Taliban To Quotes & Sayings

The Theonomists - otherwise known as Dominionists; in other words, people who believed in taking "dominion" over society and the world in the name of Jesus - believed in restoring American law to its strictest Puritan origins. They wanted to make America into a modern-day Calvin's Reformation Geneva. They were our version of the Taliban. They were antitax, antigovernment libertarians (when it came to economics), but on social issues were working to replace secular law with Old Testament biblical law. The — Frank Schaeffer

Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power? — Christopher Hitchens

The Taliban's discrimination against women is completely opposed to the practice of the Prophet and the conduct of the first ummah. The Taliban are typically fundamentalist, however, in their highly selective vision of religion (which reflects their narrow education in some of the madrasahs of Pakistan), which perverts the faith and turns it in the opposite direction of what was intended. Like all the major faiths, Muslim fundamentalists, in their struggle to survive, make religion a tool of oppression and even of violence. — Karen Armstrong

Military surge in Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban. — Barack Obama

The Taliban should keep it in mind that one of us has to die one day. And if I die early, it does not matter. I will continue my campaign and I'm going back to Pakistan as soon as possible. And I want to be a politician. And, through politics, I am going to serve my mission, and I'm going to work for education for every child. — Malala Yousafzai

I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11. — Sibel Edmonds

In Afghanistan, U.S. troops are now holding an American man who has been fighting alongside the Taliban. His mother says he was born in Washington, D.C. and his father's a lawyer. Well, that explains it ... He surrendered to authorities and said he wants to go back to his old job - airline security guard. — Jay Leno

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. Malala Yousafzai, the schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting an education and survived, in her keynote speech to the United Nations, 12th July 2013. — Malala Yousafzai

an Afghan archaeologist followed the Taliban through the museum, "pleading for mercy as if begging for the lives of [his] own children."14 Such pleas were meaningless to those who felt their axes swung with God's weight behind them. — Karima Bennoune

Allow the Taliban to open offices in Pakistan — Imran Khan

Most Muslims don't want to live in some Taliban-style utopia, which is what bin Laden and allied groups are offering. — Peter Bergen

Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it. — Sam Harris

As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense. — John O. Brennan

Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women. — Lynsey Addario

Our aim is always to minimise casualties and to separate a hardline Taliban from those who have been caught up in the insurgency. — Bob Ainsworth

Al Qaeda, the Taliban, a whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America, who have a distorted ideology, who have perverted the faith of Islam, and so we have to go after them. — Barack Obama

One of the Taliban spokesmen said they have thousands of men who look forward to death like Americans look forward to living, which is great because we can arrange that. We'll set them up with death, we'll continue living. — Jay Leno

We felt like the Taliban saw us as little dolls to control, telling us what to do and how to dress. I thought if God wanted us to be like that He wouldn't have made us all different. — Malala Yousafzai

Fom the out set, the War on Terror was sharply different from other U.S. military actions in the strong support it received from American women. Normally, men back military action by 10 to 20 points more than women do. But, after 9/11, women felt more endangered by terror and backed action against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden as strongly as men did. — Dick Morris

Because of you, in Afghanistan we've broken the momentum of the Taliban. Because of you, we've begun a transition to the Afghans that will allow us to bring our troops home from there. And around the globe, as we draw down in Iraq, we have gone after al Qaeda so that terrorists who threaten America will have no safe haven, and Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. — Barack Obama

Given that the Taliban is a Pashtun movement, the tendency of the Pashtun man to emphasize his individuality through disagreement rather than agreement will come to the fore after the disappearance of the already 'loose' authority of Mullah Omar. — Khaled Ahmed

The problem is, we have yet to convince the Taliban they are fellow passengers on spaceship Earth. — Will Durst

When [Imam] Samudra was tried, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, 'His lawyer, Qaidar Faisal, later delivered an official defence submission.' The defense summation praised the Taliban and its version of Islam and concluded with this telling detail: 'Mr. Faisal also quoted from American satirist Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and other anti-western texts.' — David T. Hardy

If today is anything like the typical day of the past 3 years, three American soldiers will die in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a little stronger in Afghanistan and the civil war will continue to be enhanced in Iraq. — Alcee Hastings

I spoke of the irony of the Taliban wanting female teachers and doctors for women yet not letting girls go to school to qualify for these jobs — Malala Yousafzai

The Taliban want to turn the girls of Pakistan into identical, lifeless dolls. — Malala Yousafzai

I was ten when the Taliban came to our valley. Moniba and I had been reading the Twilight books and longed to be vampires. It seemed to us that the Taliban arrived in the night just like vampires ... These were strange-looking men with long straggly hair and beards and camouflage vests over their shalwar kamiz, which they wore with the trousers well above the ankle. They had jogging shoes or cheap plastic sandals on their feet, and sometimes stockings over their heads with holes for their eyes, and they blew their noses dirtily into the ends of their turbans ... — Malala Yousafzai

Their latest label for religious people is "American Taliban." The left loves it. It's meant to denigrate Christians as potential threats to world peace (although the greatest threats of the last century, Nazism and communism, were both secular). — Ben Shapiro

The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, I was 26 years old, and the country was under Taliban rule. I went there to document Afghan women and landmine victims. — Lynsey Addario

Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead. — Barack Obama

The war is not going well and it is time to say why ... It has been fought with half-measures. It has been fought with an eye on the wishes of our 'coalition partners.' It has been fought to assuage the Arab 'street.' It has been fought to satisfy the diplomats rather than the generals ... why have we not loosed the B-52s and the B-2s to carpet-bomb Taliban positions? And why are we giving the Taliban sanctuary in their cities? We could drop leaflets giving civilians 48 hours to evacuate, after which the cities become legitimate military targets. — Charles Krauthammer

It is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called 'Islamic regimes' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran - and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan - they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that. — Mustafa Akyol

So, yes, the Taliban have shot me. But they can only shoot a body. They cannot shoot my dreams, they cannot kill my beliefs, and they cannot stop my campaign to see every girl and every boy in school. — Malala Yousafzai

When I heard stories of the atrocities in Afghanistan I felt proud to be in Swat. "Here a girl can go to school," I used to say. But the Taliban were right around the corner and were Pashtuns like us. For me the valley was a sunny place and I couldn't see the clouds gathering behind the mountains. My father used to say, "I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your — Malala Yousafzai

We were still children and residing in the mosque from morning to evening. We were about to turn into monsters. — M.F. Moonzajer

Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had expounded: the Taliban, or specifically the Haqqanis, were an asset that Pakistan needed to keep in order to have a strong ally in Afghanistan when the American and international forces left.4 At the core of Pakistan's thinking was an obsessive desire to dominate Afghanistan in order to protect its own rear flank from India. In that way of thinking, the Taliban were guarantors of Pakistan's national strategic interests. As — Carlotta Gall

Our news bulletins were full of killings and death, so it was natural for Atal to think of coffins and graves. Instead of hide-and-seek and cops and robbers, children were now playing army vs. Taliban. — Malala Yousafzai

[Taliban spokesman on Malala Yousafzai]
Malala Yousafzai targeted and criticized Islam. She was against Islam and we tried to kill her, and if we get a chance again we will definitely try to kill her, and we will feel proud killing her. — Shahidullah Shahid

Exactly who bears responsibility for the spate of extrajudicial killings is unclear. Senior police officials privately accuse the military's intelligence services of committing the worst abuses, and complain that their men bear the brunt of Taliban reprisals. One retired officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, offered a still-murkier explanation: that in some cases, intelligence operatives tortured suspected militants, then handed them to allied police officers for execution. Whatever the truth, — Anonymous

Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation. — Khaled Hosseini

I was undeterred by the danger of traveling as a single American woman through Taliban-governed land. I believed in the stories I wanted to tell, the stories I felt were underreported, and I was convinced that that belief would keep me alive. — Lynsey Addario

I don't want to be thought of as the "girl who was shot by the Taliban" but the "girl who fought for education." This is the cause to which I want to devote my life. — Malala Yousafzai

I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, 'If he comes, what would you do Malala?' then I would reply to myself, 'Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.'

But then I said, 'If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.'

Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that 'I even want education for your children as well.' And I will tell him, 'That's what I want to tell you, now do what you want. — Malala Yousafzai

The Taliban has a huge leadership problem at a critical political moment, another caliph has announced himself to the world, and the Taliban has been silent. And that is getting noticed by militants across South Asia. — Graeme Smith

The armies, the difference of all of those armies that had been fighting each other and the Taliban took advantage of that to rule over the whole country. — Bulent Ecevit

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles. — Khaled Hosseini

The people we were there to help, often times, didn't really give a fuck about our help. They would LIE, cheat and steal, and say anything to get whatever they could from us, and then go back to sympathizing with the Taliban. Their sense of loyalty to their country is non-existent, their ability to lie and bullshit is better than any scummy lawyer I've ever seen in a movie, and their willingness to flop sides is inspiring to Lebron James. — Donny O'Malley

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

[Today's left] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore. — Christopher Hitchens

I've come to the conclusion that, aside from Nazis, the Taliban, and possibly the honey badger, there is no one on the planet more merciless than a teenage girl once she's decided she dislikes you. — Meg Cabot

Living with a teenage daughter is like living with the Taliban a mum is not allowed to laugh, sing, dance or wear short skirts — Kathy Lette

Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers', no Northern Ireland 'troubles', no 'honour killings', no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money ('God wants you to give till it hurts'). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. — Richard Dawkins

Swapping Bergdahl for illegal enemy combatants (terrorists, in common parlance) signaled unmistakably to Taliban and al Qaeda that Obama is determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what the cost to the United States or those in Afghanistan fighting to remain free. — John Bolton

American Taliban John Walker Lindh has pleaded guilty to two counts of terrorism and will face twenty years in prison. I guess that means his jihad is on ji-hold. — Jay Leno

If a woman is wearing the burqa, it's not her wish. It's more that she feels secure from the Taliban, secure from acid if she were to show her face. — Malina Suliman

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists. — Arundhati Roy

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. — John Yoo

While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war. — John Yoo

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out. — Colin Powell

In our towns and cities they will continue to be born, in our communities they will go on to be nurtured & radicalised & from within our neighbourhoods they will terrorise & murder our citizens including women & children in their attempt to destroy the very fabric & order of our civilised society. They are influenced by our ignorance, our lack of knowledge is their power, martyrdom in the name of their God and prophet is their aspiration & so it is critical that we waste no time & learn more about them & this ideology they follow before we can even begin to eradicate this chilling & growing endemic Islamic faith based terrorism'. — Cal Sarwar

Did you hear about this 20-year-old kid named John Walker from Northern California who was apparently fighting for the Taliban? ... It didn't take long for the TV networks to jump on this Walker thing. CBS has a new show: 'Walker: Taliban Ranger.' — Jay Leno

The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country. — Bob Ainsworth

If we're so cruel to minorities, why do they keep coming here? Why aren't they sneaking across the Mexican border to make their way to the Taliban? — Ann Coulter

Hurtling the Pentagon into an unprecedented budgetary meltdown is horrifically irresponsible. Obama doesn't care. This is war - not against the Taliban, but war against the GOP. He has Republicans on the ropes, and that's a victory he savors and desires - unlike Afghanistan, where he seems only to want to turn tail. — John Podhoretz

However, the religious extremists, especially the pro-Taliban organizations, they mobilized and instigated the Islamists to come on the streets and put pressure on the government to stop any reform on the blasphemy law. — Shahbaz Bhatti

Since 1996, the Feminist Majority Foundation has been immersed in a campaign to support Afghan women and girls in their fight against the brutal oppression of the Taliban. — Eleanor Smeal

One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world. — Greg Mortenson

When we started after Osama bin Laden, we really decided to go after the Taliban. And we seemed to be content to kick the Taliban out of Kandahar. And then we let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora. — Wesley Clark

It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission. — Arundhati Roy

When trying to explain the violent path of some Islamists, Western commentators sometimes blame harsh economic conditions, dysfunctional family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young males, a failure to integrate into the larger society, mental illness, and so on. Some on the Left insist that the real fault lies with the mistakes of American foreign policy.
None of this is convincing. Jihad in the twenty-first century is not a problem of poverty, insufficient education, or any other social precondition. (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was earning more than $90,000 a year working for a drilling company in British Columbia, where he also reportedly proclaimed his support of the Taliban and joked about suicide bombing vests, with no repercussions.) We must move beyond such facile explanations. The imperative for jihad is embedded in Islam itself. It is a religious obligation. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

My mother was always trying to think up plans for what she would do if the Taliban came. She thought of sleeping with a knife under her pillow. I said I could sneak into the toilet and call the police. My brothers and I thought of digging a tunnel. Once again I prayed for a magic wand to make the Taliban disappear. — Malala Yousafzai

Things use to be real nice, til they got out of hand. Since they moved in, they call themselves the Taliban. — Toby Keith

Women and children were slaughtered by the Taliban. You are going to sit down and negotiate with these folks? They never lived up to an agreement. The Pakistanis tried in '08, the Russians tried it when they were there. George Bush tried it in '05. It has never worked. — Mike Rogers

Pakistan's ruler Pervez Musharraf predicted the Taliban will fall for hiding Osama bin Laden. Ex-king Zahir Shah is standing by to replace Mullah Mohammed Omar. And the most ominous sign of all, President Bush has learned all their names. — Argus Hamilton

When you don't stop evil in its tracks when you first recognize it, you will end up with a monster force that will spread its tentacles and affect the lives of millions. Because we did not want to judge evildoers such as the Palestinians bombing innocent Israelis, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein gassing his own people, we have helped create the monsters we are dealing with today. Don't be afraid to stand up and lift your head and be proud of what America and Western culture stand for. America did not pull itself out of the grip of tyranny and feudalism for nothing. America as a Western culture and as a nation is a tribute to men and women and God's creation at its best. — Brigitte Gabriel

Since the Bush-Cheney Administration took office in January 2001, controlling the major oil and natural gas fields of the world had been the primary, though undeclared, priority of US foreign policy ... Not only the invasion of Iraq, but also the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, had nothing to do with 'democracy,' and everything to do with pipeline control across Central Asia and the militarization of the Middle East. — F. William Engdahl

When the Taliban took over in 1996, the news of their crimes hit the Toronto papers. As a feminist and as an anti-war activist, I heard about what was happening to women, and I wanted to do something to support those folks. — Deborah Ellis

An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war]. — Michael Hastings

We're told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews? — Ellen DeGeneres

I don't think the Taliban will ever come back to take Afghanistan, no. — Hamid Karzai

When you say things like, 'We have to wipe out the Taliban,' what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know, America created anyway. — Arundhati Roy

While the Obama Department of Justice seems to favor pornographers over children and families, that will change under a Satorum Administration. I will ban all pornography. Especially gay pornography. Gay pornography is the reason people choose the gay lifestyle or what I call the deathstyle. If we got rid of that, homosexuality would be gone within a matter of months. This is one of only a few things I see eye to eye on with the Taliban. — Rick Santorum

Education is the key to perpetuation of the [god] virus for the Taliban, Baptist or Catholic. If the virus cannot control public education, it will seek to divert resources from public coffers to fundamentalist school funding. From the madrassa schools of Pakistan to the Christian push for school vouchers in the United States and the religious home school movement, religions seek to control education or to control the resources for education. — Darrel Ray

The draconian prohibitions of the Taliban years and the gains Afghan women have achieved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001 are now well known and often cited: Today, Afghans lucky enough to live in secure regions can go to school, women may work in offices, and the burqa is no longer mandatory. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The path to a sustained victory in Afghanistan lies in improving their economy, creating jobs for the Afghanis, strengthening their government and national services, getting the provinces to trust each other and work together, and eliminating the opium trade. Previously, the United States' policy was to not get deeply involved in internal Afghani drug issues; now we've changed the policy and are actively working to eradicate the drugs. But nobody has yet to come up with a way to shut down the poppy fields and get the Afghani people back to work. Until that happens, the Taliban will inevitable creep back in. — Michael DeLong

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates - which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name. — Narendra Modi

We don't see that the Taliban ultimately can succeed, and it's a combination both of what the international community can do to support Afghanistan, not just in the short term, but over the long term. — John R. Allen

Carolyn Maloney led the fight to make sure that DNA evidence kits are processed and passed the Debbie Smith Bill. She, when no one almost would listen to us on the whole issue of the Taliban and its treatment of women, she helped pass the Afghan Women's Empowerment Act. — Eleanor Smeal

Americans have eliminated Iran's worst enemies, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam [Hussein]. I occasionally threatened my Iranian counterpart in Kabul that one day I would send him a big bill for what we did. But, seriously, Iran is pursuing a dual strategy in Iraq. On the one hand, the Iranians, after decades of hostility, are now interested in good relations. On the other hand, they want to keep the country weak and dominate the region. — Zalmay Khalilzad

Know what the Taliban leaders like to do for fun? Just sit around and get bombed. — Jay Leno

Though we loved school, we hadn't realized how important education was until the Taliban tried to stop us. Going to school, reading and doing our homework wasn't just a way of passing time, it was our future. — Malala Yousafzai

Our mission is to go after Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Right now, they are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. We should go after them wherever they are. — Max Cleland

Women in the online gaming community have been harassed, threatened, and driven out. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who documented such incidents, received support for her work, but also, in the words of a journalist, 'another wave of really aggressive, you know, violent personal threats, her accounts attempted to be hacked. And one man in Ontario took the step of making an online video game where you could punch Anita's image on the screen. And if you punched it multiple times, bruises and cuts would appear on her image.' The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree. Both are trying to silence and punish women for claiming voice, power, and the right to participate. Welcome to Manistan. — Rebecca Solnit

On the Taliban: That ethos was never going to work, was it? It was just cobbled together from different beliefs. The anti-intellectualism of the Khmer Rouge, the religious persecution of the Nazis, the enforced beard-wearing from the world of folk music, and the subjugation and humiliation of women from the world of golf. — Bill Bailey

You can walk around this culture now, as a proud supporter of the so called anti-war movement and it's made up of a lot of people I used to know ... I'd like for them to be asked more often than they are, if your advice had been taken over the last 15 or so years; Slobodan Milosevic would still be the dictator of not just Serbia but also of a cleansed and ruined Bosnia and Kosovo. Saddam Hussein would still be the owner of Kuwait as well as Iraq, he would of nearly have doubled his holding of the worlds oil. The Taliban would still be in charge of Afghanistan. Don't you feel a little reproach to your so called high principle anti-war policy? Would that really have led to less violence, less cruelty? — Christopher Hitchens

But here too it should be noted that the President's approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade. — Barney Frank

Many of the points made by the antiwar movement have been consciously assimilated by the Pentagon and its lawyers and advisers. Precision weaponry is good in itself, but its ability to discriminate is improving and will continue to improve. Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect. — Christopher Hitchens

The saddest thing is an old bag lady, freezing to death in the snow on Christmas Eve, and the last thing she sees is a family in a nice warm diner getting beheaded by the Taliban. — Chris Onstad

The toll from the two attacks: twenty-one pro-American leaders and their employees dead, twenty-six taken prisoner, and a few who could not be accounted for. Not one member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda was among the victims. Instead, in a single thirty-minute stretch the United States had managed to eradicate both of Khas Uruzgan's potential governments, the core of any future anti-Taliban leadership - stalwarts who had outlasted the Russian invasion, the civil war, and the Taliban years but would not survive their own allies. People in Khas Uruzgan felt what Americans might if, in a single night, masked gunmen had wiped out the entire city council, mayor's office, and police department of a small suburban town: shock, grief, and rage. — Anand Gopal