Tuesday 14 June 2011

Swings and roundabouts

HMS Victory
The defence news out of Britain hasn't been this depressing since Dunkirk.   Thanks to the coalition's axe-murderer style cuts, the Royal Navy is in a pitiable conditions.  Stripped of aircraft carriers and fighter aircraft, the Senior Service is reduced to sending men to serve aboard France's Charles de Gaulle to relearn how to handle catapult takeoffs.  It's bad enough that our lads have to learn French, but if this leads to some idiot saying "This worked out so well (even if it hasn't), let's make the arrangement permanent", I shall demand that all three major political parties be disbanded.  What no one seems bothered to ask is, since Britain is going to use F-35 Tornado IIs, why the blazes aren't the RN training aboard an American carrier?

Speaking of the Americans, Mr Barack Hussein Obama has once again shown how he really feels about Britain by backing Argentina over the Falklands (or the Malvinas, as the US State Department now refers to them).  Admiral Sir John "Sandy" Woodward has even gone so far as saying that in the present situation, Britain couldn't hope to hold or retake the islands if 1982 replayed itself.  Not surprising, since Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope states that without Ark Royal or the Harriers, Britain can't hope to even hang on in Libya much longer.

The only good news is that Trident has again been excluded from any planned cuts.  Thank God for that. With the way things are going, the Independent Nuclear Deterrent may not only be Britain's only claim to top table status, but it may need to be promoted from last line of defence to first line of defence.

Update: Lord West: "Stupid" not to reopen review.

7 comments:

eon said...

The arrangement with France tells me two things;

1. The Cameron/Clegg menage' does not intend to use the RN for anything except Fleet Day. Why else would they be making arrangements, temporary or otherwise, with a navy mainly known for surrendering?

2. They don't anticipate actually getting the F-35. The Obama menage' recently refused to sell it to the Indian Navy (which wants it to replace their Harriers), apparently because if they did, they'd have no good excuse to either (a) cancel the program as they did the F-22 and/or (b) refuse to sell the F-35 to Israel, which they will go to any lengths to avoid.

Yes, it's because The One and The Hill have a psychotic hatred of Israel, and believe that erasing it from the map will "solve all our problems" with the Arab world. Proving that while crazy does not automatically equal stupid, the two can and do go hand-in-hand on occasion.

As for the Falklands, since oil has been discovered nearby, The One wants it in the hands of people who hate the U.S., as per his dogma. Coupled with His visceral hatred of Britain (see "anti-colonialism, theory of"), and His romance with leftism anywhere and everywhere (the more anti-Western Civilization the better), His support for the "politically correct" leftist regime' in Buenos Aires is a foregone conclusion.

Although, I suspect that in 1982 He supported the Galtieri regime' as well. First of all, because Reagan supported Britain (He secretly despises Reagan while claiming to be his "intellectual heir"- which He isn't), and secondly because He is reflexively friendly toward anyone who clearly hates Britain and the U.S., which both the Galtieri regime' and the present leftist one openly admit doing.

The difference is, back then He was a college student-cum- assistant professor- not President of the United States.

The damage Obama's radicalism, and Cameron & Clegg's ideology, plus all three's collective incompetence, will do to the UK and the U.S. could easily end in something fundamentally worse than Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor combined.

I suspect Cameron and Clegg are too stupid to realize it- and Obama yearns for it.

The rest of us will be stuck paying for their delusions.

cheers (but not to them)

eon

antiplato said...

eon, this is just a guess, but would I be right in saying you don't have any liberal friends, at least not ones you talk politics with? Because it seems a bit like you've been hearing your own opinions amplified and echoed back to you for so long that you've drifted out of 'conservative' and into 'nuts'.

(Any offense is intended for your own good.)

eon said...

antiplato;

I gather we disagree on the relative intelligence, etc., of the Free World's leaders.

Excellent. Open debate is the heart and soul of democracy.

And yes, I do have "liberal" friends. Mainly of the Harry Truman/FDR school of liberalism. They are as appalled by the antics of the "progressive" crowd as I am.

And no, I don't have "opinions". They are like arses- everyone has them. I just observe the facts, without drawing conclusions, until the behavior of those being observed makes the conclusions inescapable.

In this case, they are obvious to any unbiased observer.

BTW- I am not in any way a "conservative". Conservatives hate me. (I'm pro-limited military spending, pro-nuclear but anti-coal, pro-choice but anti-taxpayer-funded AOD, and don't really care what people do in their bedrooms.)

cheers

eon

Wesley said...

antiplato, a second to Eon's invitation. If you've read a significant number of his comments you will have to admit he is a thoughtful man drawing logical conclusions about what he (and all of us who look) sees happening in the world around us.

Please feel free to state your beliefs and opinions regarding what you see happening in our world today. And hurry, because it appears to be accelerating.

antiplato said...

Sorry for labelling you a conservative, eon! Politicians shortsighted and capable of immense stupidity? Yeah, I'll buy that. But the most cerebral US president in decades making foreign-policy decisions based on irrational, psychotic loathing of Israel, Britain and the West as a whole? Now that seems implausible to say the least. And the whole affair ending in some apocalyptic showdown 'worse than Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor combined'? Against whom, exactly? When last I checked both Britain and America had a big bag of nuclear weapons, and it's not as though the anti-terrorist security state is at risk of shrinking any time soon.

To get back to the topic, yes, the coalition government are making some pretty shoddy defence decisions. But I'm more or less with Borges on the Falklands: getting in a war with Argentina over it was and would be like two bald men fighting over a comb, given that we need to put an end to the oil age in the next couple of decades anyway.

David said...

Why on Earth do "we need to put an end to the oil age in the next couple of decades" when we have enough fossil fuels to last us the better part of a millennium?

As to fighting over the Falklands, when someone invades sovereign British territory where we have an iron-clad claim the inhabitants are and wish to remain British, I expect Her Majesty's government to fight any invader tooth and nail.

Wesley said...

antiplato, when you refer to the unnamed "most cerebral US president in decades" you surely cannot be referring to the current one. Yet your context indicates you are. Generally referring to someone as cerebral means you believe the person can reason, even if he cannot process information in a manner somewhat in agreement with reality. (College professors are sometimes called "cerebral", after all.) However, the current office holder merely evidences a slavish devotion to failed policies and methods based on 18th-century European philosophy long proven unworkable every time it's tried.

Please present evidence for your opinion, as merely writing it don't make it so.

On the other hand, your statement that he is “making foreign-policy decisions based on irrational, psychotic loathing of Israel, Britain and the West as a whole” is demonstrably true.