What goes around....

I am not sure whether the global loony tunes quotient is increasing or my grumpiness is becoming more acute.
Whatever, here's a spot more for you.
Tell you what; I shall begin with a spot of schadenfreude, otherwise known as "what goes around, comes around".
An item in today's news says that the government of the Yemen is appealing to the West for help in the struggle against Al Qaeda. Small, smug smile crosses my face.
They say there may be around 200 to 300 Al Qaeda members in the country. Well, who let them in? I have checked my diary and it certainly wasn't me. Was it then you, dear reader? No, I thought not.
But why a smug smile, you ask.
Back before a lot of you were born, this boy arrived in the port of Aden (in 1966 actually) as a teenaged soldier, just out of training. I then spent most of the next year putting up with the antics of the local bad boys, who threw bombs, rockets, AK47 rounds etc at us on a daily basis.
This was done with the open support and connivance of the government of....Yep! Yemen.
Sadly, the purpose of our being in the bloody dump in the first place was to try to help the locals organise a proper government, with democratic ideals and all that other fancy Western stuff.
The Yemen government was pretty much a collection of tribal oiks, who frankly had not moved much beyond the 18th century. In their endeavours, they were supported, quite openly, by that other bastion of civilised, democratic behaviour in the Middle East, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Nice lad, President Nasser; in addition to his years of interference in Yemeni affairs, keeping the civil war well stirred, he was responsible for gassing as many as 1,500 Yemenis, mainly in 1967. Not much said about that at the time, nor later.
Still, while the local numb nuts were throwing their hardware at us, including tactics such as throwing hand grenades into school buses, we also had to tolerate the bloody Yanks interfering.
At that time the USA was on a Brit Bashing drive, mainly at the UN. The cry was heard over and over again from the Yanks; dismantle the British Empire (they hadn't noticed this had already been done some years earlier). Independence for all British colonies etc. (Don't anybody mention the colonisation going on under the Stars & Bars at this time!).
It didn't matter what we did, the cry was relentless; end British Imperialism. An eerie foretelling of what was to come in 1982 when we fell out with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.
Well, some years later, that smug smile crept out for an airing. In October 2000, the USS Cole was attacked by a suicide bomber in the port of Aden. Now, I do not condone this sort of attack, nor the loss of life and injuries caused by this kind of action but I had to smile to myself as the first military unit to come to the aid of the Americans was a frigate of the Royal Navy, HMS Marlborough.
How ironic! The US government spent ages telling us to get out of Aden, turning a blind eye to the daily terrorist attacks that we suffered, then they move in and get some themselves! Terribly sad for the US servicemen who were killed and maimed. (Having had mates killed and maimed in that same place, I can sympathise with those guys). Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick for the American politicians.
So there we are; a good example of what goes around, comes around. In both cases, governments which had spent a lot of time and effort deriding and, in the case of Yemen, killing, British servicemen, come to the British for help.
Err Why?
I know the phrase "sod off" doesn't translate at all well into either American or Arabic but surely it is time our politicians discovered a diplomatic term to cover this?
This and other current cock ups are of your own making. You didn't want to listen when the Brits tried to explain the facts of Middle Eastern life to you.
Get on with it!
More ravings tomorrow.