We admire speaking softly and carrying a big stick, while deploring speaking loudly and carrying a small stick, but the British apparently are both speaking softly and carrying a small stick. This incident is sort of a scraping off the veneer of a generally known, but little discussed truth: that the U.K. has become often not the exception to, but the nexus of, a new sort of European thinking antithetical to the U.S. Blair’s stalwart role in Iraq has disguised that fact; but any who read the U.K papers, both right and left, look at the opinion polls, or consider the Islamic problems in London, can easily conclude that Anglo-American exceptionalism is coming to an end for existential reasons that transcend this administration.

Since 9/11 we have been lectured on the advantages of “soft” power, especially in the context of the economic engine of the EU used for moral purposes. But if the Europe Union is still extending trade credits to a belligerent that has committed an act of piracy against a fellow member, then there is neither soft or hard power, but no power at all.

In the context of the 300, we can now resurrect an old word from Herodotus–”Medize”–to describe modern Western states’ capitulation to and accommodation with autocratic Persia.Since Ahmadinejad cut his teeth on hostage-taking, we should remember how that mess finally ended–with the assumption of office by Ronald Reagan, whom the clerics apparently feared was crazy enough to bomb them. So to get the hostages released, will it take some announcement from a would-be Prime Minister that the “matter will end” when he or she takes over? Probably not. This “incident” has proved a multilateral trifecta: a patrol sanctioned by the U.N. gets no support from the U.N., a member of the EU is left hanging in the interest of EU trade, a NATO member finds no NATO allies, other than the U.S., to offer support. So what is the purpose of these alphabetic organizations? Perhaps Ahmadinejad should start holding seminars, Henry Kissinger style, to instruct the Islamic world on how to deal with the West, given his instincts that Western rhetoric is in inverse proportion to Western willingness to stand up for a principle.

We were all waiting for the final shoe to fall: It is America’s fault. And sure enough the Independent headline blaming us came in on schedule. The story line was predictable: We apparently tried to detain those masterminding the Iranian efforts to kill Americans in Iraq, then “botched” this illegal effort at getting “legitimate” diplomats, and thus left the poor British to sweep up the mess. So Bush — not lax officers, insane rules of engagement, or Iranian perfidy and aggression – did it after all.