By Andrew L. Jaffee

Two men on a motorcycle used water pistols to spray acid on girls walking to school Wednesday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, blinding at least two of them, military spokesmen said. ….

CNN.com, 11/12/08

Also yesterday in Afghanistan, a “… suicide bombing … occurred near a government building hours later that killed and wounded several civilians, including women and children.” And in neighboring Pakistan yesterday, “Gunmen shot dead a U.S. aid official along with his driver as he left his home in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday, a senior police official said.”

Such are the tactics of so-called Islamic “insurgents” who want to keep Afghanistan in the Stone Age — e.g., keep women uneducated, barefoot, in-the-home, and completely subservient to men. What cowards these “militants” are, blinding little girls, blowing up women and children, and killing unarmed aid workers.

Of course, Reuters says that Coalition efforts to fight such extremists “have fuelled anti-American sentiment.” But wait a minute, Afghanistan under the Taliban and al-Qaeda was the world headquarters for “anti-American sentiment” for years. It was there in which the barbaric 9/11 plot was hatched, even though the U.S. supported the Taliban and their Arab allies in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Such thanks we get. How can anti-American sentiment there get any worse than it has been for years?

Perhaps it is because current Coalition efforts in Afghanistan have been too soft-handed. Do people remember what it took to convince the neo-Bushido Japanese and fascist Germans to capitulate? It wasn’t soft-handedness. It was terrible but necessary actions like carpet bombing, the Dresden fire-bombing, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki which drove the enemy to surrender.

I am certainly not one to revel in violence of any kind. The events which ended WWII were horrific. But those very tough military tactics paled in comparison to the crimes committed by the German and Japanese fascists. What I’m saying is that al-Qaeda and the Taliban may never capitulate because of nation-building and foreign aid, but only by a show of strength to end all shows of strength.