Chivalry Is Not Dead

(It is only resting until after retirement, when it has nothing to lose.)

Here is the first invasionite I've seen who would prefer to be at war with warriors, and not militate against cockroaches in human form:

General Sir Michael Rose told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved." Asked if that meant admitting defeat, the general replied: "Of course we have to admit defeat. The British admitted defeat in north America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened. "The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened. The same thing will occur after we leave Iraq." (...) When he was asked if he thought the Iraqi insurgents were right to try to force the US-led coalition out, he replied: "Yes I do. As Lord Chatham said, 'if I was an American - as I am an Englishman - as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms'. The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the Americans."

What will the sophisters, economists and calculators of Airstrip One and Crawford TX make of that , I wonder? Very likely nothing at all, for it is written and thought in an old-fashioned dialect of morality that is alien to them. Perhaps especially alien to such of them as profess with their lips to be friends of Eddie Burke.

This being the case, Mr. Rose should have explained specifically that the redcoats had/have quite as much right to put down the natives and the natives had/have to try to get rid of the redcoats. Perhaps he makes that point in his book , although there is no sign of it in the extract over at the BBC website.

We are not exactly dealing with Sir Lancelot, however, who would not have rated "force protection" as highly as the first paragraph above does, and indeed can scarcely be imagined as polling his retainers about either strategy or gentlemanliness. Oh, well, it's a start.



Descending from the lofty wind-swept heights, one would like to have some clearer idea of what Mr. Rose anticipates is now to happen in Peaceful Freedumbia than merely that the outcome will not be catastrophic. I expect that it really won't be, but also attach a pretty definite factual content to that expectation, notably that the general idea of something like poor M. al-Málikí's quasigovernment will survive and sich durchsetzen so that someday, ’in shá’ Alláh, it shall become a real government -- even as "Iraq" shall become a nation once again, though naturally a nation minus Free Kurdistan. Unfortunately most of the folks usually termed "insurgents" have rather different scenarios in mind and will applaud mine no more than either of us would applaud one featuring perpetual subjection to the extremist GOP, or "Zionists and crusaders" as perhaps they might prefer to say. We know from Mr. Rose the moralist that he thinks them warranted in resisting all the inroads of Crawford, but does Mr. Rose the geopolitician look forward positively to something of my sort, or of (some subfactionette of) the TwentyPercenters' sort, or something quite different? Mr. Rose must disagree with "the insurgents" about something or another, to say "I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do," but plainly one needs more details to understand his overall position.

Who knows, perhaps "Mr. Rose the geopolitician" does not even exist, and the proper reading of this text is that whatever may happen in Mesopotamia, Airstrip One, or perhaps "the international community," will not be adversely impacted? That's likely enough too, but it does not seem quite the proper point to centre one's Big Picture around.

Chivalry is admirable after its fashion, and it would be lovely to see a thousand times more of it than we do in an age of Big Management, yet it does not trump Politique d'abord.