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Let me take on the persona of House for a moment. There’s worthless and then less than worthless. Coming up with the wrong solution goes in the less than worthless category.

That also ignores the fact that we did find the right solution. Had we followed the “superior” British approach, al Sadr would be in charge, and Iraq would be an Iranian proxy state.

Oh, and there would be a bit of religious cleansing going on, too. Think the Christians would be able to celebrate Christmas in an open fashion?

The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is more an outcome of their collapse rather then its cause. Bin Laden and other Muslim radicals believe that they brought down the USSR but that is merely a matter of Islamic self-centeredness. Had they won in Afghanistan they still would have lost the Cold War. In fact, the anti-Soviet forces were losing until the late 1980s. Another AQ self-myth is that they were agents of victory. They weren’t, the Northern Alliance won it.

The Brits have derided US military prowess since Bunker Hill. After Kasserine Pass Montgomery called US forces “our Italians.” He never seemed to have noticed that after Kasserine US forces out performed British troops from Tunis to Bavaria. The British military still treats the colonials (that includes us) with contempt. While it is true that the individual British soldier is well trained and tenacious fighter, in aggregate the British army generally underperforms other peer forces.

1. Conservatives have ceased to be “for” something and are just “against” the liberals and socialists. Psychologically that is a hard stance to maintain; it is difficult to be perpetually enthusiastic about opposing something.

2. Conservatives in Britain lack strong leadership, in part because they are overwhelmed because socialists and libeals are pressing in on many fronts and have been for several decades.

3. Tony Blair’s government was an arrogant and inept clique surrounding an unwise, inexperienced, controlling, and slightly narcisstic leader.

4. More people supported the war than opposed it but Mr Blair and his colleagues made a complete mess of trying to justify a war that very few understood and thereby spread doubt even amongst supporters. The importance of the conflict has never been well explained.

5. The traditional champions and focus points of conservative values have crumbled almost to the point of irrelevency. The conservative political party lost power and two subsequent elections not because the socialists are widely loved but because it is (justifiably) perceived to be out of touch, cliquey, and fragmented with no strong values or coherence. Meanwhile the upper echelons of the church of England are perceived to be clueless wimps with all of the presence of fallen leaves at the bottom of an autumn puddle and with nothing worthwhile to say. No new leader has yet arisen around whom followers can rally.

6. A careless democracy tends to give power and influence to those who are least well equipped to handle it. The vote of the emotionally motivated ignorant person becomes worth exactly as much as that of the rational and informed person. Unfortunately there are far more of the former than of the latter.

The result of these things is that Mr Blair never really had the support of the nation in the Iraq conflict and was therefore politically restrained.

aengus on December 23, 2008 at 2:45 AM

Having the Soviet Union just collapse under its own weight, and disapear in the flash of an eye, after all those years of immediate threats of near annihilation, was just a shock too strong for the West to absorb.

George Bush Sr.’s idiotic empowering of the UN for The First Gulf War, and building that moronic “coalition” of non-participants, enemies, and nincompoops, was the first great step down a very dangerous, and ill-advised, path on the policy front. Empowering a peerless, competitionless entity is about the dumbest thing one can do.

On the social side, Westerners just made pretend that the Cold War had never happened and started thinking that the peace in the world had just been a natural event all along, and was to continue on, naturally, forever. And if there were another enemy to appear, we didn’t have to do anything but wait for them to collapse. All clean. They forget the work and the threat that was the Cold War – and, incidentally, that ultimate threat never went away, as we still have the “football”, but now we have ruled threatening like that to be illegal, so we generally just pretend that our strategic nuclear arsenal doesn’t exist, and if it did(!), then it isn’t a really serious thing … just for show. Not a smart sort of strategizing, but that’s what shocks can do to you.

This effect was even more pronounced with the Europeans, since they had been living in an artificial security/wealth bubble (which they took sport in ignoring) that had been built, paid for, and maintained by the US.

That’s how I see it, in broad strokes.

We spent greater than 50 years fighting the Cold War. Some allege we even “won” it. I’m not so sure. Western Europe is far to the left of Russia and its former Warsaw Pact puppets and now America, under Obama is portside (by miles) of Communist China and North Korea.

It’s as if someone waved a magic wand and we became our enemies and they became us.

MaiDee on December 22, 2008 at 11:35 PM

1991 – The Soviet Union collapses.

1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed.

Nigel Farage on who’s who in the EU commission

Vladimir Bukovsky: “THE WEST LOST the Cold War.”

It’s as if someone waved a magic wand and we became our enemies and they became us.

Conservatives do not fight to get their message heard.

They sit in a corner and mumble their talking points – then cower as the leftists organize, protest and get their message out to the masses.

Christmas has been taken away and the right doesn’t do a thing. No marches on 5th avenue, no protests with picket signs at the malls and the stores that refuse to advertise Christmas.

Conservatives still shop at these stores and when they get a ‘Happy Holidays’ greeting their response is to hand over their credit card and pout they didn’t get a proper Christmas greeting.

I really hope you guys wake up in the next few months.

What will it take for Conservatives to get organized and form some protest marches to get their message to the masses?

There are also some really intense film clips of the Brits in Afganistan and Iraq.

And US Seals (or Coast Guard) would not have surrendered to the Iranians as the British did recently? I’ll bet there is all kinds of data for you to support that contention. And one event proves nothing. Remember Delta’s super performance in Somalia. Against rabble.

One of our most important missions as conservatives is to remind people that Western civilization and culture is something to take pride in.

Matt Helm on December 22, 2008 at 2:03 PM

++

I think the assessment by Ed was fair and I also like what my fellow Brits said. The issue is quite rightly that we have a left wing government in power that is so PC it hurts and going to war was Tony Blair only, the rest of teh Labour party would have been against, they do not have the stomach for it, they kept things quiet about the level of war fighting so as not to upset the Muslims at home, if you read Sniper One you can see that, also they were selling the bit about keeping the conflict down to their left wing party members, the rules of engagement were just amazing. I noted also that the writer made some comments about Americans being a bit gung ho, but he also shows some respect too.

I do not think it will be totally solved by a Tory government, there are some Tories who have the same sneering attitude as the left sadly.

smagar, your thinking of the left wing superior Brits who I detest, feel free to call them every name under the sun, I agree with you, but remember that many of us are not like that and are very pro-American and appreciate what your guys have been doing, I happen to know that we are in a war, many people don’t even know or want to know it.

Many people will seize on this to score a few points for triumphalism, especially given the public “sneering” provided by British commanders about American efforts over the last few years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d call that a mistake.

Sorry, Captain Ed, but there are some Brits who’ve been a bit too willing over the years to sneer (without scare quotes) at we less-than-sophisticated Yanks. We’ve earned the right to a bit of schadenfreude.

That’s not just a recipe for policy once we’re in the war, but for picking fights carefully in the first place.

When you allowed the neo-cons to take over your forfeited any claim to this principle.

Once we’re in a war, we’d better win it, regardless of how we got into it in the first place. All of the other options are worse.

I disagree with this. See: Soviets in Afghanistan.

Endless wars eventually bankrupt a nation.

lodge

If you don’t want endless wars, then you need to win the ones you fight, and deter enough that you don’t fight any more. To deter war you must convince every other country that either (a) they would rather have you as a friend than an enemy or (b) you’re an enemy but picking a fight with you would be suicidal.

Feckless behavior destroys your reputation on both counts.

Beyond that, there is the question of what we mean by “country.” al Qaeda is a “state without borders”, just as some international crime syndicates are. We have to know how to fight such forces, and we are still learning. The worst thing we can do is pigeonhole this threat and say that our existing tools and laws are good enough. The worst thing we can do is to stop learning. Yes, we may have faced these people before, but they are playing in our computer networks, our financial systems, our world of science and technology, and even our courts. They know how to hurt us; they are learning how to get better at it. We must be concerned not just with hurting them but with stopping them and destroying their “nations.” And the leaders who can organize and make such things happen must be found and killed, or locked up in solitary in the basement of a fortress somewhere.

thedarkknight,

As a fellow Brit,i am delighted that you have put our countries views beautifully. Well done.

mags on December 22, 2008 at 4:07 PM

Ta very much.

he probably would have seen his government toppled. Bush didn’t have that concern.

How can you say this? have you seen the makeup of our government now? Bush did what he felt was right regardless of the political ramifications.

I disagree with this. See: Soviets in Afghanistan.

Endless wars eventually bankrupt a nation.

lodge on December 22, 2008 at 1:47 PM

History, doesn’t back that. They were already bankrupt and were unable to push to a victory. They also chose not to fight like they did earlier. Typically they would mass slaughter/starve the population. They they didn’t do that, because the were worried about the PR. Had they acted like Stalin did in the 1920s, they would have taken that, but this time they didn’t have the NYTs on their side.

We aren’t willing to bleed out a country either, we try to do it nicely.

Romans figured it out. Doesn’t work to be nice and work with your enemy, it takes “Salting the Fields” to win.

My bro’s in the 82nd and he’s getting geared up. Last they heard they were going to the same spot he was at last time(OIF ‘07). Said it was boring and dirty and wasn’t looking forward to Khadimayah(sp?) again.

Boring is good.