Soon after the murderous Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, British Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered a stirring speech in solidarity with America.
Speaking of those who killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Mr. Blair declared, “There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it.”
He directed his comments both to the al-Qaida terrorist network that committed the vicious acts of 9/11 and to the radical Muslim Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which sheltered al-Qaida and its leader Osama bin Laden.
More recently, the Taliban illustrated anew that they are not a force with whom the United States or any nation may work reasonably toward peace and stability in Afghanistan.
A few days ago, the Taliban accused a 7-year-old boy of acting as a spy for U.S. and NATO military forces in Afghanistan. They took him from the garden in which he had been playing, and murdered him by hanging him from a tree nearby.