[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

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Links:    FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
                His website: http://victorhanson.com/
                NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
                Pajamasmedia:   http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/

[Lurker]

The kindest thing we could do for Europe is disband NATO.

L

[Uncle Ike]

"It’s completely outrageous for any nation to go out and arrest the servicemen of another nation in waters that don’t belong to them.” So spoke Admiral Sir Alan West,"

I note that high-level British Spokespersons have often characterized this action as an "arrest". (First use was by the Commodore in command on the scene - less than 6 hours after the incident)..

One "arrests" miscreants. One "captures" hostiles, and one "kidnaps" or "abducts" non-hostiles.

PC has really gone amok when the Brits commanders characterize them as 'miscreants' who, by implication, somehow deserved their 'arrest'......

[DB]

Real war is coming.

We watch as the world, seemingly in slow motion, sinks into a crushing spasm of reality. It won't be pretty. Not much will be left unchanged.

That's my humble opinion.

[snowrip]

Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away.”

The effete Brits have forgotten that the purpose of a military is to break sh!t and kill people, and that the faddish, liberal notion of casualty-free war is an utter fallacy. It would appear that no one in the British admiralty or Parliament has the capacity to even come to terms with what has actually happened, and instead is only able to process reality through the rose-colored glasses of political correctness. "In effect"? THEY ARE BRITISH SOLDIERS WHO WERE IN FACT SEIZED AT GUNPOINT IN A WAR ZONE.

[pabianice]

This event is the unavoidable result of Europe's unilateral disarmament. Period.

[justa-hairyape]

And with the Middle East flush with petrodollars, non-European militaries have bought better and more plentiful weaponry than that which is possessed by the very Western nations that invented and produced those weapons.

Apparently we were hoping that they would only use them against each other.

Any violence that would break out would probably be due instead to either American or Israeli imperial, preemptive aggression — and both nations could be ostracized or humiliated by European shunning and moral censure.

That was a definite logic error on the Europeans part. America was founded as a revolution against European Monarchical Power.

The author makes some great points. One should note however that military history is full of incidents where honorable people went in quickly to rescue captured comrades only to find themselves in a deeper trap. The Iranians did not just send some patrol boats in to capture the British sailors. My guess is that the main British patrol vessel would have seen a volley of anti-ship Cruise Missiles headed its way in no time flat if it had aggressively intervened. Guess what happened to the first Israeli tank that went after the kidnappers of the Israeli soldier on the Lebanon border last year ? It ran over an IED booby trap and was destroyed. When I was on a late night London street a few years ago and an Irish Leprechaun had scammed a 20 pound note off me, I had a choice of chasing him down some dark streets in his territory, or letting the 20 pound note disappear while I worked hard and smart to earn it back. Hopefully in the current crisis the British will get there sailors back. Then a well laid out plan of righteous retribution can be carried out.

For example, that lone Iranian gas refinery might have some type of unfortunate 'accident' that puts it out of commission for a few months.

[chilepepper]

Sir Alan elaborated on British rules of engagement by stressing they are “very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting ... Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away.”

what a horse's ass

[Billthedrill]

One of the best things VDH has ever penned, IMHO.

I am a bit troubled by his conclusion - it isn't an assumption - at the end, of the inevitability of increasing international engagement by a relatively unsupported United States - that is, after all, what is left in the wake of the failures of collective security in NATO and the UN. Unfortunately in the absence of a better-armed EU, NATO becomes a warrior with one sword and twenty heads, and that simply is not going to get the job done. Moreover, an increasing, traditional, and perfectly understandable isolationism on the part of the U.S. electorate is a political fact.

The real difficulty is that "soft" power has placed such an effort into building the infrastructure of administration and negotiation that it has very little built to administer and no one with whom to successfully negotiate. Hence the rather blithe hope that those who do have military assets to administer ought to subordinate them to that infrastructure. This is, to say the least, an entirely unsatisfactory and highly transient state of affairs.

There is, in the form of the Democratic party, a strong influence in American politics to do as the Europeans have done, i.e. take the military shield for granted and concentrate spending on domestic programs and entitlements, justifying this on the moral grounds that military involvements are inherently unjustifiable and unnecessary. It may be that a very harsh lesson to the contrary is in the offing.

[norton]

"Quite simply, there is now no NATO, no EU, no U.N. that can or will do anything in anyone’s hour of need."

The unraveling of the post WW2 balance, the institutions set in place to maintain it, and the overly optimistic resurgence of europe itself must be utopia for someone...maybe a list of suspects would be appropriate.