Once again, it's me and Ralph Peters on the same wavelength, deploring the cowardice of the British sailors and marines kidnapped by Iran. When it happened, I said I hoped the ones who'd shamed their country would be court-martialed on return to Blighty, and given dishonorable discharges after a couple years breaking rocks in the Outer Hebrides (which, believe me—I've been there—have a LOT of rocks). Now, I confess, I wouldn't shed a tear if some worse fate befell them.
The Ralph Peters piece he refers to is in The New York Post. Peters take the same basic view as Derbyshire, but additionally aruges that US and Australian Mariners would never be so weak as the British.
THE greatest shock from the Middle East this year hasn't been terrorist ruthlessness or the latest Iranian tantrum. It's that members of Britain's Royal Marines wimped out in a matter of days and acquiesced in propaganda broadcasts for their captors.
Jingoism aside, I can't imagine any squad of U.S. Marines behaving in such a shabby, cowardly fashion. Our Marines would have fought to begin with. Taken captive by force, they would've resisted collaboration. To the last man and woman.
Derbyshire tries to brush aside criticisms that he doesn't know what they've gone through and are still going through and therefore can't expect them to do what he perhaps could not:
I nurse a quiet hope that if put to the test, I would stand up as well as any Marine. Whether or not I would, however, is irrelevant. Whether or not I could stand up well to torture, I expect Marines to.
Keep nursing that quiet hope, Derbyshire. This is one of the worst examples of armchair war-mongering I've seen. He's got a lot of nerve to support our troops being over over there and yet to call them cowards when they're captured. When's the next episode of Keyboard Kommandos?
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