In the US, men and women chain themselves to trees to prevent loggers from damaging our national treasure (our wilderness). Yes, it still happens, but someone put their life on the line, and there are people dedicate the entire lives to stopping deforestation here.

By destroying the environment and our own positive accomplishments, we are destroying everything that makes us human and symbolically destroying not just beauty, but the universal ability to identify and value beauty and its correlative, order.

By eschewing beauty and order (or tacitly allowing others to do so so that we don’t have to engage them in a direct physical confrontation), we are moving towards a dark, ugly, and chaotic future.

Bravo for reporting it, Nancy, but I’m sad that failed to see the larger point that SOMEONE must do something to stop this and other related Taliban activity regardless of whether it represents the will of the average Pakistani. That point is completely irrelevant, unless your main point is to simply try to confront the tide of Islamophobia and violent rhetoric. If that IS your point, I would like to point out that Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence is simply a direct effect of the actions like destroying the giant Buddha (and other cultural symbols worldwide) in combination with violence against civilians.