How dare those Limeys not give us more martyrs?

Crossposted at Larvatus Prodeo
This is the frothing, eye-bulging reaction from some of the screeching warmonkeys pounding their keyboards in the US to the peaceful resolution of the British sailors’ hostage situation in Iran. Michelle Malkin, who has described the British personnel as “cringeworthy”, links approvingly to Townhall.com, where Dean Barnett commences the outrage:

A few weeks ago, 15 British seamen and marines, soldiers of the Royal Navy, found themselves in a similar quandary. Belligerent Iranians had surrounded them and threatened them with both words and actions. Just as the passengers on Flight 93 had a choice, so too did the British seamen who ultimately spent a couple of weeks as hostages of the Iranian regime. Why did these soldiers, the products of military training and representatives of Her Majesty’s flag, make the decision to surrender themselves? Because, according to their Captain at a Friday press conference, “Fighting back was simply not an option.”

What a strange and dismal trip it has been for the Western world, going from “Let’s Roll” to “Fighting Back Was Not An Option” in scarcely more than five years. One can only hope that when the history of our era is written, the former will turn out to be the immortal quote, not the latter.

Why yes, how absolutely awful for outnumbered military personnel who know their country is not at war with another country taking them into custody, to not open fire when that is explicitly against their own country’s Rules Of Engagement (ROE) and they know that it’s only their own lives at stake. A situation more exactly like the passengers on Flight 93 could hardly be imagined, could it?

Sticking to the ROE during and after capture, including conciliatory gestures, to keep a volatile situation down to a diplomatic incident rather than becoming an unplanned military venture is for sissies, obviously.

It gets worse in the comments:

There is no fight left in Britain and Eurabia. They have already succumbed to the enemy.

I don’t think you would find the same here. Plenty of people are still ready to fight. Not the dims, of course, but they have been yellow bellied cowards for years.

The Brits were pathetic and I believe universally seen as cowards, especially kissing AhmedNuts’s hands after they had already been released.

Sailors and Royal Marines? Hardly. Maybe Royal Queens. I’d love to see a video of these “marines” meeting up with the Marines who have been dealing with Bashra for the last few years. Butt kicking for all!

It’s hard to make a judgment if one isn’t actually there. But as a combat Vet myself I can tell you, if it would have been me captured. I wouldn’t be appearing on TV looking as though I was having a party with the Iranians. Nor would I have signed any kind of confession they devised. They would probably beat me to death and I would do my best to take some with me. But I would never give into them! Never!

Since we won WWs-I&II for them, the Limeys have hidden behind America’s might and have turned their military forces, such as they were, into ‘free’ eyeglasses for little old women and ‘free’ abortions for young ones.

And in the process have rid their girlyboy navy of both rum and the lash!

The occasional voices or reason get howled down:

What were they supposed to do?
They were massivly outnumbered (6:1), according to repports they had several heavy machine guns trained on them, certain death considering they were in a Dinghy armed merely with rifles.

Not only would firing back have been irresponsible for them but also for Britain, it would have sparked a wider incident and possibly an armed conflict.

As for co-operating after capture, they were merely following the guidelines for post-capture situations. They are there to help ensure their safe return.

The British hostages came across as sissies, one and all. Their country expected them to be sissies. The only indignation I read in the British Press was against the Iranians for showing film of THE WOMAN HOSTAGE SMOKING. I did not make that up. It was actually said by a member of Blair’s Cabinet on television.

My sisters and I have talked frequently about what we would do if someone asked us to renounce our faith or lose our heads. We have decided better our heads than our souls. We took heart from the girl in the Columbine Massacre who refused at the threat of one of the gunmen to renounce her faith, and died for it. We cannot all fight the great battles but we can fight the battle for our souls, and we are commanded to do just that.

A group of babies like those who cave in the minute somebody waves a wooden spoon at them is not a Military. It’s a daycare centre. I looked at them and thought to myself, “These children think it’s desperate deprivation that the Iranians are not letting them watch “American Idol” …” But of course being kept in isolation without your iPod, your computer, your BlackBerry and your cell phone means you have to keep company with your own thoughts — and what have they got in their heads, save the constant drumbeat of FAILURE FAILURE FAILURE SURRENDER, GIVE IN, ACCOMMODATE, GIVE UP? I daresay not a one of those sissies could even amuse himself by reciting in his mind a single word of the Bible, of Kipling or of anything but perhaps the blasphemy and porn of current pop songs.

Here is your rising generation. From the look of that bunch of spineless girly men, it may well be the last.

And of course, it’s all the fault of women, although they can’t seem to decided exactly where to fix the womanly blame:

Spineless..
Europe in it’s entirety is taking on the French personality – spinelessness.

All the trash-talk about blood-lust? The best example of blood-lust in the USA is in Nazi Margaret Sanger’s death clinics – scientists” of Planned Parenthood stabbing babies in the head and sucking their brains out – spineless butchers.

Let me answer the title first,
“What ever happened to “Let’s Roll?”" The simple answer is the feminization of western culture.

Since the sixties we in the west have been treated to a constant barrage of PC, feel-good foolishness. We have been taught this garbage from kindergarten to graduate school. Instead of standing up and fighting for whats right in a situation, we’re supposed to “put ourselves in their shoes” and try to “embrace their feelings.” If they have darker skin than us or come from a different culture, the PC crying fools expect us to immediately apologize as they have taught about ever conflict in history has been white-Christian-men stealing from the ancient, innocent cultures they find.

Feminization
Do you think that this played just a tiny bit in the actions of the other male sailors & marines? Were some of them being just a little over protective of her and because of that the males lost their edge, if they ever had one? And isn’t that one of the predictions when all this nonsense started? Don’t mean to sound like an old soldier sitting in an armchair, but that protective instinct is exactly what would crossed my mind had women been in my infantry unit in Vietnam.

And then you get the ones with the gloves (and probably the meds) off:

My, God!

God how those who couch their hatred for those more talented, smart, and productive than they are in pseudopolitical cant disgust me.

As to the Brits.

“Policing”? An EMBARGO!! And that’s NOT a kind of Act of WAR?! They WEREN’T Frikkin Bobbies!! They WERE COMBAT Troops in a COMBAT ZONE!!! Where WAS their support? The Brits could have had a chopper, WE could have had planes overhead in MINUTES!! The Brits SHOULD have been able to shell the crap out of ANY nearby Iranian unit. Why didn’t THAT happen?

If that particular unit was FORBIDDEN by their chain of command and the Rules of Engagement to “fight back” if THAT’s why it “wasn’t an option” then the blame is UP the chain of command, but SOMEBODY should have been not only WILLING, but READY to waste every stinkin ragheaded, camel humping, goat sucking, Islamanazi WITHIN A HUNDRED MILES!!! Don’t give a DAMN which side of the “border” they are on.

You see MY hatreds are not directed to those who have more money than me. MINE are directed AT THE STINKING PIECES OF CRAP TRYING TO KILL ME ENSLAVE MY WIFE AND BUGGER MY BOYS.

AND I WANT THEM ALL DEAD!!!!

If all you blabbers out there ain’t down with that you are simply getting in the way of my survival.

Screw you.

I admire those who continue to wade in and speak sense by this point in the thread:

Hmmm…
Comparing this to the Flight 93 is ridiculous. On Flight 93 they were informed that they were going to die if they stood still. This was not the case for those British soldiers. Of course maybe if they were bombarded with the same propaganda that many on this site are subjected to they would have probably fight back. By propaganda I mean the belief that every muslim will behead a non Muslim. The fact of the matter is that if they would have fought back they would be dead. Not only that but it would have probably been the Gulf of Tonkin like incident, this time real, and would have brought all of into war with Iran, so I can see why Neoconservatives wanted to British to fight back. The fact of the matter is that Iran is a state that is not suicidal. It’s easy to talk from our keyboards how “heroic” we would act in that situation. The fact of the matter is that the Brits had a choice between life and meaningless death that would spark a much larger conflict resulting in more wasteful deaths.

That is where Neoconservative mouthpieces are similar to Islamic Fundamentalist leaders, they are warlike, ideologically insane, but they prefer others to be their martyrs.

There were still hundreds of comments after that one, but it was all getting repetitive. In the sidebar was a link to “Talk about this article” with 10 more articles about the “spineless Brits”, and the comments threads were essentially identical to this one. John Derbyshire, an expatriate Britain living in the US, joins the chorus at The Corner with “The End of Britain”.

Of course, the readers of the UK Torygraph were largely running in a similiar vein about their gutless soldiers surrendering without a shot. The few people who dare to remind others that BRITAIN IS NOT AT WAR WITH IRAN are pooh-poohed as making an irrelevant point, because apparently it’s all about honour and losing face.

By contrast, I’m thankful for Rules of Engagement that make a clear distinction between being at war and not, and for military personnel who think about the best way to follow the Rules of Engagement. Honour means nothing to the dead, and unnecessarily starting a war means many dead. I salute the sailors and marines and their commander who kept them in mind of their larger responsibility to their nation.