About Iran’s latest hostages
Posted by Richard on April 2, 2007
Does anybody do this sort of thing better than Scrappleface? I don't think so:
(2007-04-01) — In a fresh, un-coerced video communiqué released today by the Iranian government, 15 British sailors and marines held captive for eight days, said they would seek asylum in Iran, “the only country that really seems to want us.”
The hostages said they have already begun the paperwork to become Iranian citizens, and have started classes to prepare them for conversion to Islam.
“Whatever else you might think about President Ahmadinejad,” said one British sailor under no duress, “at least he took risks to get us, and genuinely desires to keep us in his country; which is more than we can say for Prime Minister [Tony] Blair."
On a more serious note, here's Newt Gingrich's brilliantly simple suggestion for an effective response to the hostage-taking:
Mark Steyn heaped appropriate scorn on the British (and European, and American) alternative plan:
The British ambassador to the U.N. had wanted the Security Council to pass a resolution "deploring" Iran's conduct. But the Russians objected to all this hotheaded inflammatory lingo about "deploring," and so the Security Council instead expressed its "grave concern" about the situation. That and $4.95 will get you a decaf latte. Ask the folks in Darfur what they've got to show for years of the U.N.'s "grave concerns" — heavy on the graves, less so on the concern.
…The U.N. will do nothing for men seized on a U.N.-sanctioned mission. The European Union will do nothing for its "European citizens." But if liberal transnationalism is a post-modern joke, it's not the only school of transnationalism out there. Iran's Islamic Revolution has been explicitly extraterritorial since the beginning: It has created and funded murderous proxies in Hezbollah, Hamas and both Shia and Sunni factions of the Iraq "insurgency." It has spent a fortune in the stans of Central Asia radicalizing previously somnolent Muslim populations. When Ayatollah Khomeini announced the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, it was not Iranians but British, Indian, Turkish, European, Asian and American Muslims who called for his death, firebombed bookstores, shot his publisher, fatally stabbed his translator and murdered anybody who got in their way.
So we live today in a world of one-way sovereignty: American, British and Iraqi forces in Iraq respect the Syrian and Iranian borders; the Syrians and Iranians do not respect the Iraqi border. Patrolling the Shatt al-Arab at a time of war, the Royal Navy operates under rules of engagement designed by distant fainthearts with an eye to the polite fictions of "international law": If you're in a "warship," you can't wage war. If you're in a "destroyer," don't destroy anything. If you're in a "frigate," you're frigging done for.
Needless to say, it's Mark Steyn, so you should read the whole thing.
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