This is an editorial from Investors Business Daily:Hostage Crisis: Britain's response to Iran suggests the British lion now keeps its teeth in a jar. Would Winston Churchill have responded to the kidnapping of British sailors by running to the League of Nations?
Time was, the HMS Cornwall or any other British warship would have simply blown the Iranian motorboats that seized 15 British sailors out of the water. But these are the days when Western leaders run to the United Nations seeking meaningless resolutions of condemnation.
Sun sets on the Cornwall.
The problem with the West is we never get it. We never grasp the fact that appeasement, conciliation and endless negotiation do not work and that the only time documents achieve peace is when the words at the top read "unconditional surrender."
It's been 28 years since our embassy hostages were paraded on Iranian TV, and it was that weakness on our part that had tragic consequences for decades to come, culminating in the attacks of 9/11. This time it's British sailors, and every enemy from Osama in his cave to Ahmadinejad in his bunker is taking notes.
Maybe it's fitting that the British sailors were kidnapped almost literally under the guns of the Cornwall. If so ordered, the frigate could have blown the Iranian Revolutionary Guard flotilla out of the water.
Along with her sister ships Cumberland, Chatham and Campbell, Cornwall is slated to be mothballed as the British government does what no foreign enemy could ever do — sink the Royal Navy.
Two months ago, Britain announced that almost half its fleet of 44 warships will be mothballed due to defense budget cuts. British naval forces have been so degraded it is doubtful they could pull off 1982's Falkland Islands mission today.
This time next year, according to plans, the British navy that once ruled the seas will be roughly the size of the Belgian navy. According to the London Daily Telegraph, the cuts "will turn Britain's once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force."
Last month, Blair announced that 1,600 British troops will return from Iraq in the next few months, further reducing Britain's presence to about 5,500. At their highest point shortly after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, British forces numbered over 40,000. The world's fifth-largest economy now supports an army 28th in size.
The mullahs in Iran clearly see today's Britain, beset at home with threats of terror, as a weak link in the war on terror. They have their own domino theory: Pry Britain away from the coalition of the willing, and it will speed up America's decline as well.
The commitment to defend freedom is not a school dance; no nation can afford to say it's tired and will just sit this one out. Britain should know this from its own experience. No piece of paper, no capitulation to tyrants, ever brings peace in our time.
Britain has stood with us and often stood alone with us. To be fair, she now hears voices in America calling for retreat from Iraq, even from the world stage, and sees her ally going wobbly. It would behoove us both to remember the words of Winston Churchill in another dark hour when the West faced another gathering storm:
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
But of course he was called a "War Monger" by the British public during the "wilderness years" between the great wars.
