More British Marine Backlash

Collusion with the enemy is still frowned upon in parts of America, anyway.

At least a few Brits do as well:

A contrast with the two RAF Tornado crewmen captured during the first Gulf war, and paraded silent and bloodied on Iraqi television, may be unfair. But in terms of reserve, it is slightly unfortunate when comparisons with five-year-old Stuart Lockwood - who shrank from Saddam's hand as the dictator ruffled his hair during the Kuwait hostage crisis - do not flatter these latterday detainees.

Appearance is crucial. So pliant did the 15 appear in their nightly media outings that it was not long before tactfully bemused commentators were raising the possibility of Stockholm syndrome, presumably casting Leading Seaman Faye Turney in the Patty Hearst role, with the iconic black beret replaced by a hijab in this version.

More worthy of serious consideration, though, is the fact that several former senior military figures have taken the step of speaking out against the charges of luminous heroism. "This situation looked like a bloody shambles," Lt General Sir Michael Gray told yesterday's Daily Mail. "It did not look good. The shambles also relates to how and why these people were picked up in the first place. The Royal Navy appears to have been inept - but that is another story."

I cannot be sure of the precise circumstances in which the former commander of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1969-71) delivered these remarks, but I imagine Lt Gen Gray standing ramrod straight as he took the Mail's call at a small occasional table in his hall, before ringing off with a brisk "Good day to you." (Possibly even that was dispensed with. My grandfather never said hello or goodbye on the telephone because he believed it to be a device for passing information and nothing more.)

Perhaps those of us made uneasy by the spectacle of the past fortnight are just stupidly nostalgic for this kind of world - the old days when wars were waged against expansionist nations, as opposed to on an abstract noun. The days when hostage situations didn't share disturbing amounts of iconography with the Big Brother house, and captured personnel did not emerge asking for "space". Then again, as our leaders constantly remind us, we are fighting a new kind of enemy. Perhaps all this goes with the territory.

But there is a certain moment in life when those of us who consider ourselves conscientious objectors to just about everything but imported US TV dramas suddenly find ourselves a heartbeat away from ending a sentence with the words "and we'd all be speaking German now". For this armchair general hack, that moment was the Tehran Ryder Cup photo.

And for you Lefties incapable of making anything resembling to be an argument without resorting to your DNC-fed "chickenhawk" silliness, please take a moment to consider what a Marine with Total Moral Authority on this issue has to say. He's been there, and it's no surprise that he doesn't agree with the capitulation caucus of the Left.

We are at war. Such conduct as these sailors and marines displayed would be inexcusable in peacetime, much less now. If civilians aboard Flight 93 could fight back when there was no hope of victory, is it really too much to expect professional soldiers to do the same?