This "chickenhawk" stuff is just silly.  What's supposed to be the idea?  That only people who've worn uniform have worthwhile opinions about matters of national interest?  It would seem to follow that military dictatorship is the only acceptable form of government.

 Or is it only people who've been in combat?  So far as the British sailors and marines are concerned, plenty of military and ex-military people agree with my point of view.  Ralph Peters, for instance. John Derbyshire

"Worthwhile opinions about matters of interest"  are one thing. Specific attacks on individual servicemen, when the circumstances are not known - by our military, let alone a foreign journalist - are quite another. By all means express an opinion. And expect that opinion to be valued - this side of the Atlantic at any rate - in proportion to the knowledge and experience of the person giving it.

As I said before, if Andy McNab were to talk about algebra, I would not give tuppence for his views.

As Esmerelda said, "Meanwhile I understand that Andy McNab was wrong in the way he handled captivity during GWI.  Had Bruce Lee directed Sean Bean in the film of Bravo Two Zero then, of course, we would have seen the correct behaviour demonstrated."

Ralph Peters for instance.

Ralph Peters has been utterly discredited as a "pixie" at this site by Hugh and at Jihadwatch by Robert Spencer. When it comes to slagging off the Brits, he suddenly becomes the voice of sanity. Funny, that.

I assume, John, that you will be equally scathing about the fearless American apology for the China  spy plane incident and the Pueblo, the American pilot who apologised for the US' unjust war against the peaceful Iraqis in GW1, the American "soldierettes" as you might call them wearing the abaya, the American soldiers captured at Naziriyah in 2003 who were paraded, looking scared shitless on TV?

Look at mine and Esmerelda's posts here if you don't know what I mean.

Perhaps not, though. There is more to be gained from slagging off the Brits to Americans than vice versa. And you have a more gullible, ignorant and receptive audience.

Cheers, mate.

(h/t: Joseph Bottum)

GOOD-FRIDAY, 1613, RIDING WESTWARD.
by John Donne

LET man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 172-173.

All governments, but Socialist governments especially, and this wretched Labour government in particular, seem to forget that they have no automatic right to the wealth of those who create it rather than - as they themselves do - spend/squander it. Keeping the money we make should be the default position, and not seen as a kind of injustice. Likewise, with some exceptions, those who don't earn any money are not entitled to take it from those who do. Sensible column in The Telegraph:

Michael Meacher, a declared candidate for the Labour leadership, is fighting his campaign in the guise of an unapologetic class warrior.

He is seeking to embarrass Gordon Brown, the overwhelming favourite in this yet-to-be-declared contest, by highlighting what he sees as the unfair tax arrangements of some very wealthy people. Mr Meacher is agitated because people not domiciled in this country enjoy a "favourable" tax regime.

Non-domiciled taxpayers are taxed only on that part of their investment income they choose to remit to the United Kingdom. Mr Meacher believes the Chancellor is pandering to the super-rich, in the process sacrificing significant revenues, by failing to close this "loophole".

Non-domiciled residents add significantly to this country's economic wellbeing. They do so directly, in terms of what they invest and spend here, and they do so indirectly, by bringing the wealth, talent and enterprise that has helped turn London into the world's finance capital.

The Chancellor knows that changing the tax regime for the non-domiciled would mean cutting off our nose to spite our face. Any theoretical boost to tax revenues (experts estimate the potential gain to the Treasury at £1-1.5 billion) would swiftly evaporate as the non-domiciled - the investment bankers and business leaders as well as the Russian oligarchs and showbiz superstars - simply upped sticks and moved elsewhere, taking their spending power with them. Have no doubt that other countries would make them most welcome.

Mr Meacher's campaign will play well with the Left of the Labour Party, but in the real world will be seen for what it is - a counter-productive display of the politics of envy.

We national-security types tend to be so confident we are right about what needs to be done to protect the country — to the point over over-confidence — that we don't always realize it's not enough to be right.  You need to get out and make the case all the time.  In this, we're at a distinct disadvantage:  the left and its civil libertarian allies are much more attentive, politically attuned and organized.  We think it's so obvious that the government has no interest in peeking into your library records, and that it's no big deal if the government, like the credit companies, has access to your financial records, that we never see the blitz coming until it's washing over us. By the time we get out of the batter's box, the left's shock troops already have the media covered in stories about Big Brother and domestic spying.  We blithely assume we'll win based on common sense, and we end up playing catch-up, or losing, because the other side is fighting for public opinion before we even realize there's a game on.

Social conservatives are under no such illusion.  They're no less sure they have it right than the national-security types, but they've been hammered too long to be under any illusions.  Their vision of America is under assault every day, and they know they have to bring it every day just to stay even.

No one on our side, including Rudy, can win without giving social conservatives a reason to believe it's important that he or she wins.  Period.  They are the thrum that makes this thing go.  They'll be steadfast if your disagreements with them are few, principled and coherent; but you can never suggest to them that their issues — which are ingrained to their core — should be subordinated for the sake of something as comparatively trivial as party unity.  Our people believe, rightly, that their conception of America is transcendent.  It's more important than who is in power.  Government does not consume them, and they won't be active unless they are persuaded that a candidate will protect and nurture that conception — not necessarily on every issue, but on the whole.

In 2004, President Bush got the most votes of anyone who ever ran for president in the history of the United States.  But Senator Kerry got the second most, and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are more attractive candidates than Kerry.  If social conservatives are not inspired to come out in force in 2008, we lose.  It would be madness to tell them that taxpayer funding of abortions, which is a very simple issue of right and wrong, is something they need to move beyond for the good of the team.

"Europe is evolving... for the better..." --from a reader

Then you must be very young indeed. You don't know what Europe managed to be, despite the war, even in the 1950s and 1960s. I suppose you think the Levelling Revolution of 1968 was just swell. I suppose you think the educational level, in France and Italy, in England and Germany, has not declined but actually gone up, that the bac and maturita are just as taxing as they once were, that the "reforms" that have made the English tempted to cut Ancient History as an A-Level subject, and discourage the study of Greek and Latin, and that have opened the gates to mass mis-education (is the horrendous American example not good for anything?), and above all to the idea that Education is, or should be, not much more than Vocational Training, and along with that -- let me take a breath here -- the loss of intelligent interest in, and support for, the intense study of national languages and literatures and history, all that doesn't bother you?

Why not? Because you are probably in some field of mere money-making, something financial, and for so many, who don't know what once was, that's all that counts. That's the real business of living. And when I deplore the belief-system of Islam and its likely effects, you attempt to pretend that this has something to do with my supposed distaste for the "brown skins" who will prevail, or that Europe itself will darken. What nonsense. Have I expressed any objection to non-Muslim immigration into Europe? Do I deplore the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Hindus, the non-Arab even if Arabic-speaking Christians (not the islamochristians, but the Christians) from the Middle East, or the Tibetans, or for that matter Christian Ethiopians or South Africans? You might want to ask any among those brown-skinned or other non-white peoples now in Western Europe, whether Hindus from India, or Indonesia, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or Vietnamese Christians or Buddhists, or Christians from Nigeria or the Sudan or for that matter Iraq or Lebanon, to keep it all well away from that absurd attempt to pretend that those who find the spread of Islam a menace, an instrument of Jihad (and one need not be consciously engaged in any program to swell the numbers, and hence the perceived power, of Muslims -- and while there are many examples of demographic conquest by Muslims (or rather, after the initial violent conquest, the population was in most places steadily islamized, with the results we see today in North Africa and the Middle East, but the sheer number of Hindus made the same result impossible in India) and see if they have anything of interest to tell you about their own experience of Islam.

Meanwhile, in those "dynamic" and "take-charge" occupations, the kind of jobs where words such as "volatility" and "risk" and "bond convexity" and "Black-Scholes" offer the only poetry available, and young Europeans shift from one EU possibility to another and not even the Latin tag (ubi bene, ibi patria) needs to be invoked because the very idea of a "patria" is being emptied of value, and of course the definition of "bene" is also taking on a distinctly pound-note note. So they wander, not to study other languages and then come home enriched, but to find the best job, the dynamic job, the job at the financial services firm, or in advertising (engaged no doubt in "localization"), and they are out late, with the other "Europeans" who are citizens of an entirely uninteresting bureaucratic monster called the E.U.

And what are you? The name suggests a Frenchman, possibly with something Russian in the background of the Matzneff school, come to seek his fortune in dynamic, thrusting, market-oriented England, and just delighted with the Brave New Europe that is a-borning? Perhaps you think things in Europe with Muslims will be tickety-boo, because you want to believe that you can make calculations about the future based on some school chums, or nice, soft-spoken Muslim colleagues at work. I suggest you are making the same mistake as the American government did when it based its hopes and dreams for Iraq on a handful of very nice, westernized, secularized well-off Shi'a in exile, instead of on the immutable beliefs of the primitive masses (and those masses may live in Europe, but unless they jettison Islam, they will remain submissive to the texts of Islam, or even if they appear to ignore them, can easily be brought back to them, so that one never quite knows who has actually given up Islam in all but name, and who is merely feigning, or who has done so but can again revert, or his son can, or his grandson. Do you wish to bet the future of science, art, literature, individual rights, and free thought in Europe, not to mention the continued existence of non-Muslims in relative physical security, on the inexorable europeanisation of Muslims or of some non-existent postulated "European Islam" (unless there comes into existence a "European Qur'an or European Hadith or European version of Muhammad, that European Islam is hard to envision).

There are plenty of people just like you in our own, American, thrusting, dynamic, organizational-management world here. You'll all inherit the earth, and the earth will look a lot like Harvard Business School, or an investment bank. And it will be without form, and void.

Your World and Welcome To It. Na te. Take it. Enjoy.

I had meant to post about this but got distracted in pointless arguments with keyboard warriors, not to mention "real life".

I have posted many times on this site about the dumbing down of our A-levels, and our universities to match, and also about the destruction of the grammar schools, which I believe is a principal cause of this dumbing down.

When we had the grammar schools - and I am talking about someone I know - a girl from a slum, born to Muslim parents bent on shoving her into an arranged marriage could study Latin, Greek and Ancient History, and go on to read Greats at Oxford. Greats (Literae Humaniores) at Oxford are still great - no dumbing down yet - but the privilege of reading Greats at Oxford will be confined to Old Etonians. Is this what we want?

Friends of Classics, has a piece on this. Boris Johnson, for all his recent pottiness, is dead against it.

According to OCR's latest figures ancient history A-level was sat by 530 students in 2006 while 2,350 sat classical civilisation. Some 183 sat classical Greek while 927 students took Latin. But the recommendations, which follow earlier public consultation, alarmed the shadow higher education minister, Boris Johnson, who is taking over the presidency of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers in May. He said: "The birth of Athenian democracy, the transition of Rome from republic to empire: these were critical events in the shaping of our civilisation. "How can we understand ourselves if we cut ourselves off from our past? You can't just subsume the study of ancient history into the study of classical civilisation.

"You might as well say that you can learn English history through the study of English language and literature."

He claimed only by studying ancient history can students become "properly familiar" with the texts of Greek and Roman historians, and with the use of historical sources. Mr Johnson said if ancient history disappeared as an A-level it would be "another battle in the general dumbing-down of Britain." He said: "Once again, a tough, rewarding, crunchy subject is poised to give way to the softer option."

The decision, he said, was perverse because the number of students taking the subject had risen by 300% since 2000. He said: "Look at the immense interest in the Persian wars, and the success of the new film about Leonidas and the Spartans. "It is demented that the authorities should now be cutting off the supply, just when the demand is rising. The Spartans were fighting to save their civilisation - and so are we."

Boris is right. British citizens and residents can sign a petition against this on the Prime Minister's website here. They do work occasionally.

I agree, Hugh, with much of what you say here, although you shade into hyperbole. However, I strongly take issue with your disparaging comments about "mere money-making". Apart from the fact that it is a personal attack on the poster you address, whom you do not know, disparaging money-making is silly.

One of the three trustees of Friends of Classics is a senior manager with accountants KPMG. Accountants and merchant banks, or investment banks, as Americans generally call them, fund the arts and music, and support very praiseworthy endeavours such as Friends of Classics. Many Friends of Classics are merchant bankers - and it needs them.  And if you use the phrase "mere money-making" to the Master or Bursar of an Oxford or Cambridge college, you will get a very dusty answer. The fact that somebody cares about making money - and somebody has to - doesn't mean that money is all he cares about.

An entrepreneur is a Good Thing. And let's think about those countries that restrict entrepreneurial activity. Muslim countries. Communist countries. Do they, in disparaging business, value culture and civilisation? Hardly.

Fine words have their place, but those parsnips must be buttered. I prefer fine parsnips and buttered words, but that's just me.

From typicallyspanish (with thanks to Alan):

The Canary Islands newspaper, Canarias 7, reported on Thursday that the Ministries for Defence and Industry are collaborating on a plan to launch two satellites into space, in a national programme for observation of the Earth.

They will observe all Spanish territory and the northern part of Africa.

The observation system will have both civil and military use, and will serve mainly to help in controlling Spanish frontiers against illegal immigration, and provide intelligence services with surveillance information on terrorist activity.

Sources at the Defence Ministry were quoted as saying that it will allow immigrant boats en route for Spanish shores to be located, and will also be key in detecting any risk from environmental catastrophes and forest fire. It will be additionally used in planning military operations and manoeuvres.

The two satellites – one optical, and the second a radar system – will be connected to a control centre in the Maspalomas Space Centre on Gran Canaria, sending back information from a distance between 500 and 700 kilometres above the Earth.

What a pleasure!  Go to Steve Decatur's assiduously constructed site Pageflakes, actually two sites in one:  Anti-jihad, comprising links to blogs and their most recent posts, and Anti-jihad2, arranged according to topic, linked via tab on upper left tool bar. 

From the BBC:

Royal Navy personnel seized by Iran were blindfolded, bound and held in isolation during their 13 days in captivity, the crew have said.

They were also subject to random interrogation and rough handling, and faced constant psychological pressure.

In a joint statement the crew also stressed that they were inside Iraqi waters at the time of the capture.

Royal Marine Captain Chris Air said it became apparent that opposing their captors was "not an option."

"If we had, some of us would not be here today, of that I am completely sure," he said.

"We realised that had we resisted there would have been a major fight, one we could not have won and with consequences major strategic impacts.

"We made a conscious decision not to engage the Iranians and do as they asked," he said.

The crew said they spent nights in stone cells, sleeping on piles of blankets and were kept in isolation until their last few nights.

They were also lined up against a wall while weapons were cocked, making them "fear the worst".

Earlier, the Royal Navy's head defended the actions of the personnel, after criticism that they gave up too easily.

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band said the crew "reacted extremely well in very difficult circumstances".

He said British boarding operations being carried out in the Gulf had been "absolutely proper", but there would be a "complete review".

"I think they acted with considerable dignity and a lot of courage.

They appear to have played it by the rules, they don't appear to have put themselves into danger, others into danger, they don't appear to have given anything away".

Of course they are all lying, because the Iranians wouldn't lie, would they? And of course all the keyboard warriors who have posted here wouldn't have flinched, would they?

Update: British Army Blog (ARRSE) comment on Ralph Mad-as-a-box-of-frogs Peters:

OK, so you are armed with SA80s and 9mm pistols, and you get surrounded by patrol boats mounting 12mm Dushkys, 30mm cannon and God knows what else, and you are in a RIB that is made of rubber and GRP.. yep, I guess he's right, they could have given a better account of themselves.
Is this [expletive deleted, rhymes with stunt] of the George Armstrong Custer school of odds-weighing?

Three cheers — no, three million cheers — for Zuhdi Jasser, a practicing doctor and retired Navy Lieutenant Commander, who is trying to catalyze fellow moderate Muslims into standing up against the jihadists and their cheerleaders.  He has written this important article at FamilySecurityMatters.org denouncing CAIR and the lawsuit it is pushing on behalf of the infamous Flying Imams against US Airways and the "John Doe" passengers who had the temerity to be frightened and speak out.

Read it all.  Here is one excerpt of the words we've been longing to hear from Muslim moderates:

Make no mistake.  This lawsuit forces our courts and our community to firmly clarify our rules of engagement and the tools we can and cannot use to stay safe and maintain our freedoms. If this case is not thrown out early by the courts it stands to chill civilian reporting of suspicious behavior which will further embolden those who target our American citizenry—Muslim and non-Muslim. Frankly, it will also create a deeper wedge and greater fear whether based on reality or ignorance between the Muslim and non-Muslim community. Contrary to the CAIR spin machine and their sympathizers, this case is about much more than a few Muslim imams from Phoenix who felt their rights (to fly) were infringed by U.S. Airways and some passengers (John Does) who passed notes to the crew.  It is about much more than such a simplistic view of the known facts.

As a nation, our collective response to this will be a defining moment in the articulation of our values, while also defining our priorities in defense of civilian America against the threat of militant Islamism and all those enemies who target us.

We are seeing at play in this case elements that illustrate the pathology of political Islam and how it blindly drives many Muslims who believe in it, whether or not their means are wise or their ends are understood. The longer we avoid the deeper discussion of the machinations of political Islam (Islamism) in America, the longer we allow it to take cover and thrive under the guise of political correctness within our pluralistic democracy. The longer we continue to disengage from the real aims and overriding denial of Islamist organizations that wage public battle through their toxic mixture of religion and politics, the further we fall behind in this war of ideas. Without engagement, Islamism, Salafism, and radicalism will continue to flourish within the very construct of our Constitutional government and protection of our Bill of Rights - including its establishment clause – and all the while Islamists strive to create a society which honors neither.

Since the Bush Administration thinks American success in Iraq is dependant on Muslim unity there, perhaps Qaddafi should visit the White House and explain his new Muslim plan.

On March 31, 2007, Libyan leader Mu'ammar Qaddafi called, in a speech in Niger to Tuareg tribal leaders , for the establishment of a second Shi'ite Fatimid state in North Africa, after the model of the 10th-13th century empire that ruled North Africa, Egypt, and parts of the Fertile Crescent. In his speech, Qaddafi denounced the division of Muslims into Sunni and Shi'ite as a colonialist plot, and rebuked the Arab League members for "hating Iran."  MEMRI (hat tip: JW)

"What I fear is that a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would lead the Arab/Muslim world to conclude that the U.S. is 1) weak 2) a "push-over" which only requires a bit more "rough treatment" to gain even further concessions..."-- from a reader

"Precipitous withdrawal"?

After remaining in Iraq for more than four years, only one of which made sense, while the last three years have been dogpaddling, while shots and bombs are aimed at our hapless troops sent on a fool's errand, to keep Iraq "unified" and to "reconstruct" it (better: to "construct" it) and to do so with those troops kept as unaware of the menace of Islam, and the real nature of most (not all, but almost all) of those "ordinary moms and dads" they are being sent, and sent, and sent again to bring "freedom" to, with the "Iraqis" themselves even at this point, in a nation of 27 million, apparently unable to fight for that "democracy" or "freedom" themselves.

And you repeat, again, the business of a withdrawal being taken to demonstrate that America is "weak" and a "pushover." This is the same old elementary-school rhetoric of the Administration and its most dimwitted loyalists, with their charge of "cut-and-run." The Iraq war now is an obstacle too, and not part of, a coherent strategy or campaign to check all of the instruments of Jihad. Instead of a few thousand American troops seizing Darfur and the southern Sudan, keeping control until a referendum on independence can be held, instead of the Administration announcing that after decades of dancing to the Saudi tune (it is the Saudi lobby that has really counted in Washington, a lobby whose Western hirelings have been bought and paid for, and who constitute a rogue's gallery of the powerful, from both parties), the game was over, and a large tax on gasoline, a European-size tax, would be introduced, over a short time, and other measures --  to diminish the "wealth weapon of the Jihad" (use that phrase) and at the same time to "head off world-wide environmental disaster" (words to that effect) -- will also be taken. These include that NATO meeting to discuss "internal security threats" to its members -- a meeting to which I'm afraid Turkey may not be invited, or perhaps a meeting of Western heads of defense and security services outside of NATO would be better. It includes immigration tightening so that Muslims here, and in the rest of the West, is eliminated for perfectly rational security reasons. And so on.

In your view, we have to stay stuck to Tarbaby Iraq lest we be seen as "weak." Those who make this kind of argument are, in fact, demonstrating weakness themselves: a weakness of imagination, a weakness of wit, a weakness of will in coming to grips with the much larger problem of the Jihad, and its other instruments -- the wealth weapon, campaigns of Daw'a, and especially demographic conquest -- that the squandering of resources in Iraq prevents us from addressing.

And those who think the United States must stay in Iraq lest it be perceived as "weak" have overlooked the terrific economic cost of this war, and how much such people as Bin Laden have focussed on doing precisely such economic damage -- he mentions it in tape after tape after tape -- in order to bring the Great Satan down. Why was the World Trade Center chosen as the target to destroy? It was regarded as the most important center, and symbol, of American economic power. Again and again the economic warfare being waged, and discussed openly, has been overlooked by those breathless and clueless reports in the media about Al Qaeda.

Finally, the Bush Administration's loyalists who have kept repeating that we "can't leave" because it would necessarily be a "catastrophe" (without ever explaining how or why that "catastrophe" would be ours, and not that of the Camp of Islam) focus on the supposed "weakness" that American withdrawal would cause because this is the kind of thing which apparently causes a vast number of unthinking loyalists to forget about what is actually happening, to ignore the larger menace of Jihad world-wide, and to assume that "Bush must know what he's doing" and besides, we "can't appear weak."

I'll repeat it again and again: right now we appear to be fools, and weak. We are too weak to cunningly and cleverly and ruthlessly exploit the pre-existing weaknesses of the enemy. We are too weak and too lazy to analyze the instruments of Jihad. We are too weak, and too fearful, of doing anything truly damaging, and our effort has been couched as helping, as bringing "freedom" to those "ordinary moms and dads." I don't give a damn about those "ordinary Muslim moms and dads" -- I want to preserve the Western world, and diminish the power of Muslim "moms and dads" everywhere to change our legal and political institutions, or to overwhelm, through calculated overbreeding that depends on the generous payments and naive immigration policies and now fear exhibited by, Western governments and their hard-pressed taxpayers.

Who demonstrates "weakness"? The deer-in-headlights Bush, with his Iftar dinners and his Karen-Hughesish laughable campaign to "win hearts and minds" of Muslims, and his confusion about Pakistan, and his paralysis over Darfur, and his complete inattention to the need to lessen Saudi revenues, and his inability to articulate what the "mission" is in Iraq or why even the vague "victory" he says must be accomplished makes any sense, when the goals he has set out, as far as he has been able to convey them make no sense, would if achieved (and if he understood the views and behavior of both Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs he would long ago have understood why a spirit of compromise of the kind necessary will never be exhibited by either side).

Who's "weak"? People who are fed up and at long last horrified with the squandering, for goals both unattainable and wrong, of men, money (more than all of the wars America has ever fought, save World War II, put together), and matériel? Or Bush, and his credulous, thoughtless loyalists?

I have been reading the recorded remarks of some of the British sailors and marines. The more I read, the worse it looks—for Britain, I mean, now plainly in its last days as a nation.

"Some of the Iranian sailors were becoming deliberately aggressive and unstable."

Imagine—military personnel being aggressive! None of that in H.M. armed forces!

"The questions were aggressive and the handling rough, but it was no worse than that."

I guess that is what they were so effusively thanking Ahmadinejad for.

"We all, at one time or another, made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of non-operational information."

Some of us further decided to make appearances on Iranian TV, insulting our country and praising the Tehran dictatorship.

"She [the female sailor] is coming to terms with what has happened to her - and not only Faye and her family, but all of us are finding the press focus very uncomfortable, difficult - and we specifically request you give all of us the space and privacy we need, when we return to our homes."

The U.K. armed forces, you see, are not a military establishment at all—more like a 12-step program for self-discovery.

"The pressures that we were subjected to were quite diverse in the way it [sic] was carried out. It was mainly psychological and emotional."

They yelled at us and lied to us. Can you blame us for groveling to them?

"On arrival at London Heathrow, we were given the news that four UK servicemen and a civilian interpreter had been killed in Iraq. We would like to pass on our thoughts and condolences to the families of those who died serving their country."

Oh, I am sure those families appreciate your concern—given that their loved ones were killed by an IED very likely assembled in Iran and shipped across the border by Iranian soldiers, while you were yukking it up with Li'l Sqinty and his pals.

I cannot imagine how patriotic Englishmen feel about this. (Though you can get some idea from the comments posted to the web sites of UK newspapers like the Telegraph.) I am no longer a British citizen, having taken up US citizenship 5 years ago. Even so, I am burning with shame at this disgrace to British honor. And from the Royal Navy—the Senior Service—of all places!

I shall watch with interest what happens to Britain over the next few years. I shan't care, though. However bad it is, they have it coming. Goodbye, Britain.

"Once they [the Sunnis, the Shi'a] sort out their own power struggles, they'll be coming back at us."-- from a reader

And so?
"Once they sort out their own power struggles" could be a very long time. There is nowhere else, in the entire Dar al-Islam, where the forces of the Shi'a are as capable of withstanding Sunni domination and instead imposing Shi'a domination, as in Iraq, or in the area of Iraq-Iran, today. For Sunnis that is a Bad Thing. For Infidels that is a Good Thing. Even though Shi'a make up 10-15% of the world's Muslim population, they are concentrated right there in Iran and Iraq, and there is no need for the Shi'a to give up power in Iraq because the oil fields that now produce (save for the fields near Kirkuk and Mosul which the Kurds consider theirs, and which they will fight the Sunni Arabs to keep, or take with them into an independent Kurdistan if they are given enough arms) are under the lands they possess. The Sunni Arabs have no source of money, unless they can get it from a Shi'a-dominated regime whose members will not forget or forgive (why should they?) the treatment that they endured from the Sunnis, both under the disguised Sunni despotism of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athism, or during the entire history of modern Iraq, which, as one Iraqi prime minister who served four times summed things up: "in Iraq there is a Sunni party and a Shi'a party."

Why won't the Sunnis give in? Even though in population they are outnumbered 3 to 1, they are much more aggressive and violent, inured to the ways of war, than the Shi'a. And they assume -- quite incorrectly -- that they will win if the Americans withdraw. They want the Americans to withdraw, so that they can really go to town on the Shi'a. But they are wrong. The jig is up: it is the Shi'a who will go to town on them, beginning with clearing Baghdad of its Sunnis. That is intolerable for Sunni Arabs.

Remember: to the Bush Administrating, and to so many others who simply do not know, or have not assimilated enough to think the way the Arab Muslims think, Iraq is just another country. O no it isn't. It is fabled Iraq, the center of the Arab world for 500 years, the years of supposed glory, roughly from 750 to 1250, until the Mongols under Hulego arrived. Baghdad is where the court of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid cultivated the arts and sciences (again, much misunderstood when claimed as a product of "Islamic civilization rather than of Arabic-speaking individuals, some of them Christians and Jews, others at most a generation or two away from being Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, so mentally still formed by a non-Islamic milieu). It cannot be allowed to be lost to Sunni Islam, put under the rule of practically-Infidel or even worse-than-normal-Infidel "Rafidite dogs."

Islam causes its adherents to live in the past (see Ibn Warraq's essay comparing Islam and Fascism). The great past, the glorious past, the once and future past. They live in that past, and it means much more to them than Infidels, especially of the mentally limited, unimaginative sort who form our ruling and consulting and advising classes in Washington, could possibly comprehend.

It doesn't matter that that so-called Glorious Islamic Civilization, centered on Baghdad and the Land of the Two Rivers, will never come again. It does not matter that it is Islam itself, with its prohibitions on almost every form of artistic expression save calligraphy and architecture, mostly Qur'anic in the first case, mostly Islam-related in mosque-and-madrasa complexes, in the second, or its hatred of free and skeptical inquiry, and habit of mental submission, which throttle real science (but not such technical stepdaughters as engineering or even computer programming).

No, what matters is that the Sunnis will never acquiesce in their loss of control of Baghdad and of Iraq. And the Shi'a will never give it back.

And that is a Wonderful Thing.

"Once they sort out their own power struggles..."

How long do you think those Sunni-Shi'a "power struggles" will last?

I think they will last a very long time. And those "power struggles" will offer the West time to observe, as it can now observe the chaos elsewhere, and to draw conclusions from Muslim behavior, and the Demonstration Project of that behavior in Iraq. And it will buy time for the Western world, and especially the American public, to educate itself, and in so doing, to come to its civilizational senses.

I think that in the area of Iraq, they will go on forever.

A point frequently made in reader emails:

Given the spinelessness of the British government and the don't-make-trouble rules of engagement (obvious from the behavior of the RN ship commander), why should ordinary sailors and marines—enlisted men and junior officers—risk their lives?

[Me] If you don't want to risk your life, don't join the armed services.

Service in H.M. armed forces has always been a matter of dealing with (1) indifferent and clueless politicians, (2) incompetent superiors, and (3) the enemy, when he shows up. An enemy commander in WW1 described the Tommies as "lions led by donkeys." Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone?

What's a soldier to do under these circumstances? What British soldiers always did, until recently: be a lion.

The disgraceful displays we have seen this past few days bring to mind not so much lions led by donkeys, as asses led by asses, under the political direction of weasels.

It was plain as could be from the TV clips we have seen—"plain as eggs"—that these servicemen did not know how to behave. Didn't anyone tell them?

Qaddafi's speech is wonderful, and deserves close attention, even if Qaddafi is -- Qaddafi. Two of three fissures of Islam are laid bare in the speech: the sectarian (Sunni-Shi'a, for the adherents of Ibadiyya Islam outside of Omana and a few scattered pockets in North Africa, hardly matter), and the ethnic (Arab vs. non-Arab, which in Iraq means Kurds but in North Africa means Berbers).

Here is one quote to relish:

"Qaddafi gave a speech in which he denied the existence of a non-Arab Berber people (this also being a colonialist plot), provoking protest among Berbers and supporters of minority rights in the Middle East and North Africa."

This should be widely publicized and discussed in France, where Berbers, or some of them, have the freedom to begin to see Islam, just a bit, from a different perspective, have the freedom to read their celebrated writer Kateb Yacine (who hated the Arabs for their arabization of Berber culture), to begin to recognize that the Arabs have used Islam as a natural vehicle of their own cultural and linguistic (and political and economic) imperialism, and that they, the Berbers have been among their main non-Arab victims.

Until they protested, and protested violently, Berbers in the Kabyle were denied the right even to use their own language. The riots in such places as Tizi-Ouzou never made it into the non-French press. The Arabs of Algeria have now relented on that point, but they are surely alarmed, or some of them are, that the Berbers of the Kabyle are also converting, in some numbers, to Christianity, and that in France, it is Berbers who form the membership of "maghrebins laiques" and Berbers who have dared to openly apostasize or criticize Islam. This is to be encouraged, so that Berbers, by leaving Islam altogether (and how many of those who call themselves "Arabs" in North Africa, and persecute the Berbers, are in fact of Berber origins themselves? There are clear markers for this -- see the paper by G. Semana and others studying the DNA of Berbers and Arabs in Tunisia-- and that too may be useful).

Fans of the travel writer Jan Morris will recall her 1960s encounter with an old woman in Czechoslovakia. The woman was from a good family and as a child had frequented the Central European spas with her parents—places also frequented by the British upper classes. At the time Jan Morris met her, she had been reduced, by the Czech communist regime, to working as a janitor in some apartment building. Morris got talking to her about the famous & notable people she remembered from her childhood high-society days. One of them was the great British admiral Jackie Fisher. What did she remember about Fisher? "His face! Oh, the admiral's face!"

Here is the face, and here are the words, of Fisher's current successor, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band.

Alan Colmes needs to have a talk with his agent. I was on his radio show at 11 pm last night talking about the Iranian hostage thing for the best part of an hour, and I have got precisely two e-mails on it. A radio appearance usually inspires a dozen or so. Get some listeners, Alan.

One correspondent, though sympathetic to my point of view, says I sounded "heated and incoherent." I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Late evening is not the time of day when I'm at my most coherent. Like the late great Philip Larkin, "I work all day and get half drunk at night." Given the current state of Western Civ., as revealed by the Tehran business, I think I shall start going for the other half.

And if the death of a once-proud nation—the nation of my ancestors—isn't to get heated about, what is?

Once again, brave armchair hero and keyboard warrior John Derbyshire, speaking with all his experience of serving his country and all his knowledge of military strategy, bravely attacks the behaviour of our servicemen, who were out-gunned, held in isolation and subject to mock executions.

It was plain as could be from the TV clips we have seen—"plain as eggs"—that these servicemen did not know how to behave. Didn't anyone tell them?

Yes, they did. The conduct under capture training told them to behave exactly as they did.

What's a soldier to do under these circumstances? What British soldiers always did, until recently: be a lion.

I am journalist. Hear me roar.

I shall watch with interest what happens to Britain over the next few years. I shan't care, though. However bad it is, they have it coming. Goodbye, Britain.

I notice that brave John Derbyshire is not brave enough to bravely criticise any of the many blunders, cock-ups and cowardice shown by the military of his new homeland. He knows where his bread's buttered.

Qaddafi has always despised the Sunni Arabs of the Middle East and has his own ambitions, not nasserian or saddam-husseinian, but rather to be the Leader of Africa, if necessary starting with the Maghreb.

His entire career has been marked by a contempt for the Arabs of the Middle East -- for the daggers-and-dishdasha Al-Saud, with xanadu yachts and with the grandest of grand hotels taken over, whole floors or the whole thing, taken over for months at a time, months of non-stop gambling and drinking and call-girling, for those estivating emirs, all of which Qaddafi despises, and sees as their betrayal of “the Arabs,” and the echt arabische noble bedu whom Qaddafi, tenting tonight on the old camp ground of the Libyan desert (he eats up that stuff), likes to think that he, Muammar Qaddafi, Last of the Great Arabs, and possibly now Founder of a Fatimid Caliphate, embodies.

It’s all preposterous of course. But it is in such preposterousnesses that the Arab Muslims live. Saddam Hussein, King of the Arabs, was preposterous. Gamal Abdel Nasser, King of the Arabs, was preposterous. The brutalities that follow one upon another – the “Palestinian” terrorists bending down to lick up the blood of Wasfi el-Tal, the Iraqis who watched the spectacle, or even joined in, as the body of “strongman” Nuri es-Said was dragged, still half-clothed in women’s garments in which he had attempted to flee, through the streets of Baghdad in 1958, after the coup of Qassem, or the televised showing of Qassem and his bodyguards, when they were subsequently murdered, or the killing of King Fahd, or the murder of Sadat on the reviewing stand as he celebrated the “great victory” of what the 1973 war (a war in which only the Americans prevented Ariel Sharon from destroying the Egyptian Third Army), and all the rest of it, all the meetings of the Arab League, all the support for Saddam Hussein as long as he was only killing Shi’a and of course Kurds (why should Arabs care when Arabs kill non-Arabs?), and all the rest of the nonsense and paralysis of it all. Well, it’s enough to make even a Qaddafi furious, not morally, but rather, practically. The Arabs of the Middle East are to him a joke, and he’s not having it. He’s having the Fatimid Caliphate, and he’s going to solve the Sunni-Shi’a split by an appeal to history, to that Shi’a-led Caliphate.

It’s a fantastic suggestion. And a suggestion that will echo in the Cairo Press, in Egypt where Mubarak and others in his family-and-friends plan have been warning for many months about the sinister and meretricious Shi’a, who are in their eyes are close to Infidels – why, in Mubarak’s remarks one hears a slightly toned-down version of Al-Zarqawi’s denunciation of the Shi’a as “Rafidite dogs.” And others in Egypt have echoed Mubarak.

Oh, this scheme or dream of Qaddafi is wonderful. It will scare the rulers of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They have been worried about, or claiming to worry about, Shi’a efforts to proselytize among the Sunni Arabs of Syria. Their fears were, earlier, exaggerated – they were trying to exaggerate the claims of a “Shi’a crescent” for their own purposes (just as Iraqi Shi’a had inveigled the Americans, for their own by-now clear purposes, to remove Saddam Hussein), The Sunni rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and elsewhere want two things.

First, they want the Americans to make sure that the Sunni Arabs in Iraq are not forced to acquiesce to the new Shi’a-dominated order, by remaining for as long as possible to pressure the Shi’a regime, and to attack and disarm the Shi’a.

And secondly, they want what they have always wanted and always will want (and are adept at reframing their request to exploit whatever worries the Americans may harbor at any one time), that is even more American pressure on Israel to surrender its legal and historic rights, and to make still further territorial and other concessions, rendering itself still more vulnerable than it already is to further Arab pressure, and to a future Arab military assault on an Israel weakened by diplomatic, economic, and demographic undermining. The farcical “Peace Plan” of the Saudis (the kind of thing only a Tom Friedman could take seriously) offers up as the “moderates” to be dealt with the Slow Jihadists of Fatah. They are presented to the American government and to the ever-compliant Europeans as being so very different (they differ only in tactics and timing as to how to achieve the same desired result) from the Fast Jihadists of Hamas. And they use the need to keep the Arab masses happy by “showing progress” in the “peace process,”

In the old days Qaddafi was content just to be one more megalamaniacal despot, a kind of desert Kim Il Sung, peddling his new form of government, the “Jamhariya,” as set out in his Third Way in that Little Green Book of his, which told the world How Permanent Happiness Can Be Achieved If Only Everyone Listens to the Great Leader, Muammar Qaddafi.

But from our standpoint, the latest twist on his megalomania (and he’s an intelligent megalomaniac, as far as megalomaniacs go), calling for the Maghreb to return to the days of supposed Fatimid greatness, now to be resurrected, says Qaddafi, in the Maghreb which will – and the significance of this, the full horror of this from the viewpoint of Saudis and Egyptians and Jordanians, must be understood:: resurrected under a Shi’a Caliphate.

Many were excitedly convinced in 2003 that because of the American invasion of Iraq Qaddafi had changed utterly. He gave up his attempts to acquire nuclear and other weapons, but it was forgotten, or overlooked, in all the excitement, that his projects had failed, and there was little tangible to give up, though information about A. Q. Khan may well have been of value. They not only forgot that Qaddafi was famously mercurial, but that he remains a Muslim, and a megalomaniac with more-than-steigian dreams of glory.

Thank God that his Dreams of Glory now take the form – the breathtaking even if only temporary form – of the restoration of a Shi’ite Fatimid Caliphate. The very idea is going to make the Al-Saud and Mubarak and the assorted plucky little kinglets and sheiklets of the Gulf very unhappy indeed, and more determined than ever that the Shi’a in Iraq must not prevail.

Great.

I don't suppose there's any way to kill of the "chickenhawk" argument, but it's getting very wearying.

Here's a wee quiz for those who are fond of the "chickenhawk" line of attack.

Which person—it was obviously a chickenhawk—said the following things about the British hostages in Iran?

Well, they're idiots, he [the sailor who apologized at length on Iran TV] and the other 14 are, have to be, because there's no excuse for this kind of behavior.

I can tell you that they wouldn't take me without firing a shot. I would take as many with me as I possibly could.

They weren't in captivity more than 28 microseconds before they started ... briefing, in front of a big map about where they were, and apologizing, and so on—absolutely despicable behavior, deplorable behavior.

They are going to have—and they should have—a lot to answer for when they finally get home.

They acquitted themselves horribly and dishonorably.

OK, time's up. Which pencil-neck chickenhawk, cowering from behind the shelter of his keyboard, said those things? Was it me, perhaps?

No, actually it was Col. Jack Jacobs (Medal of Honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action," three Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts), currently a military analyst for NBC, talking to Tucker Carlson the other evening. Full transcript here.

So could we please retire the "chickenhawk" argument, at least on this particular topic, at least for a little while? Fat chance.