Back Towards The Locus

The Persecuted Christians meme is taking off like a particularly well-crafted rocket. Just a few days ago I warned of its arrival, and now we have three recent articles – all of them sensationalist and all of them dreadful – promoting the theory. In this horrifyingly long post I’m going to try and demonstrate that their fear of their authors are entirely without merit.

First up is the Hitch, with some rather weary bluster. Worryingly weary, in fact – more like a noisy air-conditioning unit than a howling Scottish gale…

“Here’s a thought. You’ll have noticed that openly Christian citizens are the ones who increasingly get the rough end of this society.”

Actually, now I come to think about it, I haven’t noticed that at all.

“The cultural elite jeers at them…”

Aw, diddums. Is the apparent Christian majority really threatened by a few writers and comedians being snarky?

“[M]ilitant atheists denounce religious education as a form of child abuse…”

Yes, Richard Dawkins is indeed a harbinger of demoniacal oppression.

“[P]eople are threatened for doing or saying Christian things…”

Well, yes, when it’s not in their job description or is likely to frighten children.

“I think there’s a reason for this. The types who run our country and its culture actively hate the idea that there’s an absolute right and wrong because it gets in their way.”

The “types” who run our country are indeed loathesome, but he hasn’t made clear why they’d care about the concept of an absolute right or wrong. It’s far more likely that they ignore it, as they only use religion as a device for courting sympathy or demographic votes. As for the “types” who run our culture, well, who the hell are they? Britain’s culture is a diverse mish-mash and long may it stay that way.

A weak display from Hitchens. Go and read him today, though, because on form he can be genuinely insightful (even when barking up some very odd trees).

Anyway, next up is Jimmy Young, writing in the Daily Execrescence…

“I begin with a question I never dreamed I would have to ask: is Christianity in Britain under threat?”

If you mean, “is the power and influence of the Christian church decreasing” then yes. If you mean “are Christians and their beliefs being threatened” then no.

“Labour’s Alastair Campbell led the charge when he famously declared: “We don’t do God.””

Campbell – though a lying, sleazy little reptile – didn’t mean that as a matter of policy. He meant that the PM wasn’t to talk about religion in interviews, believing it to be bad for PR.

“It has helped create climate of fear…”

No, there’ve just been a few cases of over-zealous public and private officials, which have sensationalised by pressure groups and the tabloid Press.

“…leading to nurse Caroline Petrie being suspended from her job in Somerset after offering to say a prayer for an elderly patient. Only after a public outcry was she reinstated.”

Yes, like that one.

“Elsewhere, Jennie Cain, a receptionist at Landscore Primary School, Devon was threatened with dismissal because she asked Christian friends to pray for her five-year-old daughter after she was scolded for talking about God in class.”

No, she’s being investigated for “allegations” contained with an email that she sent to friends after her daughter was ticked off for telling a classmate that they’d go to hell if they weren’t a Christian.

“Belatedly, some senior church officials recognise that Britain’s state religion, Christianity, is under the threat of being marginalised.

Almost two thirds of the Church of England General Synod believes Christians are the victims of discrimination in the workplace.”

The General Synod is comprised of 467 people, all of whom work within the Church. How are they reliable, or uniquely knowledgeable, sources?

“Some church leaders are now making impassioned pleas. The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, calls for Christians to “reclaim their place in the public square”.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, urges Christians to “wake up” and defend their faith.”

Nazir-Ali doesn’t believe that Christians are being persecuted, but that the waning of Christian influence in society – the blame for which he lays at the feet of feminism, the sexual revolution etc. – has led to a rise of radical Islamism. This has led him onto various other drearily reactionary beliefs, such as advocating a ban on the veil, and arguing that immigrants should be accepted “on the basis of Britain’s Christian heritage”. Daily Mail pin-up boy, in other words.

Dr. Sentamu’s remarks I’ll consider below.

“Britain is a tolerant nation. However, that tolerance must not include the insidious undermining of the faith into which the vast majority of us are born and brought up.”

It depends on what “undermining” means. The power of the Church may decrease (huzzah!) and their numbers may lessen (so be it), but as of yet Christians don’t face persecution. That is, I think, something to be pleased about.

So, finally, we turn to Sentamu, who puts forward the Cain and Petrie examples again (these two women, I think, have had more publicity than the Lord himself)…

“The facts of the cases differ in their contexts and circumstances, but at their heart is a seeming intolerance and illiberality about faith in God which is being reflected in the higher echelons of our public services.”

No, because, as I’ve said, the facts of the Cain case have been deliberately distorted to fit into the narrative that Sentamu is endorsing. The employers of Caroline Petrie certainly overreacted, and that may, indeed, be due the faintly irrational irritation that evangelicism sometimes inspires. She had, however, been warned before, and so she’d be an idiot to complain just because there was a reaction.

“Asking someone to leave their belief in God at the door of their workplace is akin to asking them to remove their skin colour before coming into the office. Faith in God is not an add-on or optional extra.”

This is a pretty inane strawman from the good Doctor. No one’s been ordered to renounce or forget their faith; some are expected not to practise certain rituals or beliefs , while others have been disciplined – too harshly, in one case – for not meeting those expectations.

“Yet in the minds of those charged with implementing such policies, ‘diversity’ apparently means every colour and creed except Christianity, the nominal religion of the white majority; and ‘equality’ seemingly excludes anyone, black or white, with a Christian belief in God.”

What a steaming mound of pure stupidity. Firstly, he’s offered no evidence to support this reactionary theory, and secondly, would he quite happy if, while resting in hospital, a Satanic nurse offered him a ritual chant?

“This was strikingly illustrated in the recent case of the dedicated foster mother who had cared for foster children for more than 20 years, but who was recently struck off by her local council. What was her crime? Did she harm or allow harm to be caused to her ward?

No. Rather because her 16-year-old foster daughter decided – of her own volition – to convert from Islam to Christianity, the local authority struck the foster mother from its list of approved carers.”

Now this was stupid, but, again, wasn’t anything to do with Christianity. At the time, a spokesman from the bandwagon-leaping Christian Institute said that “I cannot imagine that an atheist foster carer would be struck off if a Christian child in her care stopped believing in God“, but he’d avoided the fact that foster mother was blamed not for the Conversion but for the loss of Islamic belief – “failing to ‘respect and preserve’ the child’s faith” – and so there’s no reason why an Atheist, Jew, Buddhist or Pagan would be treated differently. The fact that the child was placed “back with members of her family, who ha[d] not been told of her conversion” shows that, rather than saying anything about attitudes towards Christianity, this said something about perceptions towards the acute sensitivity of some Muslims. It goes without saying that the girl should have been free to believe whatever she wanted, but it’s interesting to contrast the Mail’s reaction to this with their reaction to the Grandparents who didn’t want their children adopted by gays. Back then, the adoption apparently showed that the GP’s beliefs weren’t being respected, so if they were consistent they’d stand up for the Muslim family.

“The opening clause of Magna Carta in 1215 acknowledged the importance of the Church and its right to propagate its views.”

Well, it has the right to “propogate its views“. It doesn’t have the right to impose its views, and it doesn’t have the right to preferential treatment.

“A recent correspondent suggested that, like it or not, Britishness is rooted in the Christian religion.

Consider our national anthem beginning with the word ‘God’; consider the English flag: designed using the Christian cross. Its red colour symbolising the blood of Christ shows it is not simply a cruciform by chance.”

Yeah, and we all feel defined by a shite song and a pretty flag, don’t we. Sentamu goes on for a while about these Christian roots, turfing up the fact that cities were defined as having Cathedrals (so?), and the idea that our Government is “constitutionally established from the ‘Queen in Parliament under God’”. Yes, well, our forebears had some odd ideas – burning for blasphemy, that wasn’t too hot, or stoning women for looking a bit suspicious – and when these are recognised as inimical to societal values – currently, culturally at least, liberalism, secularism and free of thought and speech – society tries to render them obsolete. The fact that Governments have traditionally been defined as being “under God” doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea.

“For public servants to use their authority to deny the legitimacy of the Christian faith, when they receive such authority only through the operation of that same faith, is not only unacceptable but an affront.”

Nobody has argued that the Christian faith, or expressions of it, aren’t lawful. That’s because to do so would be to defy the values of individual liberty and freedom of belief, not because of the ridiculous traditions of old.

“My challenge, then, to the 72 per cent of this nation who marked themselves as ‘Christian’ in response to the census of 2001 is that if they wish to safeguard that same Christian tradition, they must renew their faith and become actively involved in their local church.

For those who despair at the treatment meted out to these Christian women, the message is clear: wake up, Christian England!”

So, we’ve found one woman who’s been genuinely mistreated and it may have been because of her beliefs. I hope the poor soul realises that she’s the one piece of evidence that Christianity is under the threat of persecution; it must be an awful burden to carry.

Anyway, as we’ve gathered, Christians being aren’t oppressed. What’s clear in Hitchens’s railing against “cultural elites” and Sentamu’s invocations of a “Christian heritage” is that they don’t really feel that Christians are attacked because of their beliefs, but that their beliefs aren’t accorded enough respect. And why should they have the right to respect? It doesn’t mean that they’re treated any worse, it just means that they’re not treated differently.

The problem with the “poor persecuted Christians” narrative isn’t merely that it’s wrong, it’s that it’s a terrible distraction. We, all of us, face problems from an increasingly intrusive, authoritarian state, and the Press – cynically, I think, rather than scyophantically – focus attention on strawmen. Their campaigns – against immigrants and now against the mythical oppression of a majority -tend to stir up a great amount of aimless, defensive venom, which is only then directed against minorities; amplifying prejudice and poisoning debate. With only a veneer of dissent, then, the powerful usually escape unharmed.

A tip of the hat to Rumbold at Pickled Politics for the Hitch article.

David Aaronovitch has a terrible column in the Times today, defending a continuing “War on Terror”…

“All theocracies are coercive, as are most Islamist movements, and where they are not (as in Turkey) it is because they have been forced to change. Crooke’s Hamas and Hezbollah are still the organisations that pour out hour after hour of poisonous anti-Jew racism on their TV channels, and have a rough way with dissent in their own areas.

In the Pakistani region of Swat, whence the Akond has long fled, the local Taleban were blowing up schools, attacking schoolgirls with acid, murdering journalists and assassinating human-rights activists.

On November 26 Bakht Zeba was dragged from her home, flogged and shot dead for the crime of criticism. Last week the Pakistani authorities reached a ceasefire with the insurgents, part of which is to agree that girls will no longer have the right to go to school in Swat. Where are the student occupiers and the calls for sanctions?”

Those are all terrible things, but if he’s reciting a litany of International ills then why doesn’t he mention tyrannies such as, say, Uzbekistan? And if we’re talking Islamist radicalism then why doesn’t Saudi Arabia merit a mention? The answer, as you’ve all probably guessed, is that they’re allies, whereas the ones Aaro touches upon are in direct contention for violence from Israel or the US.

Incidentally, the “where are the student occupiers and the calls for sanctions?” line is among the most wretched of the loose hairs and toenail clippings that make up this kind of column. Britain isn’t exactly pally with Hamas, Hezbollah or the Taleban, and shares no particular diplomatic link. What, then, would be the point of protesting? They don’t occupy buildings for the hell of it.

“…there is no more War on Terror. Except, as my friend Professor Norman Geras has been pointing out, Barack Obama has found phrases that mean exactly the same thing, such as this from the inauguration: “Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.”

Or this: “The United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism…” Professor Geras calls it “the struggle formerly known as the War on Terror”.

So Binyam may be back, Barack may be in the White House, but the truth is that the problem remains.”

What “problem“? The problem of international nastiness? Aaro’s own problem is that he hasn’t argued that the Taleban, Hamas, Hezbollah etc. pose urgent national security threats, only that they’re bad things. Well, there are terrible things all over the world, but we can’t actively combat them all. We can only make a beneficial difference where it’s possible.

Aaronovitch might believe that it’s worth concentrating on targets that the US/UK/Israel have specified, because their intervention brings that beneficial difference. If this is the case, I warmly invite him to back to the real world, and suggest that he extracts his head from whatever dank crevice it’s got wedged into. The War on Terror isn’t a strategy for them, it’s just a concept used to legitimise whatever conflict they want to partake in, and in endorsing this shapeless lump of disingenuousness, Aaro is only softening the ground for them and compounding his foreign policy foolishness.

Tip of the hat to Aaronovitch Watch.

Your opinions regarding the actions of Jade Goody are of no discernable merit.

John Rentoul – a writer who, rather endearingly, believes that Tony Blair only told one lie in his Prime-Ministerial career – is Galahad to New Labour’s damsel once more. He notes with sadness that “Labour ministers are at the mercy of a pincer operation” between the left and right-wing Press. “Unprincipled and powerful” journalists have “contrive[d] to conceal rather than enlighten“, and are in fact bullying “principled but weak” politicians. The poor little lambs.

This time it’s over the case Binyam Mohamed, where Rentoul believes that “media spin” has cast the government in too poor a light. He writes that…

“Clive Stafford-Smith, Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer, even acknowledges in tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday that the Foreign Secretary…

“…has worked admirably hard to secure Binyam’s release from Guantanamo Bay and should be congratulated for his genuine commitment.”"

I can’t find that statement, in fact, but two can quote from the Independent…

“The detainee’s lawyers are quick to praise the British Government’s efforts to have him freed from the controversial American military detention centre.

But they are highly critical of moves by the US and UK authorities to keep secret documents that shed light on how he was treated.”

Indeed, Clive Stafford-Smith – the very man that Rentoul quotes – has said that…

“It is true that the British government worked to get the evidence of torture to me, as Binyam’s lawyer, and for that I am grateful.  However, it is equally true that the British government seems committed to keeping this evidence from the public.”

These efforts have included the redaction of seven paragraphs from the Court’s judgment. They write in their judgement of the 3rd of February that…

“In these paragraphs we provided a summary  reports from the United States Government to the SyS and Secret Intelligence Services (SIS) on the circumstances of BM’s treatment incommunicado and unlawful detention in Pakistan and of the treatment accorded to him by or an behalf of the United States Government as referred to in paragraph 87 (iv) of our judgement. We did so as the summary was highly material to BM’s allegation that he had been subject to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and to the commission of criminal offences…”

As others have noted, the High Court summarizes the Foreign Secretary’s position thusly…

The United States Government’s position is that, if the redacted paragraphs are made public, then the United States will re-evaluate its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United Kingdom with the real risk that it would reduce the intelligence it provided (paragraph 62).

[And] there is a real risk, if we restored the redacted paragraphs, the United States Government, by its review of the shared intelligence arrangements, could inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains (paragraph 106).

In other words, the US wants to suppress the evidence of this torture, and will go to any end to have their way. Milliband, who has, it’s alleged, solicited these threats, seems untroubled by this. Don’t take my word for it, here’s more from the judgement (my emph)…

“It therefore would have remained our view, absent the evidence adduced by the Foreign Secretary as to the position taken by the Government of the United States, that there was every reason to put the paragraphs into the public domain. The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials (in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security) would be inimical to the rule of law and the proper functioning of a democracy. Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of a democracy. Moreover as the Foreign Secretary has made clear in his Certificate of 5 September 2008, the protection of human rights is central to the efforts of the United Kingdom to counter radicalisation.

However, the evidence since made available to us has made clear the position taken by the United States Government and the gravity of the threat it has made.”

“Inimical to the rule of law” – “subordinating” it in fact – and compromising the protection of human rights. And for what? Well, Milliband claims that, were he to release the paragraphs, he would be “compromis[ing] [the US's] sources“. But surely if one wanted to end torture – which has, quite obviously, been taking place internationally at the behest of the US – one would break down the apparatus that supported torture, not “protect” it. But that’s the current system – scorn for accountability, rapacity over humility and a greater wish to avoid embarrassment than accept wrongdoing. Still, in the Commons, Milliband is singing the US’s eternal praises (forever and ever amen)…

Far from denying that they are against torture, they are celebrating the fact that they are against it and want to do everything that they can to ensure that it is expunged from the rhetoric and role of the United States.

In my critique of Fitna, I noted that Geert Wilders’s most ardent supporters are among the most fanatical neoconservatives. Not necessarily damning of him, but his open embrace of them seems to seal the deal.

From Newsweek…

“Geert Wilders—who has publicly compared the Koran to “Mein Kampf”—is scheduled to make public appearances in Washington next week, including a Feb. 27 press conference at the National Press Club. Wilders is seeking to promote his movie “Fitna,” an incendiary short documentary film that depicts Islam as a religion of terrorists.

The chief sponsor of Wilders’s National Press Club event is Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official who now runs the Center for Security Policy, a prominent neoconservative think tank.”

Gaffney is a PNAC signatory and defender of torture, who has seriously argued that criticising US officials during wartime is a hangable offence. Moreover, he employs David Yerushalmi, whose Society of Americans for National Existence ponders “the vital importance of controlling Arabs”.

What a free speech advocate. And what a textbook case of a man who doesn’t promote Fitna because he fears Muslims, but because he thinks that he should dominate them.

What gets Richard Littlejohn up in the morning? As he stumbles blearily around his Florida mansion, does he hear birds singing or vermin who’d be shot if it wasn’t for “yuman rights”? As he gazes at an infant do his cockles warm or does he feel that sudden urge to flee from the feral youth? Ach, I know that this is pap-psychology, but you should try to understand the mind of the beast before you attempt to confront it.

Hmm, I’m being optimistic anyway, Littlejohn doesn’t mean what he writes because he’s not that stupid. If you’re dipping your toe into politics, you can be forgiven for communicating in cliches. If you’re tackling a complex or multi-faceted problem it’s understandable to misapprehend or only cover things vaguely. If, however, you’re dealing with a simple, well-documented issue and have a long history of political writing, and then still gargle shit you’re communicating from bad faith, and boy does Littlejohn have bad faith: prejudice, pomposity and a will to stir up his fiery readership.

These are all clear today, as he ineptly tackles the case of Binyam Mohamed…

“Shortly after 9/11, he was arrested at Karachi airport carrying a false passport, trying to board a plane for London. He ended up at Guantanamo Bay and claims to have been tortured.”

It’s lovely how much you can skip over when you’re a columnist, isn’t it? As I have the space, I can add that Mohamed was held without access to lawyers or the Red Cross, and was then “rendered” to Morocco.

There, he states, he was stripped, burnt with liquid and had his stomach and penis sliced open with a scalpel. The Courts have admitted(pdf) that he has “an arguable case that he has been subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatement by or on behalf of the United States Authorities“.

After about eighteen months he was transferred to one of the CIA’s infamous Dark Prisons in Kabul, where…

“It was pitch black, and no lights on in the rooms for most of the time … They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb … There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this non-stop over and over, I memorized the music, all of it, when they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds.  It got really spooky in this black hole … Interrogation was right from the start, and went on until the day I left there. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off …”

From there, he was transferred to Bagram and flown to Guantanamo Bay, two and a half years after he’d been arrested.

“Britain is now moving heaven and earth to bring him ‘home’.”

Er, actually they’ve requested his release and had a meeting with his lawyer. Yeah, really “moving heaven and earth” there.

“Yet he hasn’t lived here for eight years…”

And for over six of those he’s been imprisoned, mostly without charge but mostly with torture.

“…and left of his own free will.”

Er, yes, and he was just returning when this shit kicked off.

“By no stretch of the imagination is he a British ‘resident’, let alone a British citizen.”

That’s where you’re wrong, Richey boy. As da Law states, “in order to retain your UK residency staus you cannot leave the UK for a period longer than 2 years“. Mohamed left Britain in May 2001 and was about to return in April 2002, so that’s less than one year. Since then he’s been illegally detained, illegally “rendered” and illegally tortured, factors that, even as a layman, I’d say should be taken into account.

“We’ve got enough problems with foreign terrorists, not to mention home-grown headbangers, without working ourselves into a lather over the fate of an Ethiopian who was resident in Afghanistan when he was arrested in Pakistan.”

Yeah, but Richard, considering that “we” seem likely to have been party to his torturing and then actively conspired to smother his case, don’t you think we have – oh, I don’t know – some sort of moral responsibility? Even regardless of the fact that he is, after all, a resident?

“In the case of Binyam Mohammed, what we’re looking at is extraordinary rendition in reverse. Instead of flying terror suspects abroad to be tortured, we’re flying them here to be pampered.”

Er, no, some of “us” are making an effort to release a man who’s been kidnapped, tortured and illegally detained, and is on hunger strike, “just skin and bones. The real worry is that he comes out in a coffin“.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the definition of British ‘resident’ should apply to Osama Bin Laden. After all, he lived in London for a few years before moving to Afghanistan. Maybe we should offer to bring him ‘home’, too.

And if Bin Laden was discovered living above a kebab shop in Finsbury Park, he’d be granted indefinite leave to stay, showered with benefits and given access to the best ‘yuman rites’ lawyers taxpayers’ money could buy.

Duuuuuh, Richard made da funny! Dey bowf be terrrist after all! Dey bowf have beard, certainly. Nevva mind fact dat Osama Bin Laden live elsewhere for yeeers, and dat Binyam defence lawyer be from da US.

But, no, give him a big hand, folks. Richard Littlejohn: a man who can look straight at the case of a human being who’s been tortured, starved and illegally imprisoned, and then complain because he might be allowed back to his country of residency.

The terrible thing is what a blissful ride the Government is being given. Ignoring their shameful complicity in torture and then criticising the fact that might let the guy come back is like confronting a rapist and then condemning his dress sense. But that’s what comes from allowing the dumber Chuckle Brother to become Britain’s highest paid columnist.

Via Chris Floyd, yet another tragedy passes quietly through the press…

“One day this month, an old man who called himself Syed Mohammed sat on the floor of his mud-brick hut in the eastern Kabul neighborhood of Hotkheil and recounted how most of his son’s family was wiped out in an American-led raid last September.

Mr. Mohammed said he was awakened in the early morning to the sound of gunfire and explosions. Such sounds were not uncommon; Hotkheil is a Pashtun-dominated area, where sympathies for the Taliban run strong.

In a flash, Mr. Mohammed said, several American and Afghan soldiers kicked open the door of his home. The Americans, he said, had beards, an almost certain sign that they belonged to a unit of the Special Forces, which permits uniformed soldiers to grow facial hair.

“Who are you?” Mr. Mohammed recalled asking the intruders.

“Shut up,” came the reply from one of the Afghan soldiers. “We are the government.”

Mr. Mohammed said he was taken to a nearby base, interrogated for several hours and let go as sunrise neared.

When he returned home, Mr. Mohammed said, he went next door to his son’s house, only to find that most of his family had been killed: the son, Nurallah, and his pregnant wife and two of his sons, Abdul Basit, age 1, and Mohammed, 2. Only Mr. Mohammed’s 4-year-old grandson, Zarqawi, survived.”

The US’s Special Forces are, and have been, acting as their shock troops in Afghanistan. In a frustrating guerrilla war, where their enemy is always veering away from them, they’ve turned to warriors who can hit fast, hit hard and dodge the blame if they hit the wrong people.

The UN’s UNAMA Annual Report (pdf) draws special attention to their brutal carelessness and unaccountability…

“With regards to operations by IMF, separate and increasingly confusing command structures and joint operations have meant that in many incidents involving pro-government forces it is unclear who is responsible for a particular operation.

…

…the Afghan public has voiced growing anger at the perceived impunity for civilian casualties – especially those civilian casualties attributable to the actions of the IMF.”

The shocking thing is how little they’ve progressed in the past seven or so years. Even in 2002 a US commander was admitting that…

“…it’s a frustrating war. The reason it’s so frustrating and aggravating is because the enemy is not fighting. We’re trying to find him and he’s trying to avoid us. So any time we go out, he fades away. It’s just like Vietnam. Any time he finds a weak spot, he flows in like water.”

Back then, in an excellent essay for Cursor, Marc Herold picked up on the Vietnam reference and wrote that…

“Ambushes, hit-and-run, rising popular resentment, coalescing opposition forces and an invisible enemy all point to a Vietnam redux.”

The comparison holds true, and the fact that the opposition, quite justly, is a vastly unpopular one only compounds Afghanistan’s misery.