The West needs a defence system that works

Link: The West needs a defence system that works | International News | News | Telegraph.

Condoleeza Rice's article is itself of no particular interest. It's addressed more to a certain foreign government than to the readers of the Daily Telegraph. It is no doubt a minor part of a major diplomatic effort.

The comments posted on it are fascinating however.

To judge by them, the UK is populated with semi-literate anti-Zionists. Who are all these people with the leisure during working hours to tell Ms Rice to have children, to call her a c*** and to call the rest of the Bush administration "facists" (sic)?

I have sympathy with those commenters who ask the question (more or less politely) "How can we be sure you are correctly assessing the threat from Iran when you so misjudged that from Iraq?" It's a fair point and one which Ms Rice needs to answer. The Bush and Blair governments have been left (by their dishonesty, their credulity or the failings of their intelligence services) with a credibility problem.

If Iran is the threat she suggests, that credibility problem makes it more difficult to defend our countries. For that, the two governments are to blame and Ms Rice must take her share.

However it's amazing to see, fewer than 20 years after Communist dupes in Britain were suggesting the moral equivalence of the USA and the USSR, new dupes are already doing the same for the USA and an Iran led by an open proponent of genocide.

Comments

[WillS]

"The comments posted on it are fascinating however.To judge by them, the UK is populated with semi-literate anti-Zionists"

I think you've run a blog long enough to know that commentators are not an accurate representation of *anything*.

[pommygranate]

Tom

And that, in a nutshell, is the greatest tragedy of the Iraq war. The loss of credibility of Western governments and the raising of doubt in ordinary folk's minds.

"You lied to me about Iraq. You're full of shit",
really is a fair point.

think im up on BlogPower now. thanks for your help.

[Tom Paine]

WillS, yes I do know that. There was a smidgen of irony in my "...to judge by them..." observation. I don't think Britain is full of such people. I just think they make more noise. One of the Telegraph commenters is a Muslim consultant from Aberdeen. Google him and you will find him adopting Islamist positions on various newspaper websites, as well as politicising (religiousifying?) medical journals.

Pommygranate, thanks for your precis of my carefully neutral version of the sensible question to be inferred from many of the Telegraph comments. Yes you are now in Blogpower and your feed is up on "The Blogpower Express". Welcome!