THE DESERT SONG (VERSION TWO)

IN A REVIVAL of a great musical which once thrilled hundreds of thousands of theatre-goers and conscripted soldiers of Spain, France and Italy as they jollied their tenor and alto soprano voices into the Sahara in order to liberate and civilize the peoples of the Rif, of Morocco, of the Protectorate of Tetouan and of the Kingdom of Libya, we now have a new version, with new stars on the stage, in a hit that will, as they sometimes say, “run and run”. Just watch.

 

RAUNCHY LEON “LION OF THE DESERT” PANETTA, the ageing yet feisty ex-head of the CIA and United States Defense Secretary, as well as milksop, confused, pasty-faced loon Philip Hammond, the British Secretary of State for Defence, are as I write holding a joint press conference outlining how they will “knuckle down” and “sort out” the Al Qaeda bands of “rebels” who are trying to turn the North of Africa into what they call a “safe haven” for terrorists.

 

THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN, rather sensibly, have never really bothered too much with the Maghreb region of Africa, as they both realized that the shifting sands of both time and place mean that the type of colonialism that both countries favoured was never going to cut the ice in an area where people wandered about on camels with masks over their faces, indulged in buggery and could make a date last three days. This was never going to be the market for British goods or American proselytism.

 

YET THE FRENCH AND SPANISH, perhaps without such practical approaches in their minds, saw fit to try to colonise most of the Sahara. The result of all this, as could only be expected, was a series of long and bloody wars between Spain and Morocco and between France and Algeria. Italy managed to keep out of harm’s way mainly by simply abandoning Abyssinia when a couple of the locals started to show their tooth.

 

NOW, HOWEVER, THINGS HAVE GONE PEAR SHAPED and these useless ex-colonial powers have had to call in the big boys due to the heavy-handed and ham-fisted actions of the Mali and Algerian “authorities”. I am not sure that I think that involving British and/or American troops in the minefield of Maghreb politics is a good idea – and Panetta and Cameron are on my side. But we surely cannot have unwashed, flea-bitten rascals holding our enterprises to ransom, can we? So we must not give in to the French.

 

(My picture shows international terrorist, the much feared Moktar Hollande El-Moktar, allegedly responsible for the latest crisis)