I read something (which I can't find now) where the NA was standing around amazed as the Red Cross fed Taliban prisoners. "They'll eat your food and come back and blow you up," the NA people said.

I'm not recommending shooting prisoners as an official policy, but as we have found in many other situations, civilized behavior often carries a price later on. We have to be prepared to pay it if we want to keep our principles.

I had to explain something along these lines to my kid once when he asked me why Batman (in the comics) just didn't up and kill the Joker, who keeps escaping prison and killing more innocent people. It wasn't easy.