Sorry about the trite title, and also if you're already fully aware of this piece of pop trivia, but The Soldiers have released a Christmas single on top of their commercial album ( a proportion of whose sales are going to charities including Help For Heroes, the British Legion and the Army Benevolent Fund). I don't know if any fraction of the Christmas single takings is going to any charity or whether it's purely commercial, but...
Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of whiny, self-loving X Factor puppets who 'deserve to be successful' because they 'want it so much,' some people who have actually risked it all for us and for values that our entire political class is busily throwing under an avalanche of fascistic legislation; the carbon gravy train; and the slavery of paying off State debt that they are building for my daughter and her kids actually rise to the top of the, ahem, cliff this Christmas? So that when our tax-bloated, armour-denying politicians turn briefly away from their cheeseboards and port, to ask their daughters who the band are they're swooning over, then those particular daughters can say: "It's the soldiers, Daddy. You know, the ones you sent to Afghanistan?"
I'm all for this war. The enemy declared it on us and I hope that our forces go on fighting the fight. I'm also for the culture wars, and if our whole leadership is busily auctioning off our nation's future to carbon dealers, the European Empire and the kleptocrat oil states, then having real public servants make a bob or two and point out the difference between themselves and the pols would be the best Christmas present ever. Think of the dhimmis and the Gramscian Marxists and the jihadists listening to The Soldiers this festive season.
And remember that, politically speaking in today's 'Britain' , revenge is a dish best served by shoving it right up the traitor class sideways and without gravy, and with fire ants and acid thrown in their eyes.
Here’s where you can donate money to the Poppy Appeal for our servicemen and their families. What’s you money worth? Your freedom? It can be quantified – in gallons. Remember them.
And here’s why they’re doing the right thing in the right place at the right time.
LONDON – British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say Pakistan faces a serious threat from terrorism, but the country's nuclear arsenal is not at risk.
Taliban militants have launched a series of increasingly audacious attacks on military and political targets on Pakistan. On Saturday militants attacked the army headquarters, taking dozens of hostages.
At a news conference Sunday, Miliband said Pakistan faced a "mortal threat," but there was not a risk of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands.
Clinton said the U.S. had confidence in Pakistani authorities. She said terrorists were "increasingly threatening the authority of the state, but we see no evidence they are going to take over the state."
One thing you can be sure of concerning the wrong-headedness of the non-communist Left in facing evil is its essential conservative nature. They don’t believe that time passes or that uncomfortable changes happen during the passage of time. If it didn’t happen before, it won’t happen later. If it did happen before, it won’t happen again. If it happened in a small way it won’t get worse.
This explains how appeasement of Fascism worked in the 1930’s. The Left feared the probable pain and costs of small losses and if they compared that with potential gains from suppressing and preventing the future massive future losses of another world war they didn’t show any signs of it. They expressed grudging satisfactions with the status quo. Hitler could have been contained if he had been faced down. He was not and scores of millions died.
It also explains President Clinton’s repeated failure to act as if America was under concerted military and ideological attack. A chronology of Islamist attacks can be read here. The USA was in a war but it didn’t fight it, much, and treated their attackers as criminals. No forward planning. No over-view. No speculation about what might happen next. He expressed grudging satisfactions with the status quo.
Every failure to counter-attack: to have a plan to find and defeat the growing number of increasingly confident Islamists led to the moment when Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta made their dramatic protest against the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
If Secretary David Miliband and Hillary Clinton, following in this inglorious tradition, say that they have faith in Pakistan - a grudging satisfactions with the status quo - I say we should be worried.
Political Islam runs deep in Pakistan – helped to form the stat itself. Democratic institutions are skin deep and military coups are commonplace.
Take this forward in time. Imagine that our British and the American ‘peace movement’ manage to get our troops out (or mostly out) of Afghanistan. No more ‘illegal wars.’ no more ‘Blood for, er, sand,’ in Afghanistan. Neo-con hell with this kind of fine chap influencing British policy during the Cameron Governor-generalship. The Taliban take power nationwide once more. We won’t hear the screams of the doubly punished women and young men as they are forced to comply with Taliban ultra-Shia once again as the brutish morons do their bloody work. Liberal cameras will politely avert their discrete eyes from the absolute reimposition of the dictatorship, but this is sensible, Left-liberal and Right-libertarian approved realpolitik and bringing our boys home from Brown’s war.
What do the Taliban-supported Islamists in Pakistan do – grab the first camel up the pass to the new earthly paradise to be with their Afghan brothers, or call to them Come on in, the peaceful civilian population is lovely? And what would their victory mean for Pakistan’s nuclear bombs?
Evil doesn’t go away. If you don’t fight it, stamp on it, humiliate it when it’s down and attack it when it’s resurgent, it moves elsewhere because totalitarian, ideological evil is greedy.
Which is the only good British national security reason that our brave troops are in Afghanistan.
Remember them. Honour them. Remember history, and honour their mission.
Shakespeare put a speech into the mouth of Henry V at the battle of Agincourt on the 25 October 1415.
That particular war was one of dynastic pride and conquest for personal gain – the kind of warfare that our civilisation has come rightly to despise. Now we expect out just wars to be of self-defence, or survival, or liberation. Conquerors are beyond the pale – but their kinder successors are not (or shouldn’t be.)
The Saint Crispin’s Day speech plays another part in our national culture: to express not only pride in martial skill and to recognise courage and service, but to glorify ideas of nationhood: of continuity; of people and institutions coming from somewhere and being made by people to suit their present needs and the results bequeathed to us as treasures – our true heritage.
Shakespeare wrote - and his plays were performed - at a time when the idea of Englishness had emerged from two forms of government: mediaeval inernationalism (the conscious thought and political ideal of a united Christendom in Europe) and the private dominions of the landed magnates. Shakespeare was aware of something that was still informal and that would not be made real until the next royal dynasty: of Britishness. We few, we happy few in these islands of four nations were exemplified by the common soldiers, pub joke-like, with Englishmen, and an Irishman, a Scotsman, and a Welshman. He wrote confidently and proudly in the new-found patriotism of his age, and in some ways gave it its language and some of its lasting form. He wrote with the editorial approval of the State of the day (he had to, otherwise he would not have been allowed to stage his work).
It is dificult to imagine him being able to write so confidently and unequivocally about arms and the men who bear them, and civil society and civil government’s support if he was writing in today’s deliberately and treasonously equivocal days.
What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. Or feel the curses of Mussleman’s ungrateful scorn God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. For all have been stood down from lack of thrift. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Look in my parliament for such Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; And never work or thank or serve From idler’s cradle to their public grave It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires, As toys unmade by such as they; enjoyed But never earned but wished withal and given from the common purse, But if it be a sin to covet honour, (Bar a daughter’s death or sullen injury As infidel prophet and his clerics teach) I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more methinks would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, As are scribes and clerks aplenty safe at home Or town criers, players, and priests unmanly made Let him depart; his passport shall be made, And eight weeks on the morrow shall be done As swift as modern chancery allow And crowns for convoy put into his purse; Who cares from whence; not ministers civil Nor philosophers public, sage, and loving by their Daily, oft proclaimed philanthropy. We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is call'd the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Should he not need to stay in filthy hospital Or dwell amongst vagabond knaves My judges have decreed shall live as freemen As rich in rights as any Duke or armsman true, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.' And they will curse him, like as not, For blood he spilled and ne’er question why Nor wonder whence their freedom comes But as a gift from God or bounteous Nature And never think to pay or count the cost That bought their still felicity. Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words- Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester- But likelier in schools my kingdom wide Will learn other names of sages, clerics; And foremost slaves; but not of those who struck off Their chains, or why, or how. Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red. If drink be made, or law allow Its quaffing public or in houses Where weak and hurtful children dwell. This story shall the good man teach his son; Should husbands, fathers, or replacements need To live with mothers e’er again in England’s generous, charitable slums, And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, Unless the parish schools go silent When England’s kings and martial glory Need to be retold - But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; As raavagers unversed; ignorant, unlettered And base; cursed as swordmen; killers plain By those who think of peace as rain but not the work of men. For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, Which may be true if hospital bed it be; Unchanged, unwatched, unsanitary And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
