Telegraph op-ed urges dithering, pussyfooting around with Iran

The Telegraph is using the new hostage crisis as an excuse for bashing the Balir administration, but they made a few good points yesterday:

There may be neither political will nor public support for an invasion of Iran, but we do have the power to hurt that country grievously without committing our forces to another long haul, and the threat must be made explicit: release these prisoners, or else.

Then today they turn around and run a columnist named Andrew O'Hagan, who starts out well and makes a point I did yesterday:

The relative inattention is weird. If they had been French sailors, or Spanish, we would be up in arms at the injustice and the outrageous insult offered by Teheran to diplomatic relations and world security. But because they are British, and so many of us are opposed to the war, we almost behave as if the servicemen deserve whatever they get, and that their horrible experience (to say nothing of the unspeakable anxiety of their families) is somehow their just deserts for finding themselves embroiled in an unpopular war.

And then O'Hagan switches course and urges Blair to issue extremely strong threats to Iran that he does not want him ever to back up--in a word, he wants Balir to bluff.

And he tells Blair to remember the shining example of Thatcher and the Falklands, which was a great thing, and which Blair must avoid at all costs:

Those who supported the Falklands war have always claimed that it ended the rule of a military junta in Argentina and so was worth the candle, even if the islands themselves aren't much cop, and even if the rewards of ''democracy'' are still not felt in the country as the liberators had hoped. But that war, like so many, constituted a depressing failure of diplomacy, and it is that part of the equation that Blair should heed. Galtieri was squaring for a fight back then, and Teheran is now, but the nobler mind is that which can avert disaster even as it presses forward with a logic and momentum all of its own.

Yes, it was a smashing military victory over a tin-pot despot. So what if it was a failure of diplomacy? There are worse things. Munich was a triumph of diplomacy.

It is not our business to press the cause of democracy in Iran, but simply to bring our sailors back. Without a clear focus on the latter, this debacle would be sure to result in the kind of military conflict that would suit the fundamentalists (on both sides) down to the ground. It may be too late for Blair, or his legacy, but not too late for him to realise for himself that a great statesman is not to be judged on how well he fights wars but in how diligently and brilliantly he avoids them.

Again: Neville Chamberlain=F'ing brilliant in the O'Hagan version of history. Churchill? Not so much.

And the "fundamentalists on both sides"? What a repulsive, snide little equation. You wretched man. If you really believe that and it's not just a bit of cosmopolitan Euro-fairy posturing, then put your blinkered beliefs to the test: come to America and try a little dramatic blasphemy against Jesus on the Bob Jones university campus, and then go try it against Mohammed in Q'om.

Be sure to do the American part first, or you may not be able to complete the experiment.

Among those commenting on Mr. O'Hagan's piece was one John Walker:

All you other Liberal pacifiers. Are we to always allow those brave Americans to fight the World's battles for us? They bailed us out of W.W.2 and probable Nazi domination. They intervened in Bosnia whilst Europe pussy-footed around the issue. They were directly responsible for ending the Cold War and freeing millions of Germans and other foreign nationals oppressed by Soviet rule. They even helped us, although not militarily, in the Falkland's War.
I sometimes wished that the U.S.A. would pick up their ball and go home and leave the rest of the World to fathom things out for themselves, oh, and by the way, also to cease being the World leaders when it comes to first responders to natural disasters in other countries

The comments are interesting. Look for an Ahmedinejad fanboy calling himself "another proud Iranian".