I’d like you to go to UNDispatch and read an initial insider reaction to the atrocity in Afghanistan yesterday. The Islamic aspect of the massacre is non-existent, of course (after all, this is the UN), but the conclusion is still germane: it is time for the UN to leave Afghanistan.

Because a pastor in Florida burned a Koran, Imams in the Afghan city, Mazar-i-Sharif, chosen by the UN for a headquarters because of its “peacefulness”, preached violence against the “Crusaders”, and after their Mosque services rode around in cars using bullhorns to continue to inflame a growing mob.

That mob, which some have estimated to have been 20,000 strong, broke through the barriers to the UN compound. Because they were simply unarmed citizens and not Taliban extremists, the UN force did not fire on them. For their restraint, the guards were murdered, and then their arms were used to hunt down others in the compound, who were in turn brutally murdered in cold blood.

This is the Muslim concept of protest, directly led by religious leaders, on display for the entire world to observe.

This is the Muslim concept of moral equivalence: you burn the pages of a book, we slaughter you.

And it gets worse. Harman Karzai, the Afghan president, himself set the stage for the massacre by using the Koran burning incident to agitate the Afghanis. Just as in Pakistan and all the other heavily Muslim nations, riling up the Islamic base is good politics for regimes lacking real leadership credentials.

One of the provisos of the Christian principles of Just War is that for a war to be justifiable there must be a  reasonable chance of success (or that the situation is so bad that the alternative, failure, must be less acceptable than death itself). Afghanistan is sinking back into tribal and Islamic quicksand. It will take real leadership to pull her out, and more than merely in the military realm. It will take moral leadership, something the Muslim clerics clearly do not have a clue about. Harman Karzai is incapable of that leadership, and so is Barack Obama. Until something changes, we are wasting precious blood and treasure.

Meanwhile, we must remember that there are souls trapped within this horrendous cycle of ignorance and evil. Souls that Jesus loves and died for. I think of the young woman on the cover of Time, whose nose and ears were cut off by her arranged husband who grew tired of her. And she is only one of countless victims of a culture that turns men into animals.

Since the powers of this world are no longer even treading water, I would like to submit that the real war in Afghanistan, the one that matters, is being fought by intercessors, in their prayers and, for some, their acts of obedience. The world’s rulers are increasingly out of ideas, and simply do not have a clue about what to do. They are just trying to keep a semblance of order on deck, as the Titanic sinks down.

We have been warned that this would happen, so this is only further confirmation of the truth of the Scriptures. Our redemption draweth nigh, but until then we have work to do in God.

God bless you, and God bless the innocents that are suffering.