DoubleQuote: Gen Sharif of Pakistan, Gen Devereaux in Siege

[ by Charles Cameron — is this one of those times when life is imitating art, maybe? ]

.

**

In the upper panel, we have the headline of an article from the Pakistani Express Tribune of January 2nd this year, along with their image of Army chief General Raheel Sharif who is quoted in the article as saying:

the establishment of special courts [is] not the desire of the army, but need of extraordinary times

Which keads inexorably to the lower panel, with its image and words of Bruce Willis as Gen Devereaux in the tour-de-force 1998 Edward Zwick movie, The Siege, written in large part by Lawrence Wright, soon after to be the author of The Looming Tower, still our most insightful account of Al-Qaeda and 9/11.

Devereaux continues, later in the same scene:

Make no mistake. We will hunt the enemy. We will find the enemy. And we will kill the enemy. And no card-carrying member of the ACLU is more dead set against it… than I am. Which is why I urge you… no, I implore you not to consider this option.

Okay, I know — similarity is not identity, any more than correlation is causation: but sometimes you just have to wonder.

**

All this stems from reading Raza Rumi‘s piece Back in the Driver’s Seat today — highly recommended.