While it’s great that crazy man Ralph Peters is coming in for some public shaming over his atrocious suggestion that the Taliban could “save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills” by simply executing their American captive, Pfc Bowe Berghdahl, it’s important to remember that Peters says ridiculous, offensive things like this all the time. It’s only getting attention now because he had the impressivley bad form to direct his fire at one of our troops.

During the the Maersk Alabama hostage crisis Peters advocated against “proportional” response, calling on the U.S. military to go after the extended families of those suspected of piracy:

Attack their harbors with land, sea and air power. Kill pirates, sink their vessels (including those dual-use fishing boats) and wreck their support infrastructure. The clans behind the pirates must feel sufficient pain to rein in their young thugs. The price for piracy should be stunning.

And we don’t need to stay to rebuild Somalia. End the fix-it fetish now. We need to leave while their boats are still burning down to the waterline.

During the Russia-Georgia conflict, Peters wrote:

The Russians, on whom I have wasted far too much of my life, are drink-sodden barbarians who occasionally puke up a genius.

During the 2007 Annapolis conference, Peters shared his view of the Palestinian people as vagrants:

In the end, the [Israeli-Palestinian] problem’s difficulty can be put in New York City terms: A shiftless, violent family that turned an apartment into a slum was evicted. The new tenants cleaned up the place and made the apartment a showcase. Now the former tenants hate them for it — and want the apartment back.

Frustrated by the Iraqi insurgency in 2006, Peters wrote “If we can’t leave a democracy behind we should at least leave the corpses of our enemies“:

The holier-than-thou response to this proposal is predictable: ‘We can’t kill our way out of this situation!’ Well, boo-hoo. Friendly persuasion and billions of dollars haven’t done the job. Give therapeutic violence a chance.

Aside from the standard conservative old man bigotry, when you read Peters’ past work it’s actually pretty amazing how many problems he believes can be solved simply through the use of collective punishment and indiscriminate killing.

Interestingly, on Tuesday Bill O’Reilly brought Peters on to his show to explain his comments, from which Peters refused to back down. You might remember that in 2002 O’Reilly picked a fight with rapper Ludacris, who O’Reilly accused of glamorizing a “life of guns, violence drugs and disrespect of women.” Peters, however, isn’t a rapper. He’s only a political columnist, TV commentator, and occasional presidential campaign adviser, so his celebration of mass violence isn’t as big a deal

Yesterday, three Republican congressmen continued spreading the poorly fabricated myth that “criminal illegal aliens” will be covered by America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, despite the fact that the bill excludes undocumented immigrants from receiving federal funds to buy health insurance from either a private or government plan.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) and Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) relied on fear and misinformation to garner opposition to both immigration and health care reform to essentially kill two birds with one stone:

AKIN: If before we had trouble with people coming here illegally, if we give them free health insurance and health coverage that’s going to make it more attractive for them to come. So if you don’t like illegal immigration, then you’re not going to like this bill either…

BROUN: We don’t know how many illegal aliens are here — they’re not immigrants — they’re aliens. They’ve committed crimes, so they’re criminals…they’re guilty of many law infractions. This health care plan, Obamacare, is going to give every single one of those illegal aliens health insurance at the cost of taxpayers.

Akin and Broun apparently overlooked the section of the House’s health care bill that reads:

“Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

They also should’ve done some research before rattling on about immigration. The global economic recession has shown more than ever that the labor market, not health care, drives migration. Even if foreigners are under the false impression that undocumented immigrants in the US are receiving health care, in most cases it’s not going to be the reason they drop everything and leave.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) took a slightly less antagonistic approach:

AKIN: Is this bill going to give illegal immigrants health care?

FLEMING: About 10 million…that’s 10 million people who either should be here legally and then paying into the system and paying their way or they should go back home because they’re here illegally to begin with and that would not be a cost or a burden.

Though Fleming apparently didn’t coordinate with his colleague Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who put the number at 5.6 million yesterday, he provided a reasonable suggestion. That is, requiring all those in the country illegally to fix their status so that Republicans can stop using the immigration issue to drive a wedge through policy proposals they don’t like. Most undocumented immigrants actually do pay taxes, but maybe passing comprehensive immigration reform would force the “whacko wing” of the GOP to finally stop griping and grumbling about “illegal aliens” and start focusing on solving the issues at hand. Meanwhile, a policy designed to send 10 million undocumented immigrants “back home” would cost taxpayers at least $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually.

Watch it: