Features

Saturday

Andrew J. Bacevich

Remember Iraq?

The process of forgetting ‘Bush’s war’ has already begun, says Andrew J. Bacevich. But if President Obama fails to learn from that disaster, he’ll pay the price in Afghanistan What is it about the war in Iraq that induces officials to lie, dissemble, prevaricate, and otherwise exert themselves to dodge the truth? Now even Barack Obama, who prior to becoming President accurately denounced Iraq as a ‘dumb war’, has joined the crowd. A much publicised speech on 2 August to the Disabled Veterans of America became President Obama’s own ‘mission accomplished’ moment, albeit this time without the triumphal banner and, blessedly, without America’s commander-in-chief decked out as a flyboy.

Olivia Glazebrook

Rumble in the jumble

Wayne Hemingway — de-signer, trendsetter and fashion watchdog — was interviewed by the Telegraph before his festival ‘Vintage at Goodwood’ took place over the weekend. He made two claims that inspired me, not a natural festival-goer, to dial the booking hotline: ‘There will be attendants for each toilet so that they are as clean on the last day as they were on the first,’ he said, and then, ‘You’ll probably look a bit out of place if you turn up in shorts and sandals.’ These are the kind of bold assertions that have made him an arbiter of taste. Who could resist such a challenge? Mr Hemingway, sir, a ticket please! I ironed my shorts and polished my sandals instanter.

Theo Morgan

I want to kill my cat

The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. And so was the road to Eric. Eric is our cat. My wife and I rescued him from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in July 2008: two wide-eyed ‘parents’, excited about giving a young life a fresh start. Two years on, I want him dead. In fact, unbeknown to my wife, I have just asked the vet if he will put him down. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals — and I believe Battersea is a noble enterprise. But although Eric appeared initially to be shy and gentle, he has grown into a monster. He deserves an asbo. Several of them.

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Welcome to the age of sleb politics

Is the hip hop artist Wyclef Jean the right sort of person to run Haiti? He has announced that he will run for the country’s presidential election as the candidate of the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) party. Wyclef is wanted in the United States, where he made his fortune, on tax avoidance issues. The IRS is claiming $2.1 million in back taxes from him. Added to that there are allegations that he salted away an estimated $400,000 from a charity he set up to, er, relieve the suffering in Haiti following the earthquake which struck the benighted country in January this year. In fact ‘salted away’ is not the technical term — ‘mishandled’ is the technical term. So things are looking pretty good for him then, given the precedents in Hispaniola.

Martin Gayford

21st-century pilgrims

The tourists who flock to galleries in Paris, Florence and Rome are like medieval shrine-visitors, says Martin Gayford. Most don’t care about art, and are only there out of duty Last month in Rome I was standing in St Peter’s, in front of Michelangelo’s famous early masterpiece the ‘Pietá’. This, I might add, is by no means an easy thing to do in July. At any one time there was a jostling scrum of 50 to 100 visitors around that sculpture. The magnet that draws so many to that side-chapel in St Peter’s is of course the name of Michelangelo, ‘Divine’ even to his contemporaries. But it isn’t just any old Michelangelo that has this mesmerising effect.

Venetia Thompson

How Jewish are the Milibands?

At last Britain’s Jewish community has something to celebrate. Not since Disraeli has Britain had a Jewish Prime Minister (although let’s not forget that Disraeli was a practising Christian); now we have not one, but two bright, young, attractive Jewish boys running for the Labour leadership. The Miliband brothers have left every Jewish mother in the country wondering if either of them is single. But we shouldn’t start dancing the hora just yet: both the Miliband brothers seem to be having a bit of an identity crisis: are they Jewish? Jew-ish? Ethnically Jewish atheists? Does it even matter? Apparently so, or neither brother would have bothered commenting on their ‘identity’ and no questions would have been asked.

Douglas Murray

Why can’t anyone take a joke any more?

Most people reading this will at some point have had the misfortune to meet one of those piggy-faced people who at a certain point in the conversation says, ‘Excuse me, but I find that offensive.’ Often it is someone who isn’t actually offended themselves. They have claimed offence for a group in absentia. ‘Excuse me, but I find that offensive on behalf of an absent third-party.’ Unfortunately this horrible behavioural tick is extending its reach. It is realising its power and getting organised. You often hear the phrase ‘Why does no one ever say “X” in the media?’, or ‘Why do you never hear “Y”?

Matthew Adams

The Hitch comes home

I met up with Christopher Hitchens in the smaller hours of a warm morning in May, at Heathrow airport. (This was Christopher’s idea. ‘See you at Heathrow,’ he had told me.) From Heathrow we were to drive together to Bath, where he had a speaking engagement that evening to promote his new (and great) memoir, Hitch-22. When Christopher trudged into view he looked as I knew he would look: the Hitchens-style suit; that dolphin-like face; that dirty-grey fringe. And as he stood alone in the queasy light of Arrivals he gave the impression of a raffish (and impressively bibulous) don. Christopher? ‘Ah, my dear chap. How good of you to come. Now, I must have some tea. Do you know somewhere?’ We made our way to the on-site pub. I ordered a gin and tonic.

Max Hastings

The guns of August

Anybody who wants to get on in America must give handsomely to good causes. In our own essentially philistine society, the newly rich get further faster by buying grouse moors. I recently heard a tycoon observe sardonically, in an inimitable gravelly Norwegian accent: ‘Grouse-shooting makes all the English prostitutes.’ He meant that lots of people who otherwise think themselves principled, honourable, choosy about the company they keep, prostrate themselves before hosts who offer them an early entry to paradise, shooting the red grouse amid some of the most glorious landscapes in this island. I became an addict very young, and almost ruined myself renting a little place in Sutherland where we walked miles, shooting grouse over pointers.

Saturday

Doug Saunders

In 100 years we will be an entirely urban species

Chongqing is a dense and smoky inland city, the heavy-industry, high-rise home to over 30 million people. It is to China what Chicago was to 20th-century America, or Manchester to 19th-century England, and it’s growing at an extraordinary rate. Every day a tide of 1,500 new people washes in to Chongqing. Every day an extra 1.5 million square feet of floor space is constructed for new residents. It’s a vast megalopolis, a megacity of the sort that will soon take over the world. I met Mr and Mrs Zhang on the day they first arrived in Chongqing from their rural village.

Jonathan Foreman

‘How many must be shot before Kashmir is news?’

It was unfortunate timing. At the very moment David Cameron was pleasing his Indian audience by criticising Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism, security forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir were gunning down civilian protesters in the streets of Srinagar, the summer capital of the disputed state. It is not clear why Cameron failed to mention the worsening crisis in Kashmir — the violence and civilian deaths have been all over the Indian media — particularly after he was so forthright about the Gaza crisis during his trip to Turkey. But the killings of demonstrators, curfews and riots in the Muslim-majority state have not gone unnoticed in the Muslim world, and Pakistan’s President Zardari will almost certainly have raised the issue in London this week.

Isabel Villiers

What is Zardari doing at Chequers?

Pakistan’s President has provoked outrage by taking a tour of Europe with his son while thousands die in the floods at home. Isabel Villiers reports Pakistan’s worst monsoon rains continue, and thousands are now dead, many more trapped, surrounded by floods. The images on TV over here show vast expanses of putrid water where riverbanks have spilled, chasing families from their homes, swallowing crops, destroying livelihoods. In one of Pakistan’s worst affected flooded areas around Peshawar, people are very angry. They claim their privacy, their culture has been violated as women and children have been forced to sleep in the streets and wash in a contaminated mix of water, mud, human and animal faeces.

Rod Liddle

Why is the ‘Director BBC North’ staying down south?

On his vast salary, Peter Salmon could buy Wigan, says Rod Liddle. But he and the rest of the corporation’s managerial elite will not be abandoning their cosy London lives any time soon Do any senior BBC executives wish to move to Salford, as is being urged upon the corporation’s exponentially less well paid staff, i.e. the ones who make the programmes you watch or hear? Peter Salmon is the latest exec to announce that he would rather hack off his own face than move his family anywhere remotely near the north. This is a problem because Peter is ‘Director BBC North’, a post given to him presumably because he is married to a woman called Sarah Lancashire. Lancashire is in the north, isn’t it? About as close as the BBC gets, anyway.

Christopher Howse

Suburban hymns

Arcade Fire’s third album The Suburbs is in a long, glorious tradition of pop lyricism inspired by everyday life, writes Christopher Howse Arcade Fire’s first album Funeral was not about a funeral. But, goodness, when we saw Régine Chassagne hammering away at her keyboard in red elbow-gloves with her husband Win Butler singing one of its tracks, ‘Power Out’, on Jools Holland’s show in 2005, we sat up and knew something had changed. Funeral was, in part, about the suburbs. Arcade Fire’s third album, The Suburbs, out this week, continues the interpretation of city life from the viewpoint of the ‘kids’, with particular reference to parents, and disaster. Not that the kids get off without criticism.

Ross Clark

Train à Grande Vexation

The marvels of French rail travel are a myth, says Ross Clark. Travelling by TGV is a rip-off — and the customer service is appalling Which Ryanair passenger, left fuming by lousy service and lashed by Michael O’Leary’s tongue, hasn’t opined that, if only they had more money and a bit of extra time, they could glide to their holiday destination on a French TGV? Why do we insist on subjecting ourselves to the torture of budget airlines when down there, at ground level, we could be travelling on the fastest and most envied railway system in the world and one that is, according to the marketing bumf, ‘high-speed and hassle-free’? I’ll give you a good reason: because the customer service on French Railways (SNCF) is no better than on Ryanair.

David Tang

Letter from the Far East

In a tiny flat in Peking I heard a 105-year-old Chinese man explain how he was responsible for the capital of China being called Beijing. The centenarian, Mr Zhou Youguang, was the founder of Pinyin, the system of phonetic transliteration for all the Chinese characters. It might be argued that he is one of the most influential men of our age, for he has made it possible for foreigners to speak Mandarin without writing the characters and dramatically improved the literacy rate of the Chinese population. Chairman Mao had asked Stalin for advice on the gloomy 80 per cent illiteracy rate in China in the 1950s. Comrade Joseph thought that the only way forward was for China to use phonetics to substitute the complicated Chinese characters.

Saturday

Con Coughlin

Cameron has given up on Afghanistan

A fundamental shift has quietly taken place in Britain’s approach to Afghanistan: the focus is now on leaving, not winning. Con Coughlin asks if we are seeing the return of the politics of appeasement It is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment that David Cameron gave up on the war in Afghanistan. But the Prime Minister’s indisputable position today is that the Nato campaign is unwinnable, and that the sooner Britain withdraws its 10,000-strong combat contingent the better.

Ahmed Rashid

Increasingly isolated, Karzai turns to Pakistan

The extraordinary raw intelligence leaks from the Afghan battlefield confirmed what many people already believed, or feared, about the war. But amidst the avalanche of documents, several new facts have emerged. We now know, for example, that civilians are being killed in much larger numbers than officially admitted by Nato. We know that the Taleban has acquired surface-to-air missiles which downed Western helicopters. We know that both Iran and Pakistan are deeply involved in the conflict, working closely with the Taleban. Finally, we know that the Taleban’s deployment of new weapons, tactics and especially landmines has been devastating to Western and Afghan forces — but, above all, to civilians.

Rod Liddle

Mr Haque’s murderers were racists — so why won’t anyone admit it?

The moment on the video that really hurts, that really digs in — if you are a human being, rather than an ape — is when Marian runs to the prone and inert body of her grandfather and, bending down, distraught, implores him to move, pawing at his body with her hands. She is so small and ineffectual against this sudden new thing in her life, death. Her granddaddy will never move again. Marian is just three years old. Her grandfather is, was, Ekram Haque, 67 years old, a Muslim born in Calcutta who moved to this country almost 40 years ago, hard-working — spent his last years earning a living in a care home — and retired just recently. He was looking forward to taking little Marian on holiday to Pakistan and Australia, the money was all saved up, the flights booked.

Carol Sarler

The burka curtails my freedom

The great debate about the full-face Muslim veil is usually cast in terms of religious rights, says Carol Sarler. But what about my right to see who I’m talking to? So we’re all agreed then. The great burka debate has enthusiastically consumed recent weeks, even though its conclusion was never in doubt: nobody actually intends to ban the thing. Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman was correctly smacked for gushing that the garment ‘empowered’ women, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown raged against it as ‘a perversion of our faith’, while on these pages last week Hugo Rifkind more calmly disparaged the robe as ‘rude’. Nevertheless, all would prefer that the sledgehammer of legislation not be used.