Comments from feedback form - "Gee Whizz...war is violent - w..."

And when soldiers for both sides are not held accountable, you have the holocaust of the Armenians, the Slavs, the Jews and the American Indians.

That would be a fun committee hearing to sit in on... The Taliban Regulation Committee...=P

Your blythe assumption that the Taliban casually kills their own people while trying to drive out a foriegn occupation army displays a casual disregard of any information that does not square with your determination to see yourself on the side of the angels.

The committed hearing you refer to is for both the Taliban and the occupation forces. It is occurring here between you and me as well as other conversations between people around the world. It is also occurring in Afhganistan.

I was under the impression that the Taliban was an islamic extremist theocracy that deems anyone not like them as 'infidels', worthy of death...I dont believe in good and evil, it's all relative, I believe that people who are trying to kill me, my family and my people just because we are different is enough justification for retaliation.

Under the Taliban, you wouldn't be able to speak freely as you are now and that's saying something.

That is probably true. However, many who are fighting with the Taliban at this time believe they are justified to fight alongside people they may disagree with because they see someone elses troops trying to kill them, their family and their people because of someone who paints them with the same brush as the fifty to a hundred people living in the mountains who really were about killing you because you are different.

In the course of defending yourself, you have made the same prejudicial assumptions as your enemies. 'If you are not shooting at them, you are an enemy also.' Now, Rashid, Jr. wants to kill you not because you are an infidel, but because your people killed his daddy for tending his flock of goats instead of shooting at the people you did not like.

You keep speaking of the Taliban as if they are the only ones killing innocents in Afghanistan. Every innocent we kill is a major recruitment bonus for the people you claim to want dead.

And frankly, given how we treat people who disagree with the common opinion tells me one thing. At least those who really want the Taliban, instead of wanting revenge, are honest about shutting people up.

I completely agree, casualties of innocent people is horrendous, no one is denying that. What I am denying is that we should fold just because the Taliban is getting more recruits through what I call subjective interpretation of events. Maybe Rashid's father also farmed poppies that was feeding into the Talibans drug conglomerate and thus fueling their terrorist actions or maybe Rashid is a nationalist, who has now become radicalised. Who knows and quite frankly who cares. To have a practice of going around and asking the enemy why they are they enemy and then deciding to take them out or not is not rational and DEFFINATELY not recipricated. Nor would it ever be...

What would you call all those people, going about their daily lives, earning a living for their families in the World Trade Center? An Armed Militia?

We have guidelines and conventions, which are denied to us by the Taliban. Yes we toe the line sometimes, BUT we have regulatory bodies and the freedom to monitor, act on and speakout about such deviancy. The Taliban does not nor would they tolerate someone preaching against their cause in their organisation/society. THEY BOMBED DEOMCRATIC ELECTIONS, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

WE both have a double standard...isn't that fun...

It is odd that you make an implicit assumption that I advocate folding for any reason that we have discussed. It is not my belief that folding is a good option to pursue, however, we do need to be aware of how our actions can increase the intensity of the action against or defuse it.

The point that I intended to make is that ridiculing someone, such as ARM, demonstrates that we are not as committed to the principles of free speech and free marketplace of ideas. The very discussion we have had on this forum would be a better reflection that principle and all those others for which we and/or the Taliban are fighting over.

It also seems odd that you seek to hold responsible many of these civilians for the actions of twenty or thirty killers in the World Trade Center operation. To somehow say that it is okay to randomly kill people because the other guy did is a slippery slope to the same kind of fanatical devotion to some sort of destructive belief that you accuse the Taliban of.

The very doublethink inherent in that is the very doublethink that allows someone to attack the Twin Towers and call it a military strike. Rashid the goatherd may be a military target, but treat the collateral damage of his death as a minor oops devalues life as much as flying a jumbo jet into a skyscraper.

It may be that my point has not been very well made in these postings back and forth. However, I believe the basic premise still comes through. Thank you for a fine discussion.