I think about Afghanistan more and more every day.

When the world saw the destruction of a UNESCO Heritage site as expression of fundamentalist hate in early 2001, we knew the hard-line Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the other idiots linked to Al-Qaeda around the world would never stop. We knew that the ignorance, intolerance and capacity for evil would keep coming for us; we ignored it, dismissed it, or worse, thought that this senseless cultural vandalisn of destruction of the Buddhist statues in the Afghanistan Bamiyan Valley was an acceptable form of Afghani cultural assertion or islamic religious expression ... besides, it too far away from the United States to matter.   But the bell was tolling for us in early 2001.    This act took several attempts over several days; it was deliberately pre-announced and well-documented by various news agencies.  If the world had not already gotten the hint, this was Taliban's declaration of holy war against anything and everything in the world that could not be explained within their simplistic, narrow, brutish views.  Six months later, they took down the World Trade Center and flew a plane into the Pentagon. We should realize that we have only started to confront them in a world war that will continue; we can leave Afghanistan, but this attack will keep coming. We need more patience, discipline and inner strength ... to support our troops, to push for reform in [or removal of] the Karzai regime, to continue this fight as long as we need to, to sustain clear alternative.