Sad but true:

Hostage Crisis: Britain’s response to Iran suggests the British lion now keeps its teeth in a jar. Would Winston Churchill have responded to the kidnapping of British sailors by running to the League of Nations?

Time was, the HMS Cornwall or any other British warship would have simply blown the Iranian motorboats that seized 15 British sailors out of the water. But these are the days when Western leaders run to the United Nations seeking meaningless resolutions of condemnation.

The problem with the West is we never get it. We never grasp the fact that appeasement, conciliation and endless negotiation do not work and that the only time documents achieve peace is when the words at the top read “unconditional surrender.”

It’s been 28 years since our embassy hostages were paraded on Iranian TV, and it was that weakness on our part that had tragic consequences for decades to come, culminating in the attacks of 9/11. This time it’s British sailors, and every enemy from Osama in his cave to Ahmadinejad in his bunker is taking notes.

Britain needn’t be too terribly embarrassed about their slow, excruciating journey to total emasculation, because they’re not making that shameful trip alone, and the same pissypants one-world handwringers are leading the way. America is walking in those well-trodden footsteps to second-rate power status too — and not all that far behind, either.

British sailors kidnapped, paraded for TV cameras in direct violation of so-called “international law,” tortured by way of humiliation (ie, being forced to wear the ridiculous and degrading Muslim female costume while denouncing her country on video – mortifying roundup here) — and not one single peep of condemnation from the squealing, pestilential liberal ticks that wept bitter, outraged tears over every phony instance of “mistreatment” of Islamist thugs the thugs themselves could dream up, in accordance with their training.

Blair says: “I really don’t know why the Iranian regime keep doing this. All it does is enhance people’s sense of disgust.” I can tell you why, Tony: to drive the lesson home to their subjects, present and future, of exactly who the strong horse is. Hint: it ain’t you, and it ain’t us either. Some of your countrymen do seem to remember a different and a better time, but they’re far outnumbered by the pseudopacifist, multiculti cowards who brought our once-great nations to their knees in the first place — of which this miserable worm is but one, albeit a sterling, example. Now crawl on off to the UN, Tony, and beg for another useless resolution. RINO George will help with directions if you get lost on the way.

No wonder we’re losing this damned war. We seem incapable of learning anything at all, no matter how many times or how sharply our adversaries rap us across our thick skulls with the board of education.

Update! VDH says:

Quite simply, there is now no NATO, no EU, no U.N. that can or will do anything in anyone’s hour of need.

I think he’s far too damned optimistic about the odds of the US leaping to anyone’s aid these days, and I can’t see why he included the UN in that list at all. But maybe I’m just cranky this morning. Badly though the Left has weakened us, it remains true that we’re the last, best hope even yet.

Which, given our current enfeeblement, ought to scare anyone who reveres liberty and self-determination half to death.