The Brits deserved it, or decline and...

Of course it's their fault the Iranians took 15 hostages. After all, those sailors and Royal Marines...(full text subscriber only)

...shouldn't have been there in the first place...

Britain failed miserably this week trying to persuade the UN Security Council to include the word "deplore" in its two-sentence statement on the subject. The best Britain could get was a statement that expressed "grave concerns" over the detainment of the British military personnel while simultaneously asking for British consular access to the detained. It is hard to imagine what Mr. Blair could have expected from the UN body he so flippantly pushed aside when he took the decision to send his troops to the Persian Gulf in the first place.

Then, when the sabres were being rattled, Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush ignored not only the wishes of the UN but also the wishes of Britain's closest partners in the European Union: Germany and France. When Mr. Blair sent his troops into Iraq, he did so without the backing of the UN, the European Union, NATO or even the vast majority of his own people. It is ironic now that things have continued to turn sour that he has limped back to the very institutions he scoffed at in 2003 crying for help.

Mr. Blair seems to have forgotten that when you "go it alone," you go it alone, no matter how bad it gets...

Peter Zimonjic is a Canadian journalist in London...

So I guess it's just fine to break international law, the Geneva Conventions, etc., etc., etc. and seize people who are in fact operating legally under UN Security Council Resolution 1723, passed unanimously. How multilateral can you get? Hardly going it alone. I wonder why Mr Zimonjic, with his wretched Schadenfeude, did not mention the resolution. Just can't stand Messrs Blair and Bush, I guess. What a fine chap, living where he does.

But he is right about fair-weather friends in the EU:

European foreign ministers failed last night [March 30] to back Britain in a threat to freeze the €14 billion trade in exports to Iran...

EU foreign ministers meeting in Germany called for the sailors to be freed but ruled out any tightening of lucrative export credit rules. The EU is Iran’s biggest trading partner. British officials are understood to have taken soundings on economic sanctions before the meeting but found few takers.

France, Iran’s second-largest EU trading partner, cautioned that further confrontation should be avoided. The Dutch said it was important not to risk a breakdown in dialogue...

What freaking dialogue? With the devil?

Another view:

...When will our masters ever learn that, in international relations, nice guys finish last?

...this new crisis of captivity, like Mr Blair's needless kow-towing over slavery, exposes the profound differences between him and her [a certain female prime minister who dealt with the Falklands]. When it comes to the crunch, Mr Blair's greatest defect is that he is, despite his undoubted transgressions, fundamentally a nice guy. Margaret Thatcher was neither. Nor, come to think of it, was Queen Victoria. Nor Britannia...

Mark Steyn, for his part, thinks Tony Blair is doing a Jimmie Carter.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 1, 2007 04:48 PM