A Sad Day For Britannia

April 5, 2007, 5:29 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Steve  | 2 Comments

I promise I’ll be funny again sometime soon, but right now, I’m pretty exasperated. I couldn’t believe the footage of this meeting between Iran’s Ahmadinejad and the British detainees. I couldn’t find many pictures of it; it took me almost 20 minutes just to scare up this one!

Could the British armed forces have come out of this situation looking any more weak and ineffectual? While thousands of prisoners languish in torture under the Ahmadinejad regime, many facing political or religious persecution, London was forced to humbly accept the return of fifteen of its fighters as a gift this week in nominal honor of “the passing of Christ,” and this after they had all — almost without being asked — admitted they were completely at fault.

Now it’s not that Great Britain should have sent in James Bond and its version of the A-Team with five disguises and a zip-line packet of dental floss. Divorced from its diplomatic context, the ultimate outcome here couldn’t be better — everyone made it home alive. The real tragedy here is the way these sailors, and their nation, simply rolled over, belly-up, on the world stage, handing Iran the greatest publicity coup it could have ever hoped for.

Although GPS units showed the ship never entered Iranian waters, after capture, the sailors apparently wasted no time admitting they were wrong, prostrating themselves in apology. The EU and the UN responded typically, calling for “dialogue,” but refusing to call for sanctions against Iran. They were, however, authorized to express their “grave concern,” so long as no one mistook their sentiment for stamina. When the sailors met with Ahmadinejad on Iranian TV, they were beaming; shaking his hand, one sailor remarked, “We are grateful for your forgiveness.” According to British news reports, they left the country “with sweets and souvenirs,” and returned to London to talk about how “very difficult” the ordeal was — so difficult, apparently, that trained fighting men and women were willing to admit guilt within hours of capture.

So long as Iran stays away from Jerry Lewis and Mr. Bean, Europe is apparently perfectly content to roll over and give the rogue nation exactly what it wants every time, in the same appease-at-all-costs mindset that began the last war on the once-great Continent. Our enlightened betters across the sea tout their liberal democratic values of “tolerance” and “engagement,” while ignoring the seismic demographic shifts that threaten to destroy the foundation of their civilization within the next generation. Good luck with that whole ‘tolerance’ thing under sharia.

That’s what we expect from a fattened, complacent Europe and the debating club of the United Nations, their backbones long since immolated in a sacrifice to the “brotherhood of man.” But it’s a legitimate tragedy when Great Britain, one of the last nations with the guts and valor to stand up and fight for principle, is similarly humiliated — and by a man who denies the Holocaust and covets the nuclear bomb so clearly that even the media understands it.

This month, the Brits have traded the courage necessary to fight evil for the moral confusion needed to shake hands with it.

Those germs won’t wash away.


Comments

2 Comments to “A Sad Day For Britannia”

  1. Elliott Joseph on April 5th, 2007 6:23 pm

    I agree with you entirely, but I must make one important excuse. It was not the British armed forces who came up short, but the politicians.

    The British strategy was to appease from day 1. Iran ambushed Royal Navy personnel at sea, and Britain delivered talk and nothing else for two weeks. At the end of this time, the caprice of the chief thugocrat of Iran saw our people returned.

    Please don’t blame the sailors and marines. Whether it’s the diplomacy or the rules of engagement at the time of capture we’re talking about, it’s the hollow men in the polity, not the fighting men in the ships, who have let a once great nation down.

    http://elliottjoseph.blogspot.com/2007/04/endgame-in-iran.html

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