PrintAugust 22, 2007
Where is the British bulldog spirit?
Now that the French have elected a new President and have a foreign minister, who can plainly see disaster descending on Iraq, perhaps the Brits should ask the French military to take over the defense of Basra?
Richard North of Eurereferendum points out:
"Moqtada al-Sadr is claiming credit for the imminent British pullout from Basra Palace, declaring it a victory for his militia "resistance".
Euroreferendum has been shouting up a storm about the lack of top-level military support for the Basra mission, which may turn out to be a worse example of socialist defeatism than the woeful performance of those poor Royal Navy teens kidnapped by Iranian thugs last March. As least nobody died in the Shatt Al-Arab fiasco, though the British Navy became a laughingstock in the Arab and Persian world. In Basra, British soldiers have been left exposed to enemy mortar shells, living in nothing but tents, and with minimal counter-battery support. They have been taking the hits heroically, but that does not excuse high-level failures to support them.
One can just imagine Ministry of Defense officials in Whitehall trying to dodge this hot potato, choosing to advance their careers in the EU Fantasy Army of the rosy future, instead of supporting the troops fighting and dying in Iraq today. According to Eureferendum, now supported by the Times and the Scotsman, the MOD has consistently sent them the wrong equipment. There is no reason for British troops to be defeated by the likes of Mooqie Al Sadr. But given the utterly defeat-mongering British media, the near-total absence of support from Labour to the Tories, plus the intellectual inability of the upper ranks to adapt to the conditions of this new war, this might as well be another Charge of the Light Brigade: Plenty of guts on the front lines, but no brains on top.
The British need to re-read their Winston Churchill from 1941: Never give in.
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Who told Socialist New Britain that sheer dogged persistence, and the will do win, was now out of fashion? That Europe's Age of Peace and Love had made courage, sacrifice and clear thinking suddenly irrelevant? And that fighting soldiers could be abandoned willy-nilly by the top brass, to polish the boots of risk-averse bureaucrats?
The only reason that Europe has been allowed to live in Disney Fantasy World for six decades is that the United States and Britain -- and a few other allies -- have been able to maintain the peace. The BBC intelligentsia may not believe that, but it's the plain unvarnished truth. Right now it looks as if the British military will be forced to retreat from Basra by Mooqie and his gangsters. That means that Americans, with Iraq Army support, will have to re-conquer the whole province in the face of Iranian subversion. Well, we can do it, but there is a cost.
That military failure will haunt Britain for decades to come, just as Maggie Thatcher's stand in the Falklands War made British foreign policy more effective and respected for decades afterwards. The price will have to be paid down the line, in credibility and trust, and finally in lives and security, by Americans, Aussies, and Canadians, who will continue to fight. As for the Poles, the Czechs, and all the other Russian neighbors now threatened by the neo-Czarist thugs of Putin's regime, what are they to think when they see British soldiers going home in the face of loud-mouth little fascists like Mooqie?
If new Prime Minister Gordon Brown thinks that Al Qaeda and Ahmadi-Nejad aren't watching the retreat from Basra, he is not as bright as he appears to be. The West will need a lot more old-fashioned British common sense and courage to survive the coming decades of terror.
Don't leave it all to Uncle.
James Lewis blogs at http://www.dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/
