Consider what the Taliban have stood for in the past:

Requiring women to wear one restrictive form of dress and not be able to seek medical attention from male doctors.

Requiring all Muslims to worship God in one way only, because there is only one 'right' way.

Preparing legislation to require non-Muslims to wear distinctive markings.

Dynamiting the ancient works of another culture due to a misapplication of the definition of 'idol'.

And most recently:

Providing aide, comfort, and shelter to the leader of a far-flung terrorist organization which has now several times over the past few years performed deadly undiscriminating attacks against the United States and its allies.

So who is sexist, racist, and attempting to impose cultural imperialism here?

You want to demonize the bastards, be my guest.

I think when the returns are in, it will be admitted that there were comparitively few instances of discrimination per population count in the U.S. I've already witnessed dozens of instances through the media in which our attention is drawn to the need to realize the distinctions between Sikhs, Muslims, fanatics, etc.

Long before the tragic events of this month, news articles around the country have been 'preparing' us, if that is the right word, for the news that the U.S. is increasingly growing to look more like the rest of the world color-wise. This is a part of American life that I think we will grow to celebrate.

The Taliban and their ilk are indeed a sort of troll, although this is a gross insult to troll-dom and I do not wish to be politically incorrect more than necessary. They are a self-righteous, ill-informed, deadly virus, more similar in essence to the Khmer Rouge than to any other system of thought and belief. They are mired between dark ages superstition and hypocrisy. They have seized the tools of the modern world primarilly to destroy it, without accepting the principles of the world which made those tools possible. Yes, a kind of virus.

We know it's tough to kill off a virus. Sometimes you can only beat it down, but I don't know of any successful cases in which one could reason with a virus.