Weakness Is Not An Option, But An Inevitability
I'll give British Prime Minister Tony Blair his due - he certainly does talk a good game:
Hey, I said he talks a good game. Talking a great game would dispense with diplomacy altogether and would go something like, "Return our fifteen sailors unharmed immediately or we will transform your country into a parking lot". Sure, that's not really the Brits' rhetorical style, but Winston Churchill managed to cloak the same sentiments in the fine silk of his unparalleled eloquence in the runup to and during World War II vis-a-vie Nazi Germany. And Margaret Thatcher left no doubts about her resolve to drive Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands a quarter-century ago if they didn't withdraw post haste.
One quite likely reason for Blair's peculiar mode of painfully understated bravado may be that he has made the systematic disembowlment of British naval power - and with it the ability to make good on "moving this into a different phase" - a top priority of his regime:
Left-wingers don't have any self-respect, and equate neurotic, self-debasing prostration on the world stage with overarching moral virtue. They demand unconditional, unilateral retreat and surrender as penitance for the imagined, ideologically-manufactured sins of past countrymen and contemporaries that defend them and the notion of patriotism, nationalism, and core principles of freedom and self-determination in which libs no longer believe. No thought is given to the consequences of this stance because their ideology rules them out. And if they happen, well, it's all the fault of those right-wing warmongers.
Certainly not Iran, the archenemy of the Anglosphere and everything it stands - or used to stand - for, which sees the Blair government "going wobbly" and has decided, not unreasonably, that a modest push will topple it over, leaving the U.S. functionally alone in Iraq and therefore even more likely to bug out itself. Also an entirely understandable conclusion to draw in light of recent congressional events.
Yes, there is the "mammoth" American naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, which on the one hand the Pentagon insists has nothing to do with the latest Iranian act of war against the Coalition (the seizure of the aforementioned fifteen British sailors) and on the other is meant to "send a message" to the mullahs. I can't say that I'm all that impressed, personally. Looking at it from the standpoint of Adolph Ahmadinejad and his employers, I can't rightly see what message it's sending besides a lot of bluff, bluster, and spittle, a raucous rattling of empty sabres, the roar of a toothless, spiritually declawed grishnar cat without the heart to move beyond to the bite stage. I mean, let's get down to where the ol' cheese binds: I think President Bush would pull the trigger on the mullahgarchy without hesitation if they held fifteen American servicemen, but will he really take us to war on Great Britain's behalf? Especially given that the Democrats are trying to pre-emptively surrender to Tehran as well? Why else do you suppose the Iranians went after the Brits instead of us directly?
And if they were to have miscalculated, and we and the Brits did launch military reprisals, one cannot help wondering whether that would truly be a miscalculation in Islamist minds. One can imagine the firestorm of far left outrage that would erupt in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran; add to that the, um, "fallout" from a spectacular terrorist reprisal already planned, in place, and awaiting its "go" orders (take your pick - nuking Israel, a WMD attack inside the U.S. or against our two carrier battle groups in the Gulf) and the domestic political chaos here would be unimaginable. Suffice it to say, post-9/11 unity would be highly unlikely, and the fall of the Bush Administration a virtual certainty.
I think the Bushies know this, and so do the mullahs. Which makes this whole contrivance of a "mammoth" military exercise an even bigger humiliation for its rank, evident impotence. We have become, once again, the "pitiful, helpless giant" of the post-Vietnam era, possessed of unchallengable power and irredeemable cowardice. And so we march on toward Adolph's apocalypse, made all the more certain by the brazeness our weakness and suicidally short national attention span is encouraging.
Maybe the Iranians release the British sailors after they've milked enough embarrassment from the incident. Or maybe they'll execute them as "spies" and dare us to do something about it. And next time they will capture American soldiers, and nuke the carriers we send for the next "message-sending mammoth" Persian Gulf exercise.
With all due respect to Mark Noonan, this situation is already "out of control," and has been for years. And, most likely, beyond the Rubicon where a tragic outcome can still be averted.
That's the "next phase," no matter what the British grishnar cat roars, in its peculiar, understated way.
Tony Blair warned Iran yesterday that the dispute over the fifteen British servicemen seized in Gulf waters last week could move into a “different phase” if diplomacy failed to secure their release.
His words, immediately condemned by Iran as “provocative” [heh], came as the US Navy began its biggest show of force in the Gulf since the invasion of Iraq four years ago, with manoeuvres involving two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships and more than one hundred aircraft.
As tensions rose, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, had a robust telephone conversation with her Iranian counterpart demanding immediate consular access to the captured Britons.
In an interview on GMTV, Mr. Blair said: “I hope we manage to get them to realise they have to release them. If not, then this will move into a different phase.”
Hey, I said he talks a good game. Talking a great game would dispense with diplomacy altogether and would go something like, "Return our fifteen sailors unharmed immediately or we will transform your country into a parking lot". Sure, that's not really the Brits' rhetorical style, but Winston Churchill managed to cloak the same sentiments in the fine silk of his unparalleled eloquence in the runup to and during World War II vis-a-vie Nazi Germany. And Margaret Thatcher left no doubts about her resolve to drive Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands a quarter-century ago if they didn't withdraw post haste.
One quite likely reason for Blair's peculiar mode of painfully understated bravado may be that he has made the systematic disembowlment of British naval power - and with it the ability to make good on "moving this into a different phase" - a top priority of his regime:
By this time next year, the once-vaunted Royal Navy will be about the size of the Belgian Navy, while its officers face a five-year moratorium on all promotions...
Since January, the Blair government has broadcast its intentions of gutting the Royal Navy's surface fleet. At the same time, it also announced its plans for withdrawing 2,500 British troops from Iraq. The result? First, the Royal Navy is finished as a credible military force. Second, the British Army's redeployment from Basra has been widely interpreted as abandonment of the Iraq mission, rather than as moving on to Afghanistan after a job well done, as Blair insists...
The mullahs in Tehran clearly see the new pacifist trend in Britain not as a hopeful sign of future accord, but as supine surrender. Just as clearly, they have singled out Britain as the latest weak link in the Coalition fighting in Iraq and in the War on Terror...
In places like Bosnia and the Persian Gulf, and in operations like Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, its help has been solid and genuine, as well as important in a symbolic sense. America always looks better when a couple of frigates flying the Royal Navy's White Ensignare side by side with those flying the Stars and Stripes. U.S. sailors also know that in a real fight, the men of the Royal Navy, which our navy men still call the "Senior Service," will never let them down...
Now those days are gone for good. Yet, if today's Britons thought that by shedding that historic responsibility they could buy themselves some peace of mind, the current hostage crisis has just proved them wrong...
Enemies like the mullahs and their terrorist allies recognize no time outs, no neutral ground. They see only strength and weakness, those nations they can manipulate and those they have to fear. Today they clearly feel they can pull the British lion's tail with impunity.
If the hostages are finally released unharmed, it will have a lot more to do with the presence of two American carrier groups off the Iranian coast than anything Blair is doing - and the British will have learned that what they really lost when they gave up their fleet and abandoned the fight in Iraq is their own self-respect.
Left-wingers don't have any self-respect, and equate neurotic, self-debasing prostration on the world stage with overarching moral virtue. They demand unconditional, unilateral retreat and surrender as penitance for the imagined, ideologically-manufactured sins of past countrymen and contemporaries that defend them and the notion of patriotism, nationalism, and core principles of freedom and self-determination in which libs no longer believe. No thought is given to the consequences of this stance because their ideology rules them out. And if they happen, well, it's all the fault of those right-wing warmongers.
Certainly not Iran, the archenemy of the Anglosphere and everything it stands - or used to stand - for, which sees the Blair government "going wobbly" and has decided, not unreasonably, that a modest push will topple it over, leaving the U.S. functionally alone in Iraq and therefore even more likely to bug out itself. Also an entirely understandable conclusion to draw in light of recent congressional events.
Yes, there is the "mammoth" American naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, which on the one hand the Pentagon insists has nothing to do with the latest Iranian act of war against the Coalition (the seizure of the aforementioned fifteen British sailors) and on the other is meant to "send a message" to the mullahs. I can't say that I'm all that impressed, personally. Looking at it from the standpoint of Adolph Ahmadinejad and his employers, I can't rightly see what message it's sending besides a lot of bluff, bluster, and spittle, a raucous rattling of empty sabres, the roar of a toothless, spiritually declawed grishnar cat without the heart to move beyond to the bite stage. I mean, let's get down to where the ol' cheese binds: I think President Bush would pull the trigger on the mullahgarchy without hesitation if they held fifteen American servicemen, but will he really take us to war on Great Britain's behalf? Especially given that the Democrats are trying to pre-emptively surrender to Tehran as well? Why else do you suppose the Iranians went after the Brits instead of us directly?
And if they were to have miscalculated, and we and the Brits did launch military reprisals, one cannot help wondering whether that would truly be a miscalculation in Islamist minds. One can imagine the firestorm of far left outrage that would erupt in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran; add to that the, um, "fallout" from a spectacular terrorist reprisal already planned, in place, and awaiting its "go" orders (take your pick - nuking Israel, a WMD attack inside the U.S. or against our two carrier battle groups in the Gulf) and the domestic political chaos here would be unimaginable. Suffice it to say, post-9/11 unity would be highly unlikely, and the fall of the Bush Administration a virtual certainty.
I think the Bushies know this, and so do the mullahs. Which makes this whole contrivance of a "mammoth" military exercise an even bigger humiliation for its rank, evident impotence. We have become, once again, the "pitiful, helpless giant" of the post-Vietnam era, possessed of unchallengable power and irredeemable cowardice. And so we march on toward Adolph's apocalypse, made all the more certain by the brazeness our weakness and suicidally short national attention span is encouraging.
Maybe the Iranians release the British sailors after they've milked enough embarrassment from the incident. Or maybe they'll execute them as "spies" and dare us to do something about it. And next time they will capture American soldiers, and nuke the carriers we send for the next "message-sending mammoth" Persian Gulf exercise.
With all due respect to Mark Noonan, this situation is already "out of control," and has been for years. And, most likely, beyond the Rubicon where a tragic outcome can still be averted.
That's the "next phase," no matter what the British grishnar cat roars, in its peculiar, understated way.
posted by JASmius at 9:21 PM
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