The left and Churchill's legacy

Kyle Smith:

WE musn't allow the left to make us forget that Winston Churchill was a ruthless warrior.

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Chris Matthews is a fan. ("What he did, of course, was save the honor of the 20th century," the TV talking head said in a speech.)

Another is talking head Keith Olbermann, who was referring to Churchill when he spoke recently of the "great men" who dwarf today's conservatives, those supposed moral pygmies.

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But before we airbrush out Churchill's cigar and whisky glass and replace them with a tambourine and an olive branch, before his legend takes on a scent of patchouli, let's take a moment to focus on the truth.

Which comes to us from an unexpected source: the almost invariably liberal HBO, which is now showing an invigorating BBC biopic, "Into the Storm: Churchill At War." In the movie, the mighty Churchill (excellently portrayed by Brendan Gleeson) is shown as a sexist, a bully and, of course, a ruthless warrior.

Far from fitting Olbermann's notion of a more moderate alternative to George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, he was far to the right of either.

When Europe was prostrate under Hitler's boot-heel and many respected liberals were counseling that the time for diplomatic overtures to Germany was at hand, Churchill was furiously dismissive.

Have you ever heard a speech in which Bush or Cheney sounded remotely this bellicose? "If this long island history of ours is to end," Churchill says in the movie, as he did in 1940, "let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."

Told that British bombers were missing their targets because they were avoiding military areas that were also home to civilians, Churchill told them to unleash hell: "Let 'em have it," he said. "Never maltreat the enemy by halves."

One point in the movie seems to have been deliberately included as a wry slap at Obamaism. Churchill tells Stalin, referring to the timing of the Allied invasion of France, "It would be unwise to agree to such a rigid timetable."

Remember, Obama spent his entire campaign telling us that a rigid timetable for withdrawing from Iraq was essential, regardless of developments on the ground.

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The modern left would have hated World War II. They would have been whining about the North African campaign for the get go. After being attacked by Japan our first offensive action was against the French in North Africa. We were not even at war with the French, but we needed to attack their African possessions in order to get to the German in North Africa. It was a campaign of many mistakes. In the first tank battle with the Germans someone had substituted practice rounds for tank ammo and they were bouncing off the German tanks, which were superior to our tanks anyway.

The campaign in Italy was a mess, that belied Churchill's belief that it was the soft underbelly of Europe. Churchill opposed Operation Anvil which was an American invasion of Southern France that corresponded with D-Day. It was far from the failure Churchill predicted.

What Churchill brought to the war effort is something that the left in this country would have opposed. It was a determination to resist the enemy with every aspect of the UK's war fighting ability. The allied bombing of Germany was every bit as ruthless as the German bombing of London. I have no doubt that interrogation of prisoners was as tough as that used by the US against al Qaeda when it came to unlawful combatants who were captured while camouflaged as civilians. That was if they survived their capture. The standard procedure was to kill spies.