British Public - Apathetic or Afraid?

I was talking to a young man in my office today. He is concerned that the Bush Administration is going to war with Iran. I assured him that was not going to happen. I could be completely wrong but this British sailor crisis will not be the precipitant. The British people seem to be either apathetic or too frightened by the prospect of a firm Falklands type reaction. There is no hue and cry for action. I would be shocked if we see anything more than jaw jaw.

Where is the outrage? James Forsyth
Spectator.co.uk

One doesn’t need to be Lord Palmerston thundering about ‘civis Romanus sum’ and ‘the strong arm of England’ during the Don Pacifico affair to feel enraged by Iran’s capture and detention of 15 British sailors and marines. Yet the general reaction has been one of indifference. One looks in vain for mass demonstrations outside the Iranian embassy or any other signs of solidarity with our men and women in uniform.

The incident has revealed a country disconnected from its armed forces and deeply ambivalent about its global role. The lack of popular outrage here is quite incredible. According to eyewitness accounts, the Iranians crossed into Iraqi territorial waters and abducted at gunpoint British troops who were operating at the request of the United Nations and the Iraqi government. Then they moved their prisoners to Tehran and denied the British government consular access to them. If the accounts are right — and they are backed up by the master of the ship they were boarding — then the Iranians committed an act of war in snatching the Britons. Last summer, the kidnapping of two of its soldiers caused Israel to go to war with Hezbollah.

The lack of public anger is less surprising, however, when you consider that we have known for months that British troops are almost certainly being killed by militias supplied and trained by Iran. The same morning that the British sailors were seized, one of the most senior British officers in Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel Justin Maciejewski, reported that the ‘vast majority’ of attacks on British troops were being funded by Iran.

The unpalatable truth is that both the public and the political class are largely indifferent to a hostile power murdering British troops. It is hard to imagine this being the case in the past.

Read more.

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Now that the fact that the Sailors were under orders not to resist the Iranians, why would anyone think that the Brits would suddenly find their manhood and do something now?

Ahmadinejad now knows that he can quite easily keep oil prices high. The oil markets only need the slightest excuse to jack prices up and it will be easier for Iran to keep the prices up than for Saudi Arabia to force them done. Damn em all!