<If I am forced to give up a system that gives meaning to my life, the system which will ostensibly replace it will be vacant of meaning for me, except as the not-what-I-was, and will create a vacuum in my heart and in the society in which I live.

Hirohito's New Nipan, and his heroic embrace of defeat. Many were the old warriors who came home to lost ideals and utter chaos. In Germany, the defeat was felt and the surrender merely a logical choice. In the Pacific, defeat was total, and without MacArthur (well, without U.S. intervention at any rate), would have plummeted Japan to sure political annihilation and, by the turn of this new century, to historical anonymity.

Will the Taliban -- along with the other Islamic fringe rebel groups around the world -- be able to see the logic of defeat, or must they be annihilated as well?

I believe the next couple weeks will tell much,
Dan