Strutting Through Failure

I recently had a run of exceptionally rude comments from Navigator, a Brit who has a decidedly anti-American POV, which is fine if it's well articulated, but this is the kind of revisionist junk he spewed:

News flash - America didnt [sic] join WW1 and 2 out of any sort of altruistic inclination.

Remember Japan? India and Burma is on the other side of that front. British Indian troops fought on the other front in Indo- China to help rescue you guys or have you forgotten that part of the story?

No, I hadn't really forgotten and I can give credit, not sneering abuse. Neither had I forgotten the truly decisive battles we waged Island-hopping the Pacific. Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima. Rescue us? Interesting way of looking at it.

I answered his claims that America is swill in world opinion by asking why Italy and France moved towards us in their last elections, and he answered in part:

[Y]ou're showing your ignorance and arrogance by thinking the world revolves around the US once again. Naples (thats in Italy) is buried in garbage, unemplyment [sic] is high and economic growth in Italy is restricted to the cities. In short, domestic crisis. Berlesconi is a businessman so for dosmestic interests he has been re-elected.

All I'd said is the Berlesconi is more aligned with Bush than he is with England's pathetic government, which is hardly grounds for accusing me of thinking the world revolves around the US. But tell me a nation it revolves around more. The failure of the Italian economy is emblematic of the failure of the Euro-Socialist mega-state, a government model England has embraced and America, thank God, has thus far been able to reject.

I could go on, but why subject you? I only bring Navigator up because I thought of him when I read this in the Times of London (a name, by the way, he insulted me for using, claiming it was the Times of Great Britain):

Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.

All across Iraq’s second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military.

That was not written by an American reporter who thinks the world revolves around the US. It was written by a Brit about a country a big chunk of the world (including us) used to revolve around.

I have a small idea what happened in Basra and why the British command failed to adapt to the situation as well as we did, but I have a much better understanding of why the British crown failed here: arrogance, inflexibility, greed and outmoded military tactics.

I love Great Britain. I have enjoyed my visits there immensely, we love Incredible Wife's Aston, and their culture and history are indelibly intertwined with ours. It's a shame they also have a rude, bull-headed leftist minority full of bile and anger -- but hey, that's just another similarity between our two great nations.

Navigator would do his nation a much greater service if he would redirect his rancor against the EU, because that is the real threat to his country, not us. It threatens to homogenize Europe into a tasteless, over-regulated, PC shell of what it once was.

In closing, the Brits have re-engaged in Basra, and we all thank them for their improved effort and assistance in the recent fighting. But the victory there is the Iraqis' -- and if people like Navigator would remove their blinders and see the results of victory, perhaps they would understand that what we are fighting for is worth it.

(A note to Navigator: As a service to my readers, who prefer discourse to barroom brawls, I have blocked you from posting comments [I think I have, anyway]. You are free to send me any comments via email; my address is near the top of the right column.)

Nukes And Brats: Britain's Crumbling World

Two stories in the Observer show how England is tumbling into the abyss, its glory gone, its purpose adrift.

First, this:

A British company has been closed down after being caught in an apparent attempt to sell black-market weapons-grade uranium to Iran and Sudan, The Observer can reveal.

Anti-terrorist officers and MI6 are now investigating a wider British-based plot allegedly to supply Iran with material for use in a nuclear weapons programme. One person has already been charged with attempting to proliferate 'weapons of mass destruction'.

During the 20-month investigation, which also involved MI5 and Customs and Excise, a group of Britons was tracked as they obtained weapons-grade uranium from the black market in Russia. Investigators believe it was intended for export to Sudan and on to Iran.

Let's take care of one obvious foreign policy statement before returning to England: If Iran's intents for its nuclear program are peaceful, why is it trying to secure black market weapons grade uranium via a clandestine Russia-Sudan-Iran triangulation?

People, found primarily on the Idiot Left, continue to buy the Ahmadinejad lie despite evidence like this that reasonable people easily read as proof of Tehran's true intent.

Back to the Brits. People like those tracked by M16 exist in every culture, certainly. Germans, Americans and others have been caught in similar plans to supply weapons to those who would turn the weapons on us.

What is interesting about this case is that the article reveals no names -- the company is not named, nor are the people being investigated.

They very well could be British Muslims, and the British government and press would not see any particularly important reason to tell us that. If they are, it tells us a lot about how dangerous a place Britain has become because of its obsession with multi-culti.

They could be bred and born Brits -- fish and chips eaters with Grade B teeth -- and I would be no less surprised. Britain has celebrated its move away from absolute morality, making it a fine home for people who better themselves without concern for others.

The other story is perhaps even more interesting than the scheme to supply Iran with that critical material they need so much: Jewkilium. It shows us a bit more of how the British lion has been replaced with the British pansy, as we saw when Iran captured the British sailors a few months back.

Call to Ban Exams for Under-16s

All national exams should be abolished for children under 16 because the stress caused by over-testing is poisoning attitudes towards education, according to an influential teaching body.

In a remarkable attack on the government's policy of rolling national testing of children from the age of seven, the General Teaching Council is calling for a 'fundamental and urgent review of the testing regime'. In a report it says exams are failing to improve standards, leaving pupils demotivated and stressed and encouraging bored teenagers to drop out of school. ...

Some [teachers] are under such pressure from trying to keep schools at the top of league tables that they have gone further and fiddled results or helped children to cheat, according to Keith Bartley, chief executive of the council, the independent regulatory body set up by the government in 2000.

Yesterday, it emerged that Vanessa Rann, a 26-year-old teacher found hanged in her home, was being investigated for allegedly helping students to cheat in a GCSE exam.

Perhaps there's too much testing; perhaps some teachers and schools have lost their morals and cheated, but there are good and bad ways to respond to such a situation. This is how the lost and spineless respond.

The solution isn't to throw out testing -- testing which celebrates personal effort, competition and mental strength -- and settling for a milquetoast feel-good education experience where there is no measurement, no testing. Rather, work to make the tests more meaningful within the context of a broad educational experience.

Oh, but that would take work and require hard choices.

The solution isn't to avoid having crooked teachers by eliminating testing, it's to find the crooks and make a national shame of them, so students learn that being a crook is not the route to go. If the alternative suggested by the General Teaching Council is taken, the lesson will be that if people do immoral things, it's only because society asked too much of them.

Oh, but that would require moral judgments.

Britain has become a petri dish in the grand experiment of good vs. evil, morality vs. secular relativism and national pride vs. multi-culturalism, and the foul mold is thriving.