualties; it is that the American people do not want the lives of their sons and daughters wasted.
We have moved from an age in which government leaders sought to do what was best for the people to one in which the political leadership is convinced it knows what is best for the people, whether they like it or not.
There is no lack of bravery in the ranks of our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment (as well as at the higher levels of military command).