No question, Britain is afraid. One minister recently wrote a Saudi prince: “After the train bombing in London , we dutifully enacted the legislation you demanded which would make it a hate-crime for anyone in Britain to criticize Islam.” Britain has shown its fear. Arabia has seen Anglo cravenness and weakness. England is bowing to a new monarch. It seeks not victory but good will and acceptance. “We’ll be good, just leave us alone.” We won’t even fire at those taking our men — if the kidnappers are Islamic. We’ll fight Argentines — because we aren’t afraid of them, they won’t behead us in London and, most of all, we don’t feel guilty when fighting others of European, Christian ancestry.

Quote from the above piece. Talk about Dhimmitude.

Thanks Pinky – though it’s really sad that such a column has to be written. Excuse my unPC post-postmodernism, but are there no more red-blooded men left in Europe?

wordwarp on April 1, 2007 at 4:47 PM

Shame…….. you are right! Go

Allah is down on the plan for a “non-apology apology” to allow the British seamen to go free, but it’s pretty much what I expected, and I’m not sure it’s a bad thing: Ministers are preparing a compromise deal to……

Excellent post, EVERYONE, in my opinion, would gain knowledge in reading the link……… again, wordwarp, spot on!

PinkyBigglesworth on April 1, 2007 at 3:16 AM

Thanks Pinky – though it’s really sad that such a column has to be written. Excuse my unPC post-postmodernism, but are there no more red-blooded men left in Europe?

Buried within is a tidbit I haven’t seen before: apparently, Iran thought the five Quds Force members we captured at Irbil were going to be released on March 21, the start of the Iranian New Year. Why they thought we would do that is utterly beyond me, but there may be something to it. After all, the sailors were taken only 48 hours later.

I might suggest a much more conventional explanation for the timing. March 21 is also the start of the Iranian government’s fiscal year. Their budgets have been increasingly dependent on oil revenue. Other sectors of their economy are in decline. World oil prices were below the price estimated when the budget was created which would cause an even greater budget shortfall. Reserve funds have been almost completely depleted. This was done to get oil prices up on world markets.

Iran realizes there is no down side for them in this. They can hold those hostages forever and the Brits aren’t going to do anything about it. When they need to boost oil prices a little, they trot out a new hostage video or announce some news development in their nuclear program. This is basically all theater designed to modulate the prices on oil markets to keep the Iranian government solvent.

They can push as close to the line as possible and can continue to do so forever because Britain doesn’t have the will to do anything about it. I would not be surprised if they take additional hostages from other countries too or use some of the hostages for political gain such as by turning over two or three to, say, Pelosi in Syria. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see Iran hand over the female hostage to Pelosi to stir the political pot in the US.

They know that nobody is ever going to do anything to them for this. The only effective counter to this would be for global news organizations to just stop reporting on it but they Iranians know that is never going to happen. But if the media were to stop enabling the Iranians by allowing themselves to be used as a tool of the Iranians, there would be no utility for holding the hostages and they would be released.

What would Thatcher do?

Haven’t read it yet but I wanted to get the link up before Drudge does.

Allah, you don’t need to compete with Drudge. He delivers the mail, you add interest and perspective. Each has its place, but I would suggest that the latter has greater value over time.

On the same week that 15 Europeons are held hostage by what are the enablers of Jihadists, they make rules that way you can’t use the word Jihadist…

Anyone who thought that the Brits were capable of doing anything more than trying to talk their way out of this situation doesn’t understand that “talk” is the only card they have to play:

- They don’t have the military force capable of undertaking meaningful action far from their own territory (at least not without America taking the lead); and

- They lack the popular and political fortitude to take independent military action, even if the capability existed.

This is the perfect encapsulation of “The European Way” when it comes to dealing with aggressive regimes: eschew military strength as the province of the “cowboy” Americans, and try instead to jawbone the aggressors into submission – but in the end the only ones submitting are the Europeans themselves.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review summmed up the Euro Way best by making the following comparison: If you have very little cash but lots of food stamps, it comes as no surprise that you want to buy more and more things with food stamps. Just like if you have very little military capability but a surplus of diplomatic hot air, you want to resolve more and more problems by “talk” than by action.

Q.E.D.

The Iran Iraq border in the region is set, and if the British concede that their position was in Iranian waters when it wasn’t, that puts the Iraqis at a disadvantage going forward as the waterway is their only terminus on the Persian Gulf. That too ….

“Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi is said to have told the country’s Supreme National Security Council on Friday that the situation was “getting out of control” and urged its members to consider the immediate release of the prisoners to defuse tension in the Gulf…”

To the contrair: they are in control.

I can understand completley the desire to want to just go in guns blazing and everything else be damned. There’s a lot of plotting going on and if something like that happened, sort of a major knee jerk, it could come out a whole lot worse. Remember, Saudi Arabia is the country that hates the Jooooooos the most, funds many a terrorist org and is home to the meanest madrassa schools in the area.

Its more than just Iran. Patience, for a time, is important prior to the final solution.

[Latest News on Top] British ministers are preparing a compromise deal to allow Iran to save face and release the captives by promising that the Royal Navy will never knowingly enter Iranian waters, reports the Telegraph. Allahpundit calls it a……

understanding of the meaning of this most current “hostage crisis” here:

The Art of War, or How Europe Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Submission

Sigh. And so it begins…

wordwarp on April 1, 2007 at 3:07 AM

Excellent post, EVERYONE, in my opinion, would gain knowledge in reading the link……… again, wordwarp, spot on!

The Art of War, or How Europe Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Submission

Sigh. And so it begins…

Thanks Limerick, you do the same……… see you in print!

Say “Hi” to “Fred and the Mrs.”!

Damn! I broke my promise to Allah…I just realized that it is April 1 and I said I would avoid him today……Here come the Fred! headlines!(It is self preservation..I’m sure they will knock some of the colesteral loose.

Enjoy your evening Pinky.

Limerick on April 1, 2007 at 2:13 AM

By the way, thanks for the feed back……. mabye that explains why I haven’t published……. :O)

Limerick on April 1, 2007 at 2:13 AM

Maybe it was a long day with a sick little 4 1/2, but in re-reading everything going on, you know we are not getting the full picture, especially INSIDE Iran,…….

Who knows, would we ever hear of the true dissent going on, or the fear that Iranians have of the consequences, or the Love they have for their children……….?

I was trying to put it into a “Hunt for the Red October” senario…… given the amount of defections already.

Our American “Free” Press won’t give us the facts, President Bush is still in power…….

“….. it has been week now, since the British soldiers and Marines were “taken” off the waters in the Gulf. No need to speculate, our Government, the Iranian Government planned this, they had to.

No one knows the truth anymore, from the Iranian News, the European News, even the American News, unless you can pay for cable, it’s all the same.

3:15 AM, on the dot….. a knock on the door…… my wife, my children are all looking at me with scarred, watery eyes, I try to be strong, but this is the moment of truth…..

I unlock the door, slowly turn the handle, …….. an eternity passes while the old, rusty hinges give way, and there, in the dark hallway,…….. my brother’s son, in uniform, gun in hand, his patrol………………… and their families.

We are going! Thousands of us, in different directions, a new definition of “MidNight Run”, all heading for the same place……………. “…just get the fu#k out of here!”blockquote>

‘I’ll make you shorter by the head’ -Queen Elizabeth I

Just cause the commies have the media and the government doesn’t mean these guys don’t want a tussle….they gave us a pretty good run for our money in a couple of wars. These people are our allies……most of em anyway. Galloway isn’t England anymore then E-mu is America.