Lump Your Enemies

Matthew Parris on Tony Blair:

How many viewers, watching the inquiry yesterday, noted his answer to a very early question? He rolled together in a single two-word phrase two political groupings in the Middle East who were in fact bitterly opposed to each other: “these people” was his collective term for Baathist nationalism and internationalist Islamic fundamentalism.

Worlds apart, surely? Forgive the italicisation, but this cannot be overemphasised: Tony Blair believes that all bad people are on the same side.

Richard Dawkins on Christians:
Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads fell over themselves to disown Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.

What hypocrisy. Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition.

Terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists don't make distinctions between Christian, Muslim and atheist, male and female, adult and child, American and Iraqi. All the bad people are on the same side.

Bono: "Choose your enemies carefully, for they will define you." I wonder if both Blair and Dawkins, in their different ways, have become like those they most fear.