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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
The BBC’s link to a John Simpson column:
Not quite Vietnam – the war in Iraq defies all predictions
And what Simpson actually wrote:
“The situation in Iraq is nothing like the Vietnam War, and it will not be.”
Simpson has other views besides, not all of them happy reading, but balanced and reasonable. Whoever wrote that headline/link, however, might be one of the 3,780 BBC staffers who face the axe.
(Via Alan R.M. Jones)
- Nope, the dipstick who wrote that headline is one of the few guaranteed to keep their job. This is the BBC we’re talking about…Posted by richard mcenroe on 03/21 at 09:57 PM • permalink
- There ought to be a corollary to Godwin’s Law for idiots that must compare everything to Vietnam.Posted by Spiny Norman on 03/21 at 10:27 PM • permalink
- In the humble opinion of an American, they should fire everyone at the BBC who had nothing to do with Fawlty Towers.Posted by zeppenwolf on 03/21 at 11:12 PM • permalink
- Interesting that those who strongly disagreed with the author did so on the basis that he wasn’t condemning the war outright. In other words, they didn’t like the fact that he presented balance.Posted by Hamish McFootpath on 03/21 at 11:20 PM • permalink
- Another inaccurate but true statement.Posted by Mystery Meat on 03/21 at 11:44 PM • permalink
- John Simpson doesn’t get it entirely correct. The Sunni population, to a certain degree, disenfranchised themselves by (mostly) boycotting the elections at the urging of their mullahs. They wouldn’t have achieved a majority through the elections, but they could have put themselves somewhere in that 16% for bargaining power. Now they can’t. Some of that anger is “blame projection” for their own stupidity.
At the same time, there’s evidence that the Sunni-Shia split in Iraq (for example, Captain’s Quarters had some good comments about this a while back) isn’t as serious as outsiders would have it. National unity—in some form—seems to be a higher priority.
So while Sunni anger has to be considered, part of the solution is “Get over it, Bubba, you shot yourself in the foot.” It’s probably not the show stopper he describes.
Otherwise, it’s a good article.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 03/22 at 01:08 AM • permalink
- I suggest you all go out and buy the DVD of “The last Goon Show” in which Peter Sellers is seen how to properly enunciate the Bee Bee Cee Beeb, or whatever.
Unfortunately it is from the Eye-Bee Cee-Eye shops but Collins and others have allowed ABC commercial to sell their wares at the usual egalitarian prices.
- I liked to this post at WILLisms.com weekly roundup of classiness:
http://www.willisms.com/archives/2005/03/classiness_all.html
It’s weird when the left-wing becomes the orthodoxy in need of serious challenge.
It’s weird when the left-wing becomes the orthodoxy in need of serious challenge.
Why is that weird? I’m in my thirties, and it’s been that way all my life.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 03/22 at 02:27 PM • permalink
- “Viet Nam, Viet Nam, Viet Nam. We’ve all been there.” — Michael Herr, Dispatches, before he admitted that he may have been there but he made up the stories about what he saw…Posted by richard mcenroe on 03/22 at 09:19 PM • permalink
- The amusing thing is that the BBC staff are thinking of striking over the cuts (typical civil servant behaviour). What a great way of convincing the great British public how utterly irrelevant the BBC has become.Posted by Andrew Ian Dodge on 03/24 at 11:51 AM • permalink
