He will need friends at the Anti-War Mass Assembly" in Trafalgar Square this Saturday, notes Terry Glavin. And wear a green scarf while you're at it.

Long story short: Peter Tatchell has managed to find the only properly radical and principled position on the crucial question of Afghanistan. Today, an email from Tatchell arrived in my inbox. It contained a kind note and the press release he intends to issue prior to the Trafalgar Square shindig. Here's its substance:

“The left and anti-war movement is gambling with the lives of Afghan women, democrats and leftists when it calls for the immediate withdrawal of all UK and NATO troops. This demand is rejected by most Afghans and could result in mass slaughter by the Taliban. It risks capitulation to a clerical fascist movement that threatens the human rights of the Afghan people,” warns human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

Tatchell accompanied his press release with a minor but important manifesto of sorts he'd just written for The Guardian under the headline 'I'm anti-war, but the Taliban must not triumph in Afghanistan.'

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