Whither Britain?

Danny Lemieux sent me the link for the ultimate editorial nailing precisely how awful British conduct was vis a vis Iran from start to finish in the last two weeks:

Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Pathetic objects of international ridicule, perhaps, but never slaves.

Not yet, anyway.

“England expects that every man will do his duty,” said Admiral Lord Nelson off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805.

He lost his life in the ensuing battle with the combined fleets of France and Spain – but his stunning victory set Napoleon on the road to ruin and established Nelson indisputably as the greatest of his nation’s numberless naval heroes.

We strain to imagine what the old sea dog would have made of that sorry gaggle of British sailors and Marines – waving and smiling, decked out in cheesy duds and clutching swagbags stuffed with goodies from the mullahs: books, candies, pistachio nuts and even a bud vase or two.

How sweet.

Which is probably the best that can be said of their 13 days in Iranian custody. If there has ever in history been a faster, more humiliating submission to Stockholm Syndrome, we’re unaware of it.

No doubt, being plucked out of one’s rubber raft at gunpoint and passed into an Iranian captivity of uncertain duration was a harrowing experience.

But aren’t British service personnel trained for this sort of thing?

Well, actually, that’s a secret.

“We’re not releasing the details of the training any of the services go through under those conditions,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman, “because if we do that, then it would make it easier to interrogate them.”

Easier than what, we wonder.

There’s more, but you get the point. I particularly like the description of the sailors at the moment of my release — looking for all the world as if they’d just won the Eurovision song contest — because it puts into words the very strong feeling of disgust I had when I saw those images.