Britannia No Longer Rules the Waves

No sh*t Sherlock...

On Friday, March 23rd, while British Royal Marines and sailors were inspecting a fishing boat for contraband in Iraqi waters, "a number of Iranian boats" swarmed up and kidnapped the British military personnel. Iranians "interrogated" the uniformed sailors and marines (violating the Geneva Conventions) and are currently holding them hostage. Iran has just released propaganda video of the hostages, in which they are coerced to confess and to praise their kidnappers (more violations of the Geneva Conventions).

It is now...Wednesday, March 28, 2007...enough said.

The sailors and marines were on inflatable boats -- similar to Zodiacs -- that had been dispatched from HMS Cornwall, a Type 22 Corwall class frigate. Thus, here is the first question that should be answered at the inquiry -- the one where the captain of the Cornwall stands in the dock in a maritime court of inquiry:

Excuse me?!? Today, Wednesday, March 28, 2007, is roughly five days too late for such a question. The question should be: Why didn't President Bush attack Iran at the same time he attacked Iraq??? i can understand North Korea not being lumped in with Saddam's Iraq, but not Iran!!!

Basically, American Presidents are 'Handcuffed' by the American pEoPlE, as the recent elections prove, and the Democrat Party will certainly use such to their own advantage...especially as a means to prove why President Clinton didn't fully react to the 1993 attacks, and to disprove the myth that Republicans are "stronger than Democrats" when it comes to defense of America.

Thus, question 2:

Redundancy, repetition, and recidivism are all boring mistakes...so to speak whilst also adding your line-of-questioning here.

Thus question three:

Ditto (see above reply, and i hope there is no question four).

Dafydd, blaming "Captain So-and-so" is wrong. Who wants to fight in such a War?!? Only the enemy. America was attacked in 1993, and again in 2001.

Life on Earth is a *LOT* like Life in a Prison...

Basically, that quote means...if America's responses to the attacks of 1993 and 2001 happened in any Prison on Planet Earth, the results would've been repeated rapes involving males against weaker males...so to speak of 'as simple as that'.

Any person up the chain who promulgated ROEs that led to this humiliation should be sacked.

The Enemy is feeding on the entire Western World's Rules of Engagement/'Chain', and they don't care what part they are on at eating time.

And the British sailors and Royal Marines themselves should not be lauded as heroes when they return; they should have to face inquiry themselves about why they surrendered to a tin-pot, third-world dictator like Ahmadinejad without even the faintest semblance of resistance.

PuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuLEASE!!! Don't blame others for your/our...nevermind. How does one find Warriors for such a War??? One doesn't in this losing case.

KårmiÇømmünîs†

In 1756, the British Admiralty sent Admiral John Byng to prevent the French from taking Minorca. Byng arrived when the island was already under siege, and, after an indecisive naval engagement, withdrew without relieving the siege. Byng was court-martialed and hanged for "failure to do his utmost." This brought charges that he had been used as a scapegoat for ministerial failure. On his tombstone it says "bravery and loyalty were insufficient securities for the life and honour of a naval officer."

French author Francois Marie Arouet (1694 - 1778, "Voltaire") had his fictional character Candide witness such a hanging in the eponymous novel and remark:

"Dans ce pay-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."
"In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others."

The "with it or on it" half of me agrees with Dafydd. The "war is an unnatural thing in which the old bury the young instead of the young burying the old" half of me makes me glad that none of the British nor Iranian sailors died.

"Unless the captain of the Cornwall can show a maritime court that he was under secret orders to allow the kidnapping to take place ..."
I think I read that the captain was given orders from "higher up"(Royal Navy HQ? London--Tony Blair?) not to fire on the Persians even though it was obvious to the Cornwall that this was a hostile incident.
(It reminds me of our USS Cole incident.)
Clearly, the Brits were terrified of having an "international incident" with the Persians even though it's happened to them before (and they caved) and the Persians can smell their fear--Big Mistake.
Blair should call Jimmy Carter for some pointers on how to be more ineffectual with the Iranians.

JenLArt:

I think I read that the captain was given orders from "higher up"(Royal Navy HQ? London--Tony Blair?) not to fire on the Persians even though it was obvious to the Cornwall that this was a hostile incident.

If so, I believe those are illegal orders.

There are orders that nobody can give. Suppose the Commander in Chief ordered a soldier to commit rape; that would be a patently illegal order and could not be obeyed, on pain of prosecution. (And the president who gave such an order would be impeached and removed from office; for that alone.)

The same is true in Britain. Ordering troops (including a female sailor) simply to be taken hostage by a fanatical Islamist regime with heavy terrorist connections is, I am quite sure, another such illegal order; and I frankly doubt that anyone gave it.

As I said above, unless surrendering, it is always legitimate for troops to use force to defend themselves from hostile attack -- and the ROE be hanged. And I suspect there are still preexisting standing orders to do one's utmost to win the war.

The sailors and marines were cowed, plain and simple; they had been made less than fighting men by the lethargic, anemic way Britain handled their part in the Iraq war.

Like Israel, Great Britain needs to snap out of it, to "arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time," as Churchill puts it in that quote over on Power Line.

You know, perhaps if we win in Iraq, then other countries will see that defeat is not foreordained. Then they too will realize that their future is in their own hands, not those of immutable destiny.

That is all it takes: for one people, one faction, one person to stand up and say, "I, and no one else, shall decide my own fate." That opens the floodgates; thus the West shall finally rise and truly waken.

That will be the sign.

Dafydd

Never mind launching the helo once the attack was detected, that bird should be in the air before the first boat is launched. Just the sight of the Lynx providing cover should have been enough to turn the Iranians back.

I would say that you violate the ROE at your peril as my nephew found out on the old East German border. In his case, apparently the embarrassment of publicly giving out the ROE which did not allow cover fire for refugees until they were some distance inside of West Germany and with chain of command permission caused the Army to drop charges. This incident never made the papers and in the mid 1970’s things could remain “secret” easier. The Brits couldn’t keep this quiet. I don’t doubt that the Captain could not engage the Iranians without chain of command permission. We forget bout the USS Pueblo, a US Navy spy ship that was attacked by the North Korean air and sea military units on January 23, 1968 and captured. This went up to President Johnson who did not respond in any military manner even though we had interceptor aircraft in South Korea. Under President Nixon, a Navy EC-121 was shot down by North Korea over international waters on April 14, 1969 with the loss of 30 sailors and 1 Marine. Again no US response and we certainly had the capacity even though we were engaged in the Vietnam War. Also remember that on July 3, 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner during the early stages of the 1988 Tanker War with Iran when the airliner ignored a warning to remain a required distance from the US cruiser. So there are a lot of “what if” political considerations running through a senior officer’s mind. However, if the captain did have written blanket permission to defend his men and ship in any situation, he should be canned. But again I doubt if he had such control over his situation; he had to defer to the military/political machine first, as was required of my nephew, and by then it was too late.

AMR:

I do not know anything about the first incident you quote but for the others, I do not believe there was combat support availabe within 1.5 miles of the incidents.

The RN captain should have gone to the aid of his troops and damn the consequences to his career. I am sure he would be able start a second career as a parliamentarian in any electorate with a large proportion of servicemen and their families.

Dafydd,

Despite my pacifist leanings, I agree with you a lot more than with our friend Beldar.

Hmm, another armchair account of what should-have-been. There is no published information about the status of the Cromwell and her position relative to the RIB's. I can't imagine any CO not chasing down 7 or 8 boats that had just kidnapped some of his crew, but we don't have all the details.

Those boarding parties are lightly armed and when confronted with several boats full of men wielding superior firepower, including anti-aircraft guns, what were they supposed to do- try to shoot their way out while standing on top of inflatable boats?

Hoppefully some more details will come out as this dog and pny show progresses.

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