Britain had stated quite clearly they would take action outside the exclusion zone if necessary.. why would the Argentine mainland be exempt?
And - equally - to look at the other side (
after all Argentina DID start it - but I don't see you criticising them?) ....until they lost of course it gave Galtieri an "external threat" to whip up nationalistic fervour about... so that folks would forget the dreadful state of the economy (and everything else) under his inept regime....
Britain may have had reasons on top of "British they are, and British they shall remain".. (Great line though eh??
) but to ignore the political posturings and motivations on the other side is unfair and one sided.
Do we have to mention it again?.. Argentina
initiated the military action....
Reminds me of the famous speech by Arthur Harris..
"The Germans seem to have started this war thinking that they were going to bomb everybody else and that nobody was going to bomb them..... They have sowed the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind"
I am mystified as to why countries like Britain (and the Coalition countries in the Gulf War of 91 for that matter) are apparently the ones who are required to justify everything......when the aggression was from the "other side"
Where were all these questions and criticisms (and street marches) protesting Argentinas invasion of the Falklands.. or Iraq's of Kuwait? I sailed on an Aussie warship in Oct 90.. heading for the Gulf... and our
departure was protested... even though we were going to liberate a country... not to invade one -
as Iraq had done.. where was the anger at THEM?
Where were the "No War on Kuwait" stickers?
My point about the planned SAS raid on the Argentine mainland was that it appeared to me (as a non military person) to be extremely risky.
I dunno but the idea I had tucked away somewhere was that we are supposedly protecting our western democratic society and right to free speech (notwithstanding Howard's sedition laws now repealed by Rudd), elected gov's etc. In that context it is an inevitable consequence that actions of Gov be tested, analysed, discussed, debated, etc, etc. That includes military actions, suspected mistruths, etc, etc. We ask these questions about our own country because our Gov is accountable to us!!! ( I am British and Australian so feel atliberty to question and debate the actions of both).
Now the original post was about Greenpeace, and a subsequent one claimed they were violent and lost or some such thing.
My counter point was that it is ludicrous to claim Greenpeace to be "violent" given the greater political context. Since the OP was about LHR and UK my examples were based on such.
Rightly or wrongly the Argentine Gov of its day claimed it had a legitimate rationale to occupy Islas Malvinas (as they prefer to call them).
Rightly or wrongly Israel claims it has a legitimate mandate for a country much larger than that envisaged in the post war carve up.
Rightly or wrongly US money, arms and explosives crossed the Atlantic to nourish the IRA in 30 yrs of terrorism.
Rightly or wrongly millions of Iranians and Iraqis died in a war in which British/french and US happily sold weapons, whilst bolstering up Saddam because they didn't like the Ayatollah after the the mid 70s overthrow of the (non democratic) regime of the Shah.
None of these actions are dictated by some moral imperative so this PR spin of "liberation" is a load of twaddle (I say that without implying any disrespect to the servicemen and women engaged in such scenarios) - it's all about political, financial and corporate expediency.
The point is that getting high and mighty about some rather tepid illegal action by an environmental group (which I personally don't agree with as stated above), which ironically, is motivated by a genuine concern and ideal, is somewhat hypocritical IMHO.
Now as several have observed, engaging in such a lawful land buying strategy is very smart, whether or not you agree with the need to intervene to stem a perceived (by some) threat of global warming - it is legal, headline catching and potentially effective. I see the right side of politics going way beyond this to line the pockets of a few from issues at a local to Fed to International level. And that's driven by GREEED not idealism. One tiny example the former leader of the Lib party in QLD, Bruce Flegg had $16m interest in Cubie Station (cotton plantation) at a time when water resources was a hot election topic (and refused to sell to the Beattie Gov so they could buy back water).
That said, and in the interests of a sliver of comic relief, I once tried to tell someone dressed up as a koala in North Sydney collecting donations that koalas weren't technically "endangered" and the person was so aggrieved that I thought I was going to be attacked by a giant koala!!!
