Operation Northern Hinge

The whole sky over Reykjanes just lit up. Not lightning. It went up, not down.

My daughter is asking me what it is and I am telling her it is nothing.

Keflavik is under attack. Confirmed: the French air defence battery has been destroyed. There are casualties. Runway is cratered at both ends.

I am fifteen kilometres away and I can see it.

I have been awake since 02:40. Everyone in this building has been awake since 02:40.

There is no shelter. There is no siren. There is no procedure. We are a country that decided eighty years ago not to have any of that, and this morning we found out what that decision costs.

They destroyed the air defences first, then the aircraft, then cratered the runway, then landed.

I have read that sequence in staff college papers about my own island for twenty years. Watching it executed on a NATO member at four in the morning has been the single worst hour of my life as a citizen of this place.

Sequence as far as we can reconstruct it:

02:40 — SEAD package off the carrier. AARGM-ER and JASSM. MAMBA battery kills four, is overwhelmed by the second salvo. Radar and generators destroyed.
03:15 — Four Typhoons scramble. Two shot down BVR by F-22s staged out of Kangerlussuaq. Both pilots ejected.
03:2x — Runway cratered. Remaining aircraft trapped on the apron.
05:45 — Air assault wave crosses the coast.

They planned this backwards from the runway.

Neuf militaires français ont été tués cette nuit à Keflavík par des forces des États-Unis d'Amérique.

Nine French service personnel were killed last night at Keflavík by the armed forces of the United States of America.

Neuf. Nine.

Nine French families were woken up this morning by an officer at the door because of a decision taken in a room in Washington by people who will never learn their names.

I taught for forty years that this is how it always begins. Not with a declaration. With nine.

They put a missile battery seven hundred miles from our troops and pointed it at them.

I am sorry about the nine. I am. But do not ask me to pretend those men were standing on that rock by accident, or that the alternative was nobody getting hurt.

The battery was invited by a parliament, eleven days after we took Greenland by force.

I have been on the side of "the mission is the mission" my whole adult life. But you do not get to move first, twice, and then call the other man's rifle provocation. That is not toughness. My grandfather would have had a word for it and it was not a nice one.

It has been going for six hours. You can hear it from the city. Somebody said the British are still holding the terminal building.

There is no shelter plan here. There has never needed to be one.

At 11:20 UTC the commander of the British detachment at Keflavik agreed a local capitulation under the Geneva Conventions, with ammunition exhausted and casualties sustained. 154 British and French personnel are in US military custody.

The Defence Secretary will make a statement to the House.

He is not in Iceland. I got two words this morning. "Not there."

I have read those two words about four hundred times. I am not proud of how much of my week they carried.

154 prisoners and nine dead in six hours of close fighting.

I want to say something about the nine, but the number that has stopped me is 154. Those are 154 people who woke up on Sunday as allies of the men who captured them by lunchtime.

There is no medical word for what that does to a person. I have looked.

Six hours, no resupply, no air cover, against a MEB with naval gunfire and Cobras, in sleet.

Whatever else is said this week: 45 Commando held Keflavik for six hours. That is not a defeat anyone should be embarrassed by.

A student asked me today if we are the bad guys now.

Thirteen years old, hand up, whole room quiet, completely sincere. Not being smart. Actually asking.

I said history is complicated and people will argue about this for a long time. He looked at me like he knew I had dodged it. He was right. I dodged it. I have thought about nothing else since 2pm.

There are armoured vehicles around the Alþingi.

I walked past that building every day for thirty-one years. I am not going to be able to explain this to anyone who was not here.

Iceland had no army because for eighty years it did not need one, and it did not need one because of a promise.

Every small country in Europe is doing the same arithmetic tonight and it is not about Iceland. It is about what a promise is worth on a Sunday morning.

Prime Minister Frostadóttir, from a secure location: Iceland is under illegal, unprovoked foreign military occupation. We call upon the United Nations and upon every democratic nation to refuse to accept it.

Good evening. This morning American forces took control of Keflavik and of the island of Iceland.

— Address to the nation, the Oval Office

He said "that is where it stops".

I have heard a great many men say where it stops. My husband was in Korea. I do not remember it ever stopping where they said.

I hope I am wrong. I have been wrong before and I have never wanted it more.

Two of my seniors signed today. Both of them told me it was because of this morning.

One of them said "they killed our guys' allies, coach" and the other said "somebody has to". I do not think either of them could tell you where Iceland is on a map. I do not think that is their fault.

Three weeks ago I wrote here that I had never posted about politics.

Tonight my union is voting on whether to refuse work on American-owned buildings in Copenhagen. Me. A plumber. Voting on foreign policy because there is nowhere else to put it.

I do not know if that is democracy working or democracy breaking.

There are army trucks on the Brandon road going up to the base. Lots of them. Somebody at the shop said they have closed the gates from the outside.

My kids went to school with their kids. This is not a place where this happens.

Breaking: British forces have requisitioned RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Fairford. Around 1,150 US personnel have been disarmed and confined to base housing. Seventeen US aircraft seized.

The word being used is "internment," and it is the correct one. These are the armed forces of a state now in armed conflict with the host state, on the host state's territory.

Eleven days ago they were allies with base passes. The law changed the moment the missiles hit Keflavik, not this morning.

They have shut the gates from the outside.

Twenty-two years those lads have been in my pub. There is a bloke called Marcus who taught my daughter to throw a football on the green out the back. He is behind a fence this morning and my army put him there.

I have not got a flag to wave. I am just going to open at eleven like always.

Everyone in this thread has an opinion about international law and I have an opinion about Marcus, who is 24, from Ohio, and who fixed my generator for free in the storm two winters ago.

He is behind a fence this morning. That is all the law I have got in me today.