Kings used to ride to war at the head of their army

LONDON, Feb. 28 -- Prince Harry has been fighting on the front lines in Afghanistan for 10 weeks, his presence there kept secret until Thursday in a remarkable deal between the British military and news media.

British military officials confirmed that Harry, 23, third in line to the British throne, deployed to Afghanistan on Dec. 14 and has been fighting Taliban forces from a forward operating base in southern Helmand province.

News of Harry's deployment immediately became sensational news here and rekindled an emotional debate about whether the red-haired second son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana should be risking his life in war.

When the news was posted Thursday on the Drudge Report Web site, British newspapers and television stations instantly rolled out extensive special reports on the first British royal to see combat since the Falklands War more than 25 years ago.

Those reports included lengthy taped interviews with Harry just before his deployment in December and last week at his Afghan base. Photos and video showed Harry firing a machine gun, patrolling on foot in full combat gear in an Afghan village and washing his socks in a camp sink.

"All my wishes have come true," Harry told reporters in last week's camp interview, wearing a brown military T-shirt and camouflage pants and noting that he had not showered in four days.

"It's very nice to be sort of a normal person for once; I think it's about as normal as I'm going to get," said Harry, now addressed with his rank as Cornet Wales. "It's much better being here experiencing it rather than hearing all the stories of people coming back."

"Prince Hal at last!" said Robert Lacey, a noted royal biographer, referring to Shakespeare's famous warrior prince.

Harry's military adventures have been tabloid fodder in Britain since last year, when military commanders decided to deploy him to Iraq, then changed their minds in the face of extensive publicity. Officials said Harry could too easily become an irresistible target for enemy forces, putting himself and his fellow soldiers at unnecessary risk.

In the December interview, one of the most extensive of his life, Harry said he considered leaving the army after being denied an Iraq deployment. The reason he didn't, he said, was "the possibility of this" mission to Afghanistan.

"I would never want to put someone else's life in danger when they have to sit next to the bullet magnet," he said. "But if I'm wanted, if I'm needed, then I will serve my country as I signed up to do."

Perhaps the most startling disclosure Thursday was not that Harry finally got his wish to see combat, but that Britain's famously feisty media agreed, en masse, to keep quiet about it.

Harry and his older brother, William, are tabloid favorites because of their youthful good looks, their status as sons of one of the world's most famous women and their appetite for late-night drinking sessions at London's most exclusive nightclubs.

The idea that Britain's diverse and highly competitive media outlets could keep a secret about anything struck many observers as remarkable -- particularly when that secret was England's favorite young hell-raising party boy.

"It makes me wonder what else is going on," said John Harmer, 30, a London office worker. "I don't think it can be the first time" that the media have agreed to keep information from the public.

Some wondered whether an agreement among leading media outlets to withhold information would damage the media's credibility. "One wonders whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust media bosses again," TV broadcaster Jon Snow wrote in his blog. "Or perhaps this was a courageous editorial decision to protect this fine young man?"

Prince Harry put on his country's uniform and served his nation in combat. He deserves the gratitude and respect of the British people. The British media did the right thing and they also deserve the gratitude and respect of the British people.

While the people certainly do have the right to know that a royal prince was sent to war they do not have the right to know it while he is still deployed and that knowledge would make him he entire focus of the enemies efforts, to either kill or better yet capture him.

While I wish no ill to his older brother William I believe that Harry would make a fine king one day.

Its not really a threat if you can't back it up

From The New York Times:

LONDON, March 27 — Tensions escalated between Iran and the West on Tuesday over 15 Britons held by the Iranians, with Prime Minister Tony Blair warning that Britain’s campaign to free them would move into a “different phase” if they were not released.

[. . .]

Mr. Blair told GMTV television on Tuesday that Britain was trying “to make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released and that there is absolutely no justification for holding them.”

“I hope we manage to get them to realize they have to release them,” he said. “If not, then this will move into a different phase, but at the moment what we’re trying to do is make sure that that diplomatic initiative works.”

Officials in his office and at the Foreign Office insisted that he was referring specifically to a tougher diplomatic posture, not to military or other more confrontational means. The American naval exercises in the Persian Gulf were scheduled long before the British soldiers were seized, so the timing is coincidental.

Margaret Beckett, Britain’s foreign secretary, who is visiting Turkey, phoned her counterpart in Tehran on Tuesday and “spoke in very robust terms reiterating the U.K.’s concern about the continued detention of our personnel,” a Foreign Office spokesman in London said, speaking in return for anonymity.

I think that we can see here what the outlines of the "different phase" will be. I fully expect the British to move from "robust terms" to the full deployment of "harsh language" very soon if these servicemen aren't returned.

It wasn't always like this. In the old days of the British Empire a full military expedition would already be assembling to give the Iranians a spanking that they would never forget. Even as recently as the Thatcher era this kind of provocation would have been met with overwhelming force. But now the British have neither the will nor the ability.

I know that the timing of this is centered on the UN's vote to place some mostly hollow sanctions on the Iranians over their nuclear weapons program, but the choice of British sailors and Marines rather than American is due largely to the British government's decision to draw down its forces in Iraq.

There is an old saying in the Middle East, "a falling camel attracts many knives". Blair's decision to get out of Iraq was seen as weakness by the Tehran regime and to a culture which believes that the best possible time to kick someone is when they are already down that made British forces an irresistible target.