Terry Taliban

Norm Geras takes issue with today's Leader in the Guardian which criticized Prince Harry for his role in Afghanistan and his use of the phrase "Terry Taliban" to describe the enemy:

Here speaks a sensibility that, thrown back 60-odd years, must have blenched - yes, blenched - at the usage 'Jerry', as being inconsiderately de-individuating, lumping-together, forgetful of the circumstance that even soldiers of the armies of the Third Reich, spreading barbarism across a continent, are particular persons, why, they too have mothers and fathers, wives, girlfriends and pets, they're not just faceless 'Jerry'. Yes, and the poor old Taliban, each reactionary one of them, each bigoted theocrat and seeker after the sole obligatory truth, the compulsory non-dancing, non-singing, non-kite-flying subservience, the eternal subordination of women, each Talibloke is a man with a face and a childhood, with dreams and hopes and attachments - like to a life-cramping, life-denying movement that would confiscate from those under its tutelage just about every important freedom the Guardian of liberal virtue is supposed to stand for. Terry Taliban, what a heaped, what a steaming insult. How vulgar. How thoughtless.

Read the whole thing.