Fool Brittania

The Nazis couldn't do what the mullahs have:

“Restraint” sends a message of weakness in any event. It would be more prudent of Britain to calculate that any Iranian government — whatever its disposition — should be made to fear punishment for seizing British troops unlawfully. At this point, however, the only way of instilling such fear is actually to punish Iran — and that seems very far from the minds of both the British government and the British people.

One of the oddities of the present mood in London is how little anger and indignation there is about the crisis. Americans seem to be more indignant on Britain’s behalf than the British are for themselves.

Almost alone among allies the U.S. has strongly backed London against Iran — which has prompted some columnists here to complain that they don’t want the support of a war-monger like Bush.

Obviously one element in this public mood is a guilty hostility to the Iraq war, which is blamed on Bush and Blair. A deeper and perhaps more permanent cause, however, is the Brits are developing a quasi-pacifist European sensibility on military affairs. They are “entering Europe” psychologically as well as economically. That puts them at a disadvantage in conflict with a revolutionary Iran:


Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight.
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

If that is so, a number of oddities about the crisis become much clearer: the Royal Navy’s feeble rules of engagement which in effect say “Hey, you can’t do that — someone might get killed”; the willingness of the sailors to repeat Iranian propaganda — they apparently received no training in resisting pressure in captivity; the assumption that the sole aim of diplomacy must be to free the captives at almost any cost; the widespread belief that Britain has no options against a poorer and less powerful nation like Iran; and the overriding sense of fatalism that colors both government policy and press comment in the British capital.

If these beliefs were true, that would be some excuse — but they are false. As Newt Gingrich has pointed out, Iran’s sole refinery could be attacked. Its ports could be blockaded or mined. Its exports blocked.

And though the lives of the hostages are important, the overriding aim of policy should be to protect the many more lives of those future hostages who will suffer and die if London sends out the message that its people can be seized with impunity.

That this might happen — with the half-hearted consent of the British people — is the result of two policies pursued by the Blair government over many years: the running down of Britain’s armed forces and the deliberate official discouragement of British patriotism in favor of the European Union and international institutions.

A week ago Prime Minister Tony Blair was discussing the Falklands War which, through the agency of some ironical fairy, is enjoying its 25th anniversary at the moment. Blair remarked that Mrs. Thatcher had then made the right decision to respond to Argentina’s seizure of the British islands by sending a naval task force to recover them. He would do the same thing himself in like circumstances. Two days later the British sailors and marines were seized.

God is not mocked. Neither are Clio and Britannia.

Poor Churchill must be spinning in his grave like a rotisserie hooked to a jet engine right now.

When in God's name are we going to once again have iron men at the helms of our states, rather than the quiver-lip squishes with whom were cursed now?