Editor,
This letter is to continue on with the fuss the community has made since the publication of the "Taliban photo."
First, thank you for publishing reality even if it's a reality that the peaceniks would rather stick their heads in the sand over.
Second, I request that you also publish a photo of the gruesome reality that led us to the moments during which the Taliban photo was taken. Publish a picture of terrified American civilians clutching to each other as they were forced to jump from windows 100-plus stories high, knowing that, one way or the other, death is their fate. Please, publish a picture of these same terrified American civilians as they went splat on the streets of New York.
I wish the Sept. 11 attack had never taken place. Since it did, since the attack was so cruel and savage, I vote for a reinstatement of Hammurabi's Law: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
I vote that once we've rounded up a sufficient number of Taliban and al Qaeda affiliates, we fill a giant remote-control jetliner with them and use that as our next bomb to be dropped on suspected Taliban hideouts. I vote that we bring Taliban and al Qaeda heads home on spears and parade them through the streets as children dance and the local fire fighters throw candy from the fire trucks.
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Blood thirsty? Yes! Vengeful? Absolutely! "But, Ramona," I can already imagine tomorrow's opinion columnists whining, "that would make us just as awful as them."
No, it would merely put them in their place. They're counting on American diplomacy, counting on the peace-protesting masses to prevail, so that they can continue to commit atrocities in Afghanistan and around the world.
It is America's duty now to show the Taliban who's boss and show them that there's no tolerance for their cruelty and brutality, not here, and not in Afghanistan.
Perhaps it will take a gruesome photo of American suffering for people to understand why it is that the brutality displayed in the Taliban photo is justified and deserved. Believe that special forces are sticking it to the soldiers they capture when the camera isn't there.
Afghanistan's methods of torture are legendary. I vote it's time for them to get a taste of their own medicine.
Ramona Baca-Hodroff
UNM freshman and advocate for Hammurabi's Law
