Perils of the Echo Chamber

Andrew Sullivan and Charles Krauthammer have me confused. It seems I’ve accidentally slipped into a parallel universe in which Ahmadinejad won the struggle over the captive British sailors, Blair and the U.K. were completely humiliated, and the whole ordeal only served to magnify the moral shortcomings of the West. The paradox: Ahmadinejad schedules of day of childish photo ops in order to make it look like he’s won, and because he’s trying so hard to make it look like he’s won, he’s won? The media, even the new media, have an irritating habit of conflating “looks like it” with “it is.” I stand by my previous assertion that Blair handled the situation soberly and skillfully. New revelations from the Guardian back me up:

In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation. […]

The British declined the offer and said the US could calm the situation by staying out of it. London also asked the US to tone down military exercises that were already under way in the Gulf. […]

At the request of the British, the two US carrier groups, totalling 40 ships plus aircraft, modified their exercises to make them less confrontational.

The British government also asked the US administration from Mr Bush down to be cautious in its use of rhetoric, which was relatively restrained throughout.