Lots of revulsion out there for the behavior of the British sailors/marines that seemed to have willingly served as propoganda tools for the fanatical Iranian regime. Ralph Peters, from the New York Post:
IT WAS a fitting image of the 14 wimps and a sob sister arriving back in the United Kingdom yesterday: skulking away with pink goody bags in hand.
The color was no accident - although yellow would've been more appropriate.
But why on earth is Britain, the land of the legendary stiff upper lip, celebrating cowards who clambered over one another to shame their country?
In a sharp signal of the difference between our military and the politically beleaguered Brits, our chief of naval operations gave an interview to CNN (which he knows the Iranians watch), making it clear that if Tehran tried such a stunt with our sailors and Marines, we'd feed their thugs to the sharks.
The admiral also stressed that if captured, our troops are still taught to give name, rank, service number - and very little else. [ See related link here ]
Those blubbering Brits were only playing dress-up in the military uniforms...They hadn't been through the Bataan Death March. They didn't suffer four years in Changi Prison after the fall of Singapore. They didn't spend a five-year lifetime in the Hanoi Hilton. And we have yet to see evidence of torture.
But they started criticizing their own country within days.
And from the same paper’s editorial page:
If there has ever in history been a faster, more humiliating submission to Stockholm Syndrome, we're unaware of it.
Of course, the only story that the terrorist homepage will print is one defending the actions of the British military:
Britain's top naval officer on Friday defended the conduct of 15 sailors and marines seized by Iranian forces after boarding and inspecting a merchant vessel in the Persian Gulf.
He told the British Broadcasting Corp. he believed the crew behaved with "considerable dignity and a lot of courage" during their 13 days in Iranian captivity.
He also said the so-called confessions made by some of them and broadcast on Iranian state television appeared to have been made under "a certain amount of psychological pressure."
"I would not agree at all that it was not our finest hour. I think our people have reacted extremely well in some very difficult circumstances," he said.
This is Orwellian doublespeak at its finest....“considerable dignity”? Good sir, I refer you to the one-liner above from the NY Post…and incidentally, if making treasonous statements is “dignified”, then doesn’t that make a complete surrender “heroic”? If this is the state of the armed services of the West, we’d better start fitting our womenfolk for the hajib and veil….
Charles Krauthammer points out how this little debacle should destroy any illusions regarding the power of multinational institutions:
Iran has pulled off a tidy little success ... All with total impunity. Further, it exposed the impotence of all those transnational institutions -- most prominently the European Union and the United Nations -- that pretend to maintain international order.
You would think maintaining international order means, at least, challenging acts of piracy. No challenge here. Instead, a quiet capitulation.
Europeans talk all the time about their preference for "soft power" over the brute military force those Neanderthal Americans resort to all the time. What was the soft power available here? Iran's shaky economy is highly dependent on European credits, trade and technology. Britain asked the European Union to threaten to freeze exports, $18 billion a year of commerce. Iran would have lost its No. 1 trading partner. The European Union refused.
The capture and release of the British hostages illustrate once again the fatuousness of the "international community" and its great institutions. You want your people back? Go to the European Union and get stiffed. Go to the Security Council and get a statement that refuses even to "deplore" this act of piracy. (You settle for a humiliating expression of "grave concern.") Then turn to the despised Americans. They'll deal some cards and bail you out.
You know, maybe we should reconsider our criticism of the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hostages – if no one in the West, including the U.N., EU, and their own government, was willing to stand up to Iran, why should they? Why should these captured soldiers stand tall, when their leadership is on its knees?
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