Revising history

First of all, thanks to everyone for their best wishes and supportive comments. Mrs Stan remain very unwell, but is making progress albeit slowly. Sometimes it's two steps forward and one step back - sometimes it's one step forward and two back - but there are occasional glimpses of the woman I married starting to show through. It's been particularly hard on the kids though - it can't have helped that this happened while they were on summer holidays - but they are coping well under the circumstances.

However, rather than dwell on the problems of the Stan household, I'd rather talk about something which is currently happening in Britain. To be honest, I've been rather surprised by it as the sort of thing that is currently taking place is more often put off until a more .... appropriate time. I'm talking about the progressives habit of rewriting history.

Progressives hate Britain. They hate England even more, but essentially they hate anything to do with our country which is not of their making or choosing - and that means anything that happened before progressivism took its death grip on our nations throat - i.e. anything before 1960, roughly speaking.

In particular they despise anything that is positive about Britain or British history. They'd like you to think that everything pre-progressivism was bad - health care was bad, education was bad, inequality was bad, social mobility was bad and so on. Unfortunately for progressives, historical evidence often disputes their depiction of pre-progressive Britain - so what they do is rewrite history to change that view.

It's not that hard to do. All you have to do is wait until everyone who might possibly remember what life was like in the past is dead then get someone to write a book telling the "true" story of the bad old days before we had social liberalism. These books are often based on second or third hand anecdotal evidence - i.e. the thoughts and opinions not of people who were there at the time, but people who knew people who were there at the time - and then published as non-fiction.

As I said, this is easy to do when those who were really there are dead - and even easier if they are long since dead - but it is a little trickier if there are still some who are still alive. Which is why I was surprised last week to find that the task of rewriting the history of WW2 is already in progress - with particular emphasis on transforming the crucial and decisive Battle of Britain into a "folk myth".

Robin Hood is a folk myth. There is no evidence to suggest he ever existed let alone did the things he was supposed to have done - but the Battle of Britain was not only a real event it was a real event captured on film and photograph and which those who were there at the time still remember. Even my mother recalls the time a "Spitfire" downed a "Messerschmidt" near Slough (they may not have been a Spitfire and a Messerschmidt, but to a very young girl every British fighter plane was a Spitfire and every German aeroplane was a Messerschmidt).

Incidentally, even popular folk myths are not immune from progressive revisionism. In its last incarnation on television, Robin Hood was depicted using a Saracen bow rather than the traditional English longbow with the explanation that it was "more powerful". It wasn't. The English longbow was the last word in weaponry back in those days as the French knights of Agincourt would testify (Agincourt itself being subjected to revisionism in recent years). The only advantage of the Saracen bow was that it was easier to use while mounted on a horse due to its shorter length - but there wasn't a chance in hell that someone like Robin Hood would have used one in preference to the English longbow. It would be like a sniper today giving up his telescopic sight equipped long range rifle in preference for a handgun.

Anyway, over the last week I heard and saw various attempts to suggest that the Battle of Britain was neither crucial or decisive or even particularly important in the grand scheme of things that was World War 2 - and the cheerleader of this revisionism was the dear old BBC. Unfortunately for Auntie and the rest of the progressive scum who want to do this country down, there are still sufficient men and women around who were not only alive at the time, but actually took an active part in defending this nation from Nazi tyranny.

This won't stop the progressives, though. They planted the seeds of doubt and over the coming years they will feed and water them. It is the intention of progressives to destroy the Battle of Britain as an icon of our history - it will no doubt be replaced by something more acceptable to the progressive mind set. I don't know what that will be, but it will almost certainly involve women, ethnic minorities or homosexuals. By the time of the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Britain it will be a celebration of the part played in victory over Nazism by transgendered Moslem immigrants.

No such thing as an "unwinnable" war

If you've been paying attention to the news at all over the last couple of weeks you must have noticed that the term "unwinnable war" is being applied more and more to our mission in Afghanistan.

It's a stupid phrase because there is no such thing as an unwinnable war. At the end of 1940 the war must have seemed "unwinnable" to the British people. By the end of 1941 the war must have seemed "unwinnable" to the Soviet people - but both eventually prevailed over their enemies.

All wars can be won - it just depends on the strategy and tactics applied. What you actually have are losing strategies and tactics or winning strategies and tactics. If your strategy is failing to achieve the objectives and the tactics are resulting in severe casualties then you need to address that strategy and those tactics - or take advantage of your enemies mistakes in their strategy and tactics.

The truth of Afghanistan - regardless of whether you think we should be there or not - is that our strategy is undefined and our tactics are obviously wrong. First of all, you can not win a war with a political strategy. The overriding strategy must be military. If we insist on pursuing this mission we must face the fact that the Afghan people are neither ready nor capable of governing their country themselves.

The discredited President and his abject, corrupt government must be replaced by a military governance. We ARE an occupying force and an occupying force must take control. Military commanders must have complete control over all areas and be free to take the decisions necessary to achieve objectives.

As for our tactics - well, we keep taking areas which we then withdraw from allowing the enemy to reclaim that land without any effort. Imagine if we had done the same against Nazi Germany? We'd still have a million soldiers camped on the borders of Holland, Belgium and France today!

Our strategy and tactics in Afghanistan are not working. It's always hard - if not impossible - with this style of warfare to achieve success. The only way you can do it is to apply tactics that work and we have only one example where this has been done to a successful conclusion - Malaya.

What we need is an updated version of the "Briggs Plan" - whereby the strategy was to deprive the enemy of resources and safety. Deprive them of food and people and harass them at every opportunity so that they never have a moments respite.

We're not doing that now and as long as we don't do that this war will remain unwinnable.

Not making history

There was an interesting article in the Daily Mail last Saturday regarding the D-Day celebrations and the way the original event has been "Americanised".

There is no doubt that Hollywood blockbusters such as Saving Private Ryan and the TV mini-series Band Of Brothers are responsible for an unmistakable - and untruthful - Americanisation of the Normandy landings.

To be honest, I agree with most of what Ken Ford says - particularly about the average French citizen being eternally grateful to the British, American and Canadian men who sacrificed their lives to liberate France - but I do take issue over his criticisms of Hollywood. Yes, it is true that US films tend to overplay the role of the USA in the war, but as they are American companies making films primarily for an American audience then why shouldn't they?

The truth is that British film makers gave up making films like "Saving Private Ryan" decades ago - preferring instead to make dismal films filled with post-modern irony and/or leftist propaganda. Twenty seven years after the Falklands War we still haven't had a decent movie about the liberation and the incredible feats of our soldiers, sailors and airmen during that conflict.

Rather than blaming the yanks for the fact that many kids grow up today not knowing what part the British played in D-Day we ought to be wondering why our movie makers would rather celebrate the drugs culture, abortion or alcohol dependency rather than make films which tell the true story of the part played by British people in shaping history.

I should point out that this is in no way a criticism of the documentary makers who've made some very good programmes about our part in the war - such as "D-Day to Berlin" - but a more direct criticism of popular culture and the cinema which is, after all, where most kids get their ideas about history from these days.