Sir John Woodward - Bosham, Hampshire - has a letter in today's Daily Telegraph, writing:
"I really do not see the French coming to our aid with their aircraft carrier and her fixed-wing aircraft. With our land and air forces already over-committed in Afghanistan and Libya, with the defence budget still shrinking, our submarine force more than halved, our destroyer and frigate force halved, our carrier force more than halved in terms of deck availability and completely discarded in terms of fixed-wing assets – the answer appears to be that we can do precisely nothing other than accede to US pressure.
But surely the islanders’ wishes should be paramount? Surely they are more deserving of our continued support than the wretched citizens of Afghanistan and Libya? Surely, I and some 25,000 others did not fight a nasty little war for this?
Government – get your Coalition ass in gear."
When one looks at the nadir to which this country has sunk, courtesy of the ineptitude of our political elite, no doubt there are others who will be asking why they fought a bloody nasty big war 70 years ago!
2 comments:
Seeing as we are speaking of the Falklands here I am sure the French would not be willing to assist us. History tells us that France always acts in France's interests which means that any joint action will have to further French interests, our interests would count for nothing.
Even so it must be remembered that without the personal chemistry between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan the US would not have assisted us the first time and without US logistical and intelligence support we might well have not succeeded then. In truth we had insufficient naval assets for the job and while it was a magnificent achievement to pull it off it was still a pretty close run thing, our biggest asset being the inability of the Argentinian forces on the Islands to mount an adequate defence.
Certainly things have only got worse since, thanks to the policies of ALL main stream parties and, it should be noted, the serial ineptitude of our own brass.
PC: As always you make good points. It should of course be the first aim of any politician to secure their country and any outposts - something as you say which our politicos have failed miserably to do.
Perhaps they should be the first armed and shipped out to defend us? They treat us as voting fodder so let us treat them as cannon fodder!
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