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Jewish World Review July 20, 2005 / 13 Taamuz, 5765 Out for a pillion ride By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Britain's highly respected (until now) Chatham House, formerly
known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, announced their
considered judgment last week that Britain's alliance with the United States
in Iraq contributed to the cause of the terrorist strike on London a
fortnight ago. The report then went on to pronounce that the key problem in
Britain for preventing terrorism is that the country is "riding as a pillion
passenger with the United States in the war on terror."
What a vile, lying, contemptuous assertion. For those unfamiliar
with the term, a pillion is a padded, woman's passenger seat on a motorcycle
driven traditionally by a man. The British are riding as a "pillion
passenger"?
Tell that to the Royal Scots Dragoons, The Black Watch Regiment,
The Irish Guard, the 7th Armoured Brigade, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the
33rd Engineers Explosive Ordinance Disposal Regiment, the Royal Marines, The
Special Air Service (special forces), the Staffordshire Regiment, The Royal
Air Force, The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, and the many other
British military units fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pillion
passengers? My horse's backside! (and it's even wider than my own).
According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Chatham House
is staffed by "leading academics and former civil servants. " For such as
these to disparage the flower of British manhood, which may yet again be the
savior of the nation — as it has countless times through her history — is
shameful.
These unworthy heirs to an England that "Never did, nor never
shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror," to an England that is "this
royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this earthly majesty, this seat
of Mars," these unworthies, by their analysis and conclusions prove they
have as little between their ears as they presumedly do between their legs.
These hapless, hopeless "thinkers" are following in the foolish,
timorous tradition of the European "neutrals" who were the object of Winston
Churchill's wise but unheeded guidance back in January 1940.
The Nazis had conquered Poland in the winter of 1939, and then
paused to digest their meal. The French army and the British Expeditionary
Force sat warily watching toward the East and waiting. It was the season of
the Phony War, the Sitzkreig.
Churchill, then only First Lord of the Admiralty (he became
prime minister in May) gave a speech on Jan. 20 in which he impleaded to the
neutral states (Norway, Holland, Belgium, Romania among others): "What would
happen if all these neutral nations I have mentioned — and some I have not
mentioned — were with one spontaneous impulse to do their duty in
accordance with the Covenant of the League, and were to stand together with
the British and French Empires against aggression and wrong? At present
their plight is lamentable; and it will become much worse. They bow humbly
and in fear to German threats of violence. .
"Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the
crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass
before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear — I fear greatly — the
storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, ever more loudly, ever
more widely. It will spread to the South; it will spread to the North. There
is no chance of a speedy end except through united action."
For the Chatham House experts — and their legion of similarly
mentally impaired co-thinkers in America and Europe — they deduce from
events that Britain would be safer waiting for the Americans to successfully
suppress the Islamist insurgency worldwide. (Or, if the Americans fail,
appeasing the insurgent passions).
But the coward's calculation is also extremely risky. If he
added his arms to the fight early, he risks being hurt, but he increases the
chance that his side will survive the lethal enemy attack. By holding back
his share of the common defense, he risks the enemy defeating each of its
targets, in seriatim.
In World War II, Holland and Belgium bet wrong. Had they joined
the alliance in January, their stout defense — backed up by properly
positioned British and French troops might have held the line against the
Germans in May 1940. That was certainly Churchill's hope.
But does all this misty recollection of WWII have any relevance
to today's danger? Of course, the operations of this war are as different
from WWII's operations as one can conceive. And yet the principals are the
same. Each European country that is not ferociously aggressive against the
nests of Islamists in their midst not only endanger themselves but provide
another close base of operations from which their neighbors may be attacked.
The danger is like an insinuating virus. The larger the
contagion-free zone, the safer for every body.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
