25 years ago today Argentina invaded a group of islands thousands of miles away from Britain in the misguided belief that we would abandon our countrymen who lived there. We did not, and we turned their act of aggression into a national reawakening from the slow death we had been suffering since the end of our empire.
There are many who say that we should never have fought the Falkland Islands War. They saw it as an act of outdated imperialist aggression, carried out by the Thatcher Government to save face. I will not deny that I'm sure Thatcher thought about how good it'd look to win a war but we must consider other factors. 1) the population of the Falkland Islands DID NOT want to be invaded by the Argentinians let alone become part of Argentina. 2) Argentina was a dictatorship at the time, and since that dictatorship fell we have discovered it committed many atrocities. We went to war in Iraq for less. 3) An invasion is an act of aggression, which must not be allowed to go unpunished. 4) This was a blatant disrespectful act against our nation and allowing that to go unpunished would have just have given the impression other countries could do what they wanted to us.
I love reading historians views that if Thatcher had only told the Argentinians we would fight back if they invaded they would never have invaded at all. The idea that a country should need to be told there would be consequences for invading another countries territory is a little absurd and shows how stupid the military dictatorship in Argentina was. And how dumb our country and America have been of late!
Let us remember those who gave their lives for the Falkland Islanders freedom and let us not forget that the Argentinians still claim the islands. Bastards. You'd think the thrashing they got would have been lesson enough. If they're not careful we'll have to send Max Hastings back.
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