Unless they are part of an accepted military force, they are civilians. If they then point guns at people or do similar things, that is (attempted) murder. Last time I heard, you can drag people into prison for that, question them, and search their homes for further evidence, quite legally.
The Taliban was a government, with soldiers, at the beginning of the conflict, which is still ongoing. Assuming that these people represent the Tailiban would make this an obvious example of wartime conduct, and therefore a matter to be investigated as war crimes. If they are not war crimes, then it is a pretty clear case of a number of criminal offences, which have well established responses.
They aren't the Mafia. They don't function in a normal society, they don't abide by any laws except their own and the Afghani police are ill-equipped and powerless to stop them. At what point does a 'citizen' become 'a warlord?' We have the benefit of stability, a government that has existed unbroken for 100+ years, and social order. There is none of that in Afghanistan. They've been at war for almost 30 year straight now. Karzai barely controls half his country, and he's busy making money off that half rather than trying to unify his country. Some of the tribal warlords on both sides of the border are actually turning back to the Taliban after fighting with them, simply because the Taliban is winning.
Applying our Western civic understanding to their world is.....naive. It's almost Bush-esqe in its view, only on the other side of the spectrum. They exist worlds apart from the law, order and certainty we enjoy. You guys want Law & Order in a war zone. Seriously, watch some Nat Geo on Afghanistan. Watch 5 marines in the middle of nowhere with zero cover trying to track down insurgents so they can be "apprehended" and getting pinned by sniper fire, right before they shove an RPG into the rear of their Humvee.
Law & Order that ****ing ain't.
If we cannot agree on an academic ideal version of evil, how could we possible justify agreeing on a practical level? You are just trying to shock people into agreeing that there are things that cannot be tolerated, but practical matters are never that simple, there is no good and evil, only different perspectives... Well, the underlying nature of the universe might qualify as evil, but otherwise...
That IS a practical level. Instead of it being 1,000 miles away from where you live, make it the next town over. Make the bodies in those graves your family members, your countrymen. Make the peace they are threatening YOUR peace. I love watching people say "quit trying to shock me" as they avoid THINKING ABOUT THE SCENARIO GOING DOWN IN THEIR BACK YARD. Am I freaking out about possible extremists in our country? No. But I'm asking you to live in that world for a minute, instead of viewing everything through your comfy, secure lens.
Practical is it's real, tangible impact. You're still debating the philosophical "everyone has a right to believe blah blah blah" "I'm sure there's something else blah blah blah." Get past that, and ask yourself, if faced with the situation yourself, what would be your ACTUAL response? I'm asking you get out of the armchair and put yourself in the reality of it, away from the certainty that it's not your problem. Make it your problem, then ask yourself what you'd do.
This is basically the entirety of your definition, that they are committed to their cause. If someone is committed to clean oil off of endless stretches of featureless sand, then their morality is generally not questioned. If someone is committed to their country, then many would celebrate their virtue. The virtue of a cause changes completely based upon who you ask...
You cannot question the results. Judge the results, not the justification. Being wholly committed to cleaning up an oil spill has utterly different results than being committed to murdering any non-Taliban Muslim to make the point you're not going away. I'm not going to humor your quote war above, you're not being that clever.
And please don't come with the "too dangerous to keep in a normal prison" argument that regularly turns up: Homicidal maniacs of the worst kind can already be kept in normal prison, so where is the problem? Just because they claim a religious foundation for their crimes does not change them in any fundamental way from any other homicidal criminal.
I wasn't going to. But you bring up a nice point. Since when did our soldiers become police men for other nations? Since when did their primary mission change from 'kill the enemy' to 'kill the enemy...and put people in jail?' Our whole definition of what's going on over there, what our real mission is and what our priorities are, is ****ed. The US has been policing the world for a while now, but only recently have our troops started functioning as police instead of soldiers.
And as you point out, there are shades of gray, and if you claim to arbitrarily set the definition of evil on your own, personal attitudes, you already make it useless for society as whole. For we don't need laws that are based on personal whims but rather those based on more or less universally applicable definitions (I know, laws allow some leeway, but there are limits to that).
I never claimed to be stating a belief system that works for society as a whole. I've made the point, emphatically I thought, that laws are all nice and dandy, but it will always come down to the individual to decide the difference between good and evil, and that laws are ultimately secondary. There have been unjust laws, there have been evil laws. There have been great laws. Laws merely mean something is legal; their proponents are the ones who will always claim that they are righteous as well. I don't rely on legal definitions to decide for myself what is right and wrong. I use them to know what will get me a jail sentence and what won't. There's a big difference.
What will you do then, if you are hit by that arbitrariness you wish for?
By placing the responsibility on the individual to decide their own morality and ethics, you are forced to accept that their belief is sacred, to them at least. And you will be forced to fight if you don't agree. Yes, I'm advocating the law of the jungle. Is it the most enlightened view? No. But I think it's truer to who we are; the dissembling and obfuscation of these moral and ethical arguments is just cover for the fact we believe, and we disagree, so now what? I'm in favor of cutting the BS. I believe in relativism; but it's gotten to the point where people believe in it so strongly that they ignore the REAL impact of the things and they blithely say "it's not that simple." I think it's just a dodge to avoid the visceral reaction it deserves, to not seem like the warmongers many of us despise. Be real. That shit is wrong, and someone who lives "just to inflict the pain on your people that you have inflicted on mine" is evil in my book, regardless of race, creed or color. They don't need a court hearing, they need a lethal dose of exactly what they are peddling; unflinching belief.
It's almost like a bad episode of Law and Order, to tell the truth. Killer A says he killed for an ostensibly non-criminal reason. Prosecution says reasons rarely justify the ends. Defense says Killer A had a good reason and therefore shouldn't be sentenced to the maximum extent. As if the only killers we should be worried about are the ones that do it for no reason at all.
You sure about that? Depictions of human figures in a mosque are a big no-no.
I was unaware of that stricture, I thought it was just the Prophet. It wasn't technically a mosque--more like a shelled out building with tile work that they hand painted, and where they chose to worship. I'm not sure if that makes it a mosque...but yes, the video did show somewhat abstracted human figures.
Guys, I'm going to encourage you read what I'm actually saying before defaulting to "zomg he's bashing Muslims and Islam!" Big letters for everyone.
If I'd had a relevant, recent Christian example to give, I would have.
