Tuesday 1 March 2011

Time's swift chariot

In the old days, it took years before a new Prime Minister started invading Arabic and Islamic countries.

Although Thatcher 'let' the Americans use their UK airbases to bomb Libya (a mere three years after the Yanks had invaded the British dependency of Grenada without even mentioning it to her) in 1986, she didn't actually invade anywhere. She planned the Kuwait operation, but was booted out (after 11 years) before UK forces replaced the Iraqi dictatorship with the previous dictators. So although John Major technically did invade within a few weeks of taking control, it was already a done deal.

Blair of course invaded as many countries as he could find, but I guess Kosovo was the first part-Muslim one he dropped in on - 1999, two years after he was elected, and he left it until 2001 and 2003 to invade Afghanistan and Iraq respectively. He took a very different approach to Libya, as we all know.

So Cameron's record of getting the SAS into Libya within a year of reaching power is pretty impressive. The only way Ed Miliband can top that is to invade Oman now, before he even wins an election. Seriously: it's a small and undemocratic regime which has alienated its people ripe for liberation.

Just like New Labour.

Boom Boom.

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