So I’ve got this running argument with a certain faction of the C & L readership about war and peace issues. My thesis is that war is a cultural response as well as a calculus of leadership. Theirs is that war is a lie. Seven dead UN workers are not a lie:
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghans rioted for a second day Saturday to protest the burning of a Quran in Florida, killing nine people in Kandahar and injuring more than 80 in a wave of violence that underscored rising anti-foreign sentiment after nearly a decade of war.
What happens in Florida doesn’t stay in Florida: Terry Jones is single-handedly destroying any good anyone has ever done in Afghanistan. Moreover, deliberate pursuit of the apocalypse is a trait of right-wing patriarchal authoritarians like Osama bin Laden and Jones. They deserve each other and are happy to have the rest of us in the way.
The first Florida mom to lose a child in this new Taliban uprising ought to go heap shame on Terry Jones and his congregation. Veterans groups in Florida should go picket his church — and the Christian community had better repudiate him en masse. They are, after all, supposed to be all about a Prince of Peace.
