Iran 'unable to take Australians'

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran 'unable to take Australians'

The SECRET is out! All this colonisation and cricket was not for nought. Indeed. Her Majesty's forces went quietly were the Australians resisted. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards were unable to to capture and ransom for political capital these intrepid Australian sailors.

That "political capital" is an illusion. The UK had 15 sailors taken prisoner by a country who's president had to be seen releasing the prisoners before a serious standoff with Her Majesty's Naval Forces. Now we can understand it was due to a brewing fear of the Aussies who really take this kind of thing seriously. One can imagine their earnest roughness all bruising into action at the clanging sounds of ships alarm battlestations, smoke, fire and explosions all about to erupt - but because its sort of "local" we (in New Zealand) remain unshocked - as though by a cloud of non-reality. The "war games in the Gulf" sneaking into recent news items and the mad scientists sponsored by a Persian sheikdom play shadows in our fear.

The hardest and most worthwhile battle of all is to solve things without weapons and soldiers. The West has a tendancy to view itself as the "civil" side of the equation. The side that is the "natural winner" that has convinced its populace of its right and legitimacy.

Germany was high jacked by an evil, authoritarian, insane war monger given confidence of the fear he could engender by killing people. And American fears of a sponsored repeat of this in Saddam Hussein justifies a war that will soon justify more skirmishes.

The point is not who is right or wrong. America is in a foreign land and establishing itself as a viable military force permanently. One of these days it will simply be able to react anywhere in the world. No wonder Putin gets a little edgy. America has beaten the Soviet dream into insignificance.