The 30th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War and amongst all of the maudlin or jingoistic stuff in the media perhaps we should ponder what our reactions might be if a similar situation were to happen today. At the time I hated the Thatcher government and everything that they stood for but could see that if I were a Falklands Islander fearful at the thought of being governed by Galteri's military dictatorship I would certainly have been cheering on the approach of the task force. A few weeks and nine hundred British and Argentinian deaths later and it was all over. Here in Britain the post Falklands euphoria led to a huge surge in Thatcher's popularity and gave her the confidence to push on with Thatcherism red in tooth and claw. For the Argentinians, national humiliation was to be followed by the collapse of the junta and the rebirth of democracy. Was any of it worth the loss of all those young lives?
Hindsight is a wonderful gift. At the time there was total confusion on the left to the extent that some so called revolutionary socialists actually voiced support for a fascist dictatorship. Nothing that has happened since 9/11 leads me to think that it would be very different today.
1 comment:
Another "Falklands" became the Holy Grail that inspired Major and Blair - more so Blair, who became a pro-sabre rattler and the scourge of the weakest targets available to him ... please let it not inspire the current rabble further than the Libyan bloodbath.
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