Kudos to the Brit Junior Officers
The actions taken by Royal Marine Captain Air and Royal Naval Lieutenant Carman were mature and prudent. The incident is an extension of General Krulak's observations of the contemporary military environment, described in
The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War.
"The inescapable lesson of Somalia and of other recent operations, whether humanitarian assistance, peace-keeping, or traditional warfighting, is that their outcome may hinge on decisions made by small unit leaders, and by actions taken at the
[SIZE=-1]lowest[/SIZE][SIZE=-1] level.[/SIZE]"
High political tensions, fast paced operations and intense media scrutiny put small unit leaders into situations of having to make immediate, autonomous, highly visible decisions. It is, therefore, incumbent on these leaders to "exercise an exceptional degree of maturity, restraint, and judgment."
The trivial comic opera that played out through the British capture served only to portray the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as amateurishly inept at information warfare. Alternately, a belligerent response by the Brits would have resulted in a much more dire international event that would have been difficult to de-escalate. The prudent decision made by these junior leaders was probably more instinctual than strategically considered, but it turned out to be the proper one.
If criticism needs to be meted out in this incident, then the people who deserve blame are the ship's captain, who did not provide sufficient security cover for the boarding party, and the US neo-cons who are throwing around simple-minded bellicose jabs, like Michael Rubin's "Marmite-eating surrender monkeys." I suspect that this latter group are losing their collective erection since any prospect of a war with Iran is now deferred.
