We can expect the English Right's favorite chivvier of New Labour not to change his tune about women serving in the armed forces for the fact that Faye Turney was apparently told by her captors that she was the only hostage remaining. After all, Iran would not have cordoned her off from the men and used her delicate, mommy-like sensibilities as leverage if women were never admitted to the Royal Navy in the first place, right? Whatever you think of Wheatcroft's sexual politics of warcraft, you owe it to yourself to give this remarkable paragraph a double read:
Contentious borders used to be called "debatable land," and the whole Persian Gulf is debatable water. In the vast estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates at the northern end of the Gulf, the coastline itself continually shifts, and the notional sea boundary with it. We are credulous about modern high-tech gadgetry, including the wonderful Global Positioning System, although plenty of evidence, from automobile satellite navigation to voting machines, might be a caution against blind faith in machinery. From my own modest experience of navigating a small boat, I know it is far-fetched to think you can know your exact position on the high seas to within a few hundred yards—and that may still be true even with GPS.
Allowances made for Skipper Geoffrey's experience manning dirigibles in the Persian Gulf — or, you know, Oxford Canal, or whatever — note how the first two sentences axiomatically fault the Iranians as much as they do the Brits. If the coastlines are forever changing, then what right did Iran have to nab the Royal Navy sailors and marines? Tehran no more than London could have determined the case for "trespassing." Yet that didn't stop the former from creating a two-week spectacle of an international crisis, did it?
Wheatcroft's pathetic attempt to blame the prime minister he's made a late-stage career out of reviling collapses under the weight of its own rationale. By his own admission, there's hardly anything that "vulnerable inflatable craft, little more than lightly armed dinghies" can do that could possibly be interpreted as threatening to a foreign military. Were the British attempting covert reconaissance in Iranian territory? Hardly with the martial analogue of a boogie board.
Iran is still the only one to blame for this affair, whatever you think of Tony Blair's handling of its paltry and shameful conclusion.
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