With great interest, I read Thomas Lifson's blog piece about the Welsh government's attempt to legislate the sentencing of dog owners to two years in prison if their in-house canine obeys a pack animal instinct and bites an invading burglar, protecting his master or mistress and any other family members from harm.  

Last spring, a mid-sized crowd stood on a Hudson River pier converted to a park in Midtown Manhattan and waited for the U.S. Navy's aerial demonstration team, The Blue Angels, to fly over during Fleet Week in New York City. I started a conversation with young man with closely cropped hair who brought his dog to the pier.

My saying that the young man's dog looked like a Military Working Dog got him to reply that the dog was from the pound, an Akita and German Sheppard mix - and that he had been stationed in Iraq, not identifying his service branch. I told him that I had written an article (at AT) about attempts to defund the Advanced K-9 Training Course at the U.S. Army base in Yuma, Arizona and had also read accounts of wild packs of 100 or so dogs that roamed in Iraq.

This relatively politically neutral topic got the young veteran to talk more, mentioning his having been stationed in a Forward Operating Base in Iraq and seeing a pack of near-feral dogs come over the edge of a berm with their lead dog cautiously checking out the Americans before the other dogs would follow him to approach the camp. The soldiers (or Marines?) used their own initiative to spread open MREs, the pre-packaged military meals, on the ground for the dogs to eat. This resulted in a pack of wild dogs residing on the edge of the soldiers' base and acting like porch dogs do back in the U.S.

They used their keen sense of smell and hearing to warn the troops of any approaching strangers, be they on foot or in a vehicle.  It is conceivable that at least some of these wild dogs would bite anyone approaching the base with an aggressive demeanor, a thing that many dogs can easily sense.

The British people love dogs. One wonders if the British Army in Iraq used this same method of procuring local (literal) watchdogs at the periphery of their bases in Iraq. But if a military unit is entitled to have watchdogs, then why shouldn't civilians back in Wales or elsewhere be allowed the same protection from marauders who wish them harm? Is all power to flow to the central authority of The State in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, leaving citizens with no individual rights, essentially making them vassals, at best, or lowly serfs, at worst?

Come to think of it, would the police in Wales be as quick to arrest the current Princess of Wales, Camilla, the wife of Prince Charles, if her dog came to her defense as they would a brewery truck driver whose dog bit a burglar in his home? That was a rhetorical question.

If you are a politically correct Brit or American, you may say that in Iraq those surreptitiously approaching a military base may want to kill but in Wales, home invaders  only want to steal (I believe I just penned the premise of a Manchester Guardian editorial). This is a very blurry distinction to discern in the midst of a home invasion. There are Iraqis who wish to "just" steal valuable equipment and supplies from forward military bases and have no intention of killing anyone. And there are home invaders in Britain and elsewhere armed with knives - and illegal guns - who could easily become motivated to rape and kill, especially if they have ingested drugs to build up their courage to commit the crime.

Although the politicians in Wales think the following is possible, it is impossible for a home owner (or renter) to read the mind of a criminal and determine how viscous they are willing to be as they lift a stereo. In fact, the only source of a first-hand account defending the "peacefulness" and "reasonableness" of the burglar is...the burglar himself (they generally are male).

Yes, they may appear in court dressed like young English honor students, but that doesn't tell you much about how aggressively they were pursuing a home invasion on the night or day of the crime.

The West has gone mad from suicidal political correctness. There was a time when Brits (and Americans) said that "A Man's Home Is His Castle." Will a man's home (in Wales) become a burglar's Petting Zoo, as all move toward losing their individual rights in the United Kingdom?