Like Mark and Victor, I too have a very bad feeling about Gordon Brown. Those Orwellian language changes spooked me, as did the appointment of M.M. Brown. The obvious intent is to reduce the whole unpleasantness to a policing problem, which is what they did with the I.R.A., and Mark is entirely right to stress the enormous differences. I too admire the British security forces, but I don’t think they are the best counterterrorist force in the world, that medal goes to the Israelis, surely. And Israel, not Britain, is the lab experiment for what we will face: enemies within and without, a big border to control, and real battles to fight, lest the enemy truly threaten our survival as a free nation.
Maybe the Gordon Brown government will come to be seen as a test case for the multiculti Left’s approach to “the war (shhh),” and if it fails quickly enough, it might help us sort out the real choices for November ‘08. After all, British failures have often been inspirational for America, sigh.