I stopped out of even reading this thread for the last few days, because from experience, so often they turn into dispiriting and destructive quarrels. Reading through it today I was really pleased to see that it hasn't happened, and it's stayed as a honest attempt by people to explain their different points of view.

Wars drive people crazy, and "irregular wars" drive them crazier still. People do things and feel things and say things that just don't make sense, and that they never would in ordinary life. The consequences is horrible atrocities, like the obscene killing of Daniel Pearl, with its accompaniment by a style of anti-semitism borrowed from European history, which has nothing to do with the culture of Pakistan.

"Turning the other cheek" doesn't mean giving in to violence.It means refusing to be drawn into the embrace of violence. I am sometimes surprised at how freely people sneer at the expression - more especially people who generally might say they have a lot of regard for the man from whom the expression comes.