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nigelswift
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Edited Jun 19, 2009, 11:48
Re: In Memorian: Margaret Thatcher
Jun 19, 2009, 11:47
"So, what do you think should have been the response to the invasion?"

My opinion is that

a.) The people of the Falklands were very strongly integrated with and economically dependant upon Argentina and were content to be so. Their "Britishness" only blossomed when the invasion happened.

b.) Patriotism, IMHO, stinks and the British are world-experts at letting it stink (had Britain, for instance, been more deeply integrated into Europe they wouldn't have gone to war in the Falklands OR Iraq.)

c.) There's a body of opinion (well it's my opinion actually) that the orgy of backward 19th Century flag waving that accompanied the departure of the invasion fleet to the Falklands was us at our shameful worst.

d.) Had we not been given the intelligence help by the States (and they debated long and hard whether to do so even when we were on our way because they saw S. America as of equal, in fact greater strategic importance to them as Britain), we'd have lost and been utterly humiliated. Going to war when you simply don't know if you are going to lose disastrously is not a good move.

e.) The Argentine Junta wanted to make a prestige point to boost their domestic position and would have settled for just a symbolic toe hold. They never expected a war and didn't want one. They offered a settlement in the courts (knowing the law was on their side and knowing the courts would say "share it") and also offered the prospect of symbolic joint sovereignty pending their own full sovereignty in a few decades. Had we agreed they were willing to withdraw and they (and we) would have got all they needed.

So my response to the invasion would have been one which avoided the deaths of nearly a thousand people including a few Falkland islanders (the latter, incidentally, killed by the British, not the Argentinians).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00661/news-graphics-2008-_661518a.jpg
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