Another, Much Bigger Ethical Conundrum

... I'm thinking about those drones operating along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, lobbing missiles into Pakistani villages that kill scores of people. We claim that the dead are Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders, but who could contest that there are innocent civilians amongst them.

... I'm thinking of the lead story in today's New York Times: "Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven: Imposing Islamic Law." I'm thinking about barbers beheaded for shaving beards, about women stoned to death for adultery, about the ban on music, movies, dance, the dynamiting of schools whose offense is to offer an education for girls...

... I'm thinking about the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas...

... I'm thinking of what we know about how the Taliban use their havens, as they used their haven in Afghanistan to host the people who brought about the destruction of the Wold Trade Center towers and killed nearly three thousand people; who have wreaked similar wanton destruction of human life elsewhere in the world on, now, numerous occasions; and who want nothing better than to pursue these tactics until the world itself is ruled by Islamic law...

... I'm thinking about the right to use violence in self-defense--a right that even the Buddhist teachings acknowledge--and the limits of that right; I'm thinking abut the "Bush Doctrine," abhorrent when it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Do we now approve the implementation of such a doctrine, when Pakistan creates a haven for those we know are plotting to do us dreadful harm?

Can such people be "killed with kindness"?

... I'm thinking about Barack Obama's response to a question at an informal press conference aboard Air Force One, reported by Bob Herbert of the New York Times, and elsewhere: "I'm an eternal optimist," Obama said. "That doesn't mean I'm a sap."

I don't pretend to know the answer to any of the questions. I only know that they trouble me deeply, and that I fear for a future when the world is threatened by the kind of deadly intransigence manifested by the Taliban and their terrorist associates. My every instinct agrees that violence can only beget more violence. But then...?