Several months ago a senior officer in the British armed forces made a statement that I found rather odd. He in essence said that the British Army after considerable effort has been rendered incapable of operating independently of the US Army. The fact that this statement passed without comment in the British press speaks volumes about the state of affairs in that sceptered isle.
Suppose that a senior commander in the Saudi armed forces had said that the Saudi military policy was for its army to be unable to perform its duty without the support of — for example — the Syrian Army. How would the people of this country greet this news?
In the British case, we have an army composed of British citizens and paid for by the taxes of the British people, and yet it can only function in conjunction with a foreign army. This does not make any sense. Whose interests are really being served here?
I am reminded of a story from the 1950s. A British citizen called Kim Philby became a spy or mole for the Russians — or the USSR as it was known in those days.
Philby was recruited by the USSR while he was at university. When he left Cambridge he joined British intelligence and, step by step, reached higher and higher positions until he almost became head of that organization. All along he was a spy for the USSR.
Eventually, he was exposed and fled to Moscow, where he lived on as a highly respected patriot.
For you see, Philby was loyal, just not to Britain.
He was loyal to the USSR, which he served with considerable courage and resourcefulness for many decades.
The question that needs to be asked is: Is there someone like Philby in the British government serving US interests? Philby, by the way, was not alone. He had several accomplices, some of whom are known while others will never be known. Kim Philby was exposed, but is the American version still on the loose?
The British have a saying “Fool me once — shame on you, fool me twice — shame on me!”
(Philby, interestingly, also had a Saudi connection. His father, an archaeologist who excavated at Najran and Madain Saleh, was a friend of King Abdul Aziz and lived for many years in the Kingdom, in time embraced Islam, adopting the name Abdullah. Two half-brothers of Kim Philby, Saudi citizens from birth, still live here.)
