Pitiful "London can take it" nonsense...

In 1940, the British empire stood alone. Defeated in war, unable to prevent the hun from bombing London, the great Churchill made a virtue out of endurance. Dunkirk and the East End became examples because Britain's weakness meant they could not be avoided.

But Churchill knew that the making of virtue from necessity was a dangerous fraud. "Wars are not won by evacuation", he said; and when he spoke of the finest hour and the debt owed the few, he referred to those who killed Nazis, not those who nazis killed. And when he did pay tribute to our endurance he always made it clear that the first goal was testing the enemy's ability to do the same.

Bliar, Livingstone, and all the other bien pensant accommodators are weak. They are wrong to only speak of how good we are at suffering. It sends a bad message to our enemies and a worse one to us.

Our culture has become so obsessed with the virtues of the downtrodden that we now see being beaten as morally better than winning victory. We have such contempt for the things that gave us success- lack of nuance, focus on the goal, self confidence - that we forget that others have and value these things. The enemies- moslems, Chinese tyrants, or whoever- DO live in a black and white world. THEY know weakness when they see it. It's good to not be afraid, I suppose. But what good is it in isolation? Better that we should be feared.

It's the old story. We are better than they are, and we really do try to avoid wholesale slaughter. Maybe they will shrink before our moral power. It's a nice fantasy. "London can take it, we'll go back to the desert now."

The historical precedent is.... hmmmm....