when i was kid, i frequently watched a film called the princess bride, mostly because it was a favourite of my stepmother's. within the film, there is a stereotyped spanish character that was in search of the one-armed six-fingered man (a crude fugitive parody), and who repeatedly stated the following line:

my name is inigo montaya. you have killed my father. prepare to die.

while the film presents this man's plight in a romanticized sense, he is truly the most contemptible sort of barbarian, carrying out the most barbaric type of blood feud; this man has dedicated his life to the death of another, and has no apparent purpose or aim to his life, no goals, no other reason to exist. one presumes that he could happily expire upon enacting his revenge, with no other thought in his head at all. and, he travels the world seeking the opportunity to actualize it.

it is no doubt some kind of warped concept of "justice" in this man's mind, but that is a thought process that must be alien to any civilized creature. that's an utterly barbaric concept of justice.

the united states has created an entire generation of inigo montoyas in afghanistan, and that is what the song was about. these inigo montoyas will not give up upon american withdrawal, as they have no other reason to exist. they are operating under a code of honour that can only be abrogated in their own suicide. there is no other option for them.

so, we can kill them now, or we can wait for them to try to kill us later.  and, the more inigo montoyas we kill, the more inigo montoyas we create.

there is little chance they will succeed, but withdrawal is not a solution - it is an escalation in total violence.

the only way forward is to wipe them out before they can create further generations. and, that is a harsh lesson, but one we must learn.

a society rooted in the pashtunwali should not exist in the modern era. so, call it genocide if you want, and offer it as an example of one that is justified in the name of the broader expansion of peace and human rights.

at the end of 2003, i wrote a song called like divine amoebas that warned that the result of the occupation of afghanistan would be the creation of a generation of radical islamists bent on enacting their revenge against the west.

that song may have been misunderstood.

badal is the word for revenge in the pashtunwali, the pashtun code of honour, which is what orders the tribal society in the region, more so than any concept of islam. nonetheless, it is the vicious application of the horrors of islamic law that await the society on the resumption of taliban rule. and, our solidarity should be with the people fighting against the barbarism of sharia law.

here we are, almost 20 years later, and those children have grown strong and want to fight.

we must take no pleasure in it, and we must realize that it is a consequence of our own mistakes. but, we need to annihilate them - without mercy, and without shame.