Despite all the rhetoric and vitriol the essential point is being ignored: The Taliban probably DO want to withdraw from international affairs….last time they let themselves get involved, the most powerful nation on earth invaded, backed by virtually the ENTIRE world, and they were forced to flee for their lives. 

I mean think about it: The Taliban allowed themselves to be suckered by Al Qaeda into giving them aid and comfort in the Great Jihad to make all the world radical Moslems and what did it get them? Thrown from their enjoyable position of being able to torture and torment and enslave their own people.  But they are not STUPID—Al Qaeda brought them unwanted international attention and disdain and they’d just as soon not have that again, so they can once again be extreme despotic dictators of Afghanistan.

Better to be the biggest fish in a little pond.

hello. religious/politico defamation obscures the message. Taliban states no expansionist threat. they want the right to pursue profits from illegal heroin trafficking until all countries wise up and legalise it. our DEA wants to control the profits. it is the same illegal war funded with illegal drug money we have seen for the past 2 generations. nobody in government wants to disclose this ugly truth about the human slaughter they undertake to confiscate our huge illegal revenue abroad. brainwashing everybody about a dozen born crack babies or less than 1% of the population hooked on heroin certifies an illegal war on drugs (not voted on by Congress) instead of legalising all the crap and opening treatment centers. this is a war about illegal heroin profits. it is not about changing the religion, or putting in a pipeline, and it is illegal. pull out and let the Taliban survive on legalised heroin. we should not be getting our brothers and sisters slaughtered over less than 1% of our population of heroin abusers. we can influence political or religious change without the end of a gun barrel. this illegal drug war is self perpetuating: from the vast revenue source generated by keeping it illegal; to all the agencies that live off of it. legalising would return this wasted money back into our economy.

“Freedom-loving” Taliban?  That’s rich…

Sure, they love freedom. Freedom to murder or maim with acid any woman who tries to attend school or learn to read, or who darse to show her face in public without cover of a burka.  Freedom to kidnap girls at gunpoint from their families, to force them into marriages they don’t want. Freedom to shoot the girls family if they resist (happened to someone I used to know).  Freedom to murder anyone who dares to switch from Islam to any other religion. Freedom to ban music, haircuts for men, or anything else they deem un-Islamic. Yessiree, they sure love freedom.