The Falklands War - 1982

The British had them. On April 2, 1982 Argentina decided they really wanted them. Later that day the British decided they really wanted to keep these dusty spits of rocky terrain in the middle of nowhere (but admittedly a hell of a lot closer to Argentina than England) and hence the Falklands War came to be.

In this corner you had a bunch of stiffs in uniform in charge in Argentina who needed to divert attention from the mess they'd made out of that country's economy. In the other corner you had people who had the habit of bowing to fantasy figures and who needed to divert attention from the mess they'd made of their country's economy. In the middle you had one Ron Reagan who agreed to help the tiara-lovers in London (which should have told the middle class in this country exactly what he had in store for them) in their war against a soverign nation in the Western Hemisphere, in direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

As anyone with a brain could tell this wasn't going to work out well for the army-types clinging desperately to power in Buenos Aires, and it didn't. After 74 days and the loss of more than 600 soldiers and sailors the Argentines surrendered. Some 350 or so British had died in taking back these largely worthless bolders in the sea but hey, the public had been hypnotized successfully and was now so mollified that they were willing to rubber stamp anything that old prune on a broomstick Maggie Thatcher would dangle in front of them. Basking in the light-by-association Reagan also was awarded special political capital points and would use them to help push his agenda to wipe out the middle class by century's end.

The big losers were the soldiers and sailors who were forced to participate in this exercise in futility and the people of Argentina who were forced to accept yet another humiliation brought upon by yet another in a long line of incompetent governments.

More than 300 sailors die after the ARA General Belgrano is heroically torpedoed by a British submarine.