Stringsinger, this is an odious comparison from you, "...(B)ut before we get to(sic) self-righteous about it I would suggest that we also remember what happened in Hiroshima and Nagaski and who was responsible for that. A few schools were bombed there too."

The allies were trying to end a war in which invasion of the Japanese Islands would have cost, by estimate, over 100,000 American lives...perhaps even a cousin and an uncle of mine who were US Marines in the Pacific...and, perhaps other relatives who might have been transferred from Europe. You, too, might have had close relatives killed or wounded in that invasion. I am sorry for the loss of civilian Japanese, but their government started the war.

The Taliban, on the other hand, are bullys (and that's the very mildest word I can use) who destroy schools and cultural monuments, to keep girls and women in their 'place', and want to impose their retrograde form of Islam on Afghanistan at whatever the cost to the populace.