Some people want to negotiate with the Taliban?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Taliban attacks school and murders over 100 students and some teachers.

 

Extremists are exactly that.  What more can be said than that they need to be utterly eradicated?

 

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"

Mahatma Gandhi

[Anthracite 37]

I read it. Horrific acts. I think that they should be disabled, justice has to be done. But certainly no man has the right to take another man's life. Even if this man has taken another life before. That's my humble opinion.

What do you think?

[Indiana Joe 1,752]

I read it. Horrific acts. I think that they should be disabled, justice has to be done. But certainly no man has the right to take another man's life. Even if this man has taken another life before. That's my humble opinion.

What do you think?

 

They'll use your weakness against you; the pacifists will burn first when it all breaks loose.  

 

-

 

Unfortunately the Middle East is another Vietnam; going anywhere near there will result in unavoidable bloodshed.  The extremists corrupt the governments and control the population very effectively.  They're like a late-stage cancer that's been growing since the end of WWII.  There's no way to get them out without it becoming very ugly.  But the barbarity of recent events is becoming hard to ignore, even to the most isolationist-minded.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

There might be a solution to the extremist problem, but what do you do with your own corrupted youth?

[LexusInfernus 908]

They'll use your weakness against you; the pacifists will burn first when it all breaks loose.  

 

Pacifism is not weakness. 

 

 

And in this case the Taliban have shot themselves in the foot. By reaching a new low and targeting children on such a massive scale they have done much to turn public opinion decisively against them. But in the end, the military can't solve this problem. New Wars are not won through superior firepower, they need to be starved of oxygen. 

[CapTon 592]

You simply don't negotiate with terrorists because in the end, you'll never get the better deal. Western nations need to confront the situation head-on instead of holding back (specifically the United States). Why hold back and make us appear weaker to these extremists? The only thing that does is dig us in a deeper hole than we're already in and give them a reason to continue doing what they're best at?

[LexusInfernus 908]

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem appears to be a nail. 

 

Perhaps Americans should look for tools other then their trusty hammer to solve problems. Rather than try and bomb every problem away only to find out that it didn't work and you inadvertently made your enemies even more numerous and stronger, you might want to approach problems from a different perspective. And no that doesn't mean you have to negotiate with the Taliban, there are other options that could work that could destroy them without force. 

 

Remember what Sun Tzu said:

 

Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

 

 

Actually Sun Tzu said a lot of things the US should listen to, they might learn something. 

[Sabretooth78 808]

Maybe instead of using a hammer we should use some trusty old duct tape.  I would assume you could suffocate somebody with duct tape.  Heck, it can do everything else.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The trouble with duct tape is that it dries up and falls off.  Instead of fire power, what should be used against insurgents is ridicule.  Nothing can survive being laughed at.

 

Recently, I saw an article saying that this Taliban attack was a dying effort of an organization that is on the ropes.  Hope it is true.

[jmsepe 2,039]

I definitely don't and perhaps will never will understand why people would do this? Have rationality and reason gone astray these days? As what I have read from one book, perhaps I just have to accept that indeed evil exists. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Who can account for the actions of a group of psychopaths?

[hamsterTK 93]

I'll take the bait and respond to the original proposition of the thread, no matter how unpopular what I say will be...

 

The Taliban are certainly the bad guys, but the region is a festering sore whose problems were created long ago by the British. The tribal culture and extremism were promoted for geopolitical reasons, as part of some strategy to keep borders secure without paying to station a large army. In the parts of Pakistan known as the the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA, there is not a normal constitutional form of justice or law. Instead of fair trials, there is collective punishment handed out to entire tribes and the whole system puts power in the hands of "political agents" whose office was created in the colonial period. Until the 90s people there couldn't vote for their own representatives, and the collective punishment even affected children prior to a reform effort. All of this created anger towards the Pakistani government and is fertile ground for corruption and makes it impossible for the area to develop.The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is also an arbitrary boundary splitting an ethnic region in half.

 

Like I said, the Taliban are evil, but things like illiteracy and how easy it is for people there to feel resentful prevents a new generation from rejecting their ideology. and bigger more challenging problems that won't go away overnight with a military crackdown.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

It is now nearly 70 years since the British pulled out of India (before Pakistan existed).  Since then there has been a dichotomy of the people caused by Jinnah who insisted on having his own Muslim state, which caused a general volkerwandrung both from the newly partitioned Pakistani territory and India with serious bloodshed on both sides.

 

Since then both countries have joined the nuclear club, which makes matters somewhat more serious.  Let's not forget that little fact.

 

Also, recently, Pakistan was partitioned to form Bangladesh, for reasons I don't remember.  One thing to remember is that Bangladeshi territory is pretty much all at sea level, and that as climate change deepens the oceans, their land will be shrinking.  They are already in serious trouble during the monsoon season, and since their population is in the millions, these people are going to want to go somewhere as their land disappears.

 

As a sub-continent, the Hind has enough trouble without echoes of the Raj, which have pretty much faded by now.  These overcrowded lands are masters of their own fate, but we can expect a loud cry for help any time.