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The right are right but are getting it wrong to prove themselves right. If you think that is a piece of gobbledygook, you are not wrong in coming to the right conclusion.
A good example is Leo McKinstry, who writes a weekly column published in the International Express, the sister paper of the UK’s Daily Express. This is the paper that has surprisingly fallen for every malady that has supposedly hit the fairly vigorous Donald Trump, giving him a near-death pronouncement on numerous occasions. Who knew a bruise on the hand could be potentially life threatening? That is an example of the right getting it wrong but not the one I’m about to reveal here.
Back to Leo. This gentleman is a very intelligent chap, hence you won’t find his articles in the Guardian. He is an author and has published many books. However, like the paper he writes for and his namesake, the pope, Leo has succumbed to the current political pandemic. Known as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) it affects mainly those on the left but occasionally the right also get infected. Perhaps Leo has colleagues at the Guardian with whom he has a beer now and again. Whatever the cause, and from whomever he picked it up, poor Leo has a bout of TDS.
His recent article headlined “Sitting ducks thanks to our quackers leaders” gives a clue as to the extent to which he has been mentally incapacitated by catching TDS. He opens by saying “Donald Trump’s capricious, ill-conceived war against Iran looks like it could generate the worst crisis in the global economy since the second world war. Other emergencies of the recent past, like Suez in 1956, pale beside the potential devastation that could be inflicted by the USA’s reckless adventure, including mass unemployment, crippling inflation and a collapse in living standards.” He goes on to say “Just as disturbing are the political consequences”. Reckless adventure? No it isn’t.
Where to start. Leo should remember that ‘Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ Leo is sounding like the 2026 version of Neville Chamberlain, who naively waved around a piece of paper proclaiming ‘peace in our time’ to the cheers of his equally naïve supporters. It might not, but should have, occurred to Leo that the IRGC are the modern day equivalent of Hitler. Hitler wanted race domination; the IRGC want religious domination. Anyone who can’t see that is blind to the facts. In the end one man stood in Hitler’s way and that person was Winston Churchill. Eighty years on the world still owes him an enormous debt of gratitude.
In the same way that Hitler was dealt to, so does the IRGC need stopping in their tracks. Too many ‘Neville Chamberlain’ type presidents have failed in their attempts to achieve this necessary aim. Like Chamberlain they have waved around pieces of paper, supposed agreements, plus money, and all to no avail. The terrorists in Iran took them for the fools they were and blithely marched on to achieving their goal of obtaining nuclear weapons. Anyone who doesn’t believe that is hopelessly naïve. The inaction on the part of former presidents has brought us to the point that Leo McKinstry finds so abominable. In reality, it is no more than ‘the chickens coming home to roost’.
One man stood in the way of Hitler. Now we have one man, an ardent admirer of Churchill, standing in the way of the IRGC: Donald J Trump. If the IRGC is prevented from manufacturing nuclear weapons, history will give Trump a vote of thanks, as we all should. The real question is not whether the IRGC would develop nuclear weapons, but rather would they use them. Those of us who live in the real world would unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. Those who choose to ignore reality would answer in the negative.
Leo the writer and Leo the Pope are both correct in their writing and their religious speak. There are dreadful consequences to war, both economically and politically, and praying for peace is a good thing, but neither changes the reality of what the world is dealing with. Trump is unequivocally correct: the IRGC cannot be allowed a nuclear weapon. The Iranian terrorists have given two fingers to diplomacy time and again, so Trump has invoked the only means left: the military option, while still, fruitlessly in my view, negotiating. Leo McKinstry calls it “reckless”. I wonder if the IRGC firing a nuclear weapon at the UK would cause him to offer up the same description.
You don’t go to war without the possibility of facing the consequences that Leo writes about. War always comes with a price, but you have to weigh up if is it a price worth paying. Churchill thought so (I much prefer the English language to German) and so does Trump. There is also an irony in Leo’s article. He goes on to talk about how this “reckless adventure”, as he calls it, has shown up the lack of investment in the military and how ill prepared for war the UK really is. He tells us that at the end of the second world war Britain had a formidable fleet of 2,300 vessels. Today there are just 63. Add in 25 battle-ready tanks and 151 combat aircraft, down from 463 in 1990 and that is it.
Leo is right in the substance of his article but wrong to describe the means by which a terrorist goal would be stopped as a “reckless adventure”. As Leo points out Trump has put NATO (of which the UK is a member) and Europe, on notice as to their military deficiencies. Maybe his headline should have more appropriately read as:
‘Britain owes Trump a vote of thanks for the wake-up call’.
