Three cheers to the yachtsmen of the Royal Southern Yacht Club who raised £56,000 for wounded servicemen and women. It was reassuring to know such support still exists in this nominally Christian country for our state-financed ‘terrorists’. For this is how our servicemen and women are seen by an increasingly vociferous, and not-so minor minority of radical muslims, born here and practising their faith in peace.
Last month the Royal Anglian Regiment came face to face with such protestors when they marched through their home town of Luton.
Yet, serious-minded people, including many in the services themselves, will agree that those demonstrators have a point. The Royal Anglians were returning from the one overseas conflict which is, even now, difficult to justify; Iraq.
Many tens of thousands of children, their mothers and their ailing grandparents have been killed in that war. A war, we were told, would root out weapons of mass destruction. A war which America tried to tell us, was linked to Islamic terrorism and, more directly to 9/11. None of this is true.
Had they been returning from Afghanistan – though this is a futile war which cannot be won – they would have at least been able to claim the moral high ground. For this is a country which does support terrorists, but which does not have weapons of mass destruction and therefore is invadable and can supply the need to be seen ‘to be doing something’.
The one country which the western allies are unlikely to set foot in – though it is near to having both weapons of mass destruction and major support for anti-western terrorists, is Iran and we have the very sensible Barack Obama to thank for that. He got in just in time before the maniac George Bush could light any more fires.
Probably the most dangerous country in the world is now Pakistan, it has nuclear weapons and has fallen partly into the hands of militant Islamists: a knock on effect of chasing the Taleban out of Afghanistan.
Pray Obama can find a way through this hellish maze for come the day NATO feels the need to ‘support’ a pro-western regime in Pakistan, the Royal Southern Yacht Club will need to raise 100,000 times the amount it did recently to Help our Heroes.