THE TALIBAN have broken peace talks again and their consequent renounciation of terrorism, as President Karzai wants American forces to stay on their bases as early as 2013 and not engage in contact with Afghans, a measure not without dangers that would have aided post 2014 counter-insurgency against fundamentalist terrorists, thus paving a way to a cuddly political acceptance of the Taliban by expanding finite groups of people. Panetta, in the heat of this moment, while visiting with Karzai, was offered yet another example of a coalition force member switching sides and supposedly ideas by trying to drive into a group of Marines with a stolen pick-up truck, setting himself on fire instead. Since 2006 70 Americans have been killed in such attacks in Afghanistan, which have also taken place in Pakistan, this after years of American solidarity on all levels with the plight of Afghanis against those awful Soviets who saw them as satellites to their greater power, a role we have come to claim on their shores, then.In the meantime the Taliban are running a popularity contest with Afghans, who seem to be very understanding of bloody foibles should they occur for customs whose brutality can be justified as idiosyncratic while the vast interaction with our amorphous mass of America seems also to have created hybrids such as Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who tried to kill an American soldier, instead of delegating a male relative to do so. While thriving on an opium trade in the past, the Taliban are now making a living mostly through abductions, some lasting years and ending in murder. Other groups involved sell their victims to them or Al Quaeda, and they in turn request money and the exchange of hundreds of prisoners, this while peace talks were an option (as they still are).The people kidnapped include tourists, journalists and aid workers, or basically, anyone who isn't them crying out " Allah made me do it". The Koran has also been a favorite excuse for the indiscriminate murder of U.N. workers and U.S. personnel, since appearance is the visible and uncontestable proof of whether someone considers it a text for burning. In these cases, it is supported unquestionably by believers in countries they wish its teachings would illuminate the nation's drive to turn it into the only code for the only religion available for moral consolation and pride in oneself, since neither could be found in just action.