On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote:
The Taliban were illegitimate, not on legal grounds, but because they were evil.
Using this line of "reasoning", Shrub is ripe for that overdue case of high velocity lead poisoning.
If someone was in the Taliban, then those threatened by the Taliban have a strong case for locking him up, just as we locked up nazis. Thirdly a government that systematically depopulates large areas of the territory it supposedly rules is not as legitimate as warlords with genuine local roots and traditional authority, who for the most part came to power through religious or military leadership in a spontaneous revolution against tyranny.
And if the local warlords are also participating in a vast depopulation, then what?
No one in the Northern alliance ever controlled territory though ethnic cleansing.
I can easily imagine circumstances where ethnic cleansing is a legitimate response to an intransigent enemy with strong roots in the local population - but the fact that the Taliban used such measures shows they did not have strong roots in the local population.
You don't see a circular problem here? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time