We bend over backwards to avoid these casualties; the jihadis go out of their way to create them.

Again: it seems that the use of human shields is a very effective way for our jihadist foes to tie our hands; it is a way that they can use our own moral scruples (which they do not share and see as a sign of weakness) against us, and they know it.

You and I agree that our own moral qualms about attacking them when they employ this tactic are justifiable only in proportion to the severity of the existential peril of staying our hand: the level of the threat determines the appropriate response.

So we cede to them a cheap and powerful means of defending themselves. As I remarked above, the issue now becomes an empirical matter of just when we decide that the stakes are high enough, and the cost of tolerating this tactic severe enough, to justify denying it to them.

The good guys can’t remain good if they mimic such behavior.

I am certainly guilty as charged as regards the occasional rhetorical flourish.

You may or may not be right about that. It certainly gives our foes a powerful weapon.

“Not mortally so.” What if you’re wrong? Just what should we be willing to sacrifice for this principle? Even when pitted against implacable enemies who will stop at nothing to achieve our subjugation or extermination, will we nevertheless play by our kind-hearted rules, rules which to them are nothing more than a laughable weakness? Is there to be no qualification for inclusion in the circle of moral obligation? Must we pursue this ideal even unto our own destruction?

It is the moral dimension which I think is most interesting, and I’ll have to go with Alyosha Karamazov on this one. In the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, Alyosha is asked what he would do if he could stop all human suffering, if and only if a small child were tortured to death. He said no. In my view, this is the only defensible moral position.

I recognize that others may differ, and Alyosha Karamazov never met Josef Stalin. I get that. I’m also a big John Rawls fan, and he might answer it differently. Nonetheless, that’s my belief, and I’m sticking to it.

Obviously OBL et al., however, have none of the qualms that liberal Westerners do about the killing of civilians; they see it as nothing more than a further sign of our weakness and irresolution. This one of many reasons why I am not particularly optimistic about our prospects.

The article frames it this way: if we knew that Osama Bin Laden was in a room with a four year old, most people would say go for it. What if he were in a classroom? A hospital? Where do you draw the line?

However, I’m curious to know your thoughts on a related topic (to Hillary Clinton and Pakistan). An excellent article in this week’s New Yorker reports that we’ve killed between 300 and 600 innocents in Pakistan this year using predator drones targeting suspected terrorists. The drones have decimated Al Qaeda, but the collateral damage has been enormous. Basically we are attacking a country which has never attacked us, and which we are not at war with. Your thoughts?

But I would also have no problem with making distinctions and discriminations as far as different cultural symbols are concerned; the benevolent fiction that all cultures stand in exactly the same relation to the West is naive at best, and in my opinion dangerously foolish. I consider, for example, that symbols of Muslim repression of women are at a far greater distance from our own culture than a yarmulke is, and I see no persuasive reason for us to feel obligated to tolerate them.