Brendan O’Neil argues that the current hostage crisis in Britain just shows how impotent the war in Iraq has made Britain since all that the British can do is to watch their 14 captured seamen paraded on Iranian television and to be outraged at the evilness of Iran:
The Iranian captive crisis has provided some striking snapshots of Britain’s standing: its isolation post-Iraq; the emptiness of its foreign policy; a view of the military as victimised, vulnerable. The affair shows Britain is the loudmouth of international affairs - it talks big, but it lacks the strength or coherence to back the talk up.
What I wonder is whether Blair’s weakness isn’t having a negative impact on the situation in the sense that the Iranians knows that he doesn’t have the support of his people and that he is his way out and cannot therefore afford to make the mistake of confronting him. One of the biggest drawbacks of having an impotent leader at the top of an important such as Britain is precisely that they can’t deal with any crisis or with any international issue precisely because their interlocutors have no faith in their ability to keep their word and to act.
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