Allowing the Northern Alliance to rule over and terrorize people is also wrong. Replacing one set of murderers with another, what Washington is doing, isn't much of an improvement. The liberation of the oppressed must be the work of the oppressed themselves; anything else just replaces one form of oppression with another. The ends don't justify the means. The Taliban should be overthrown by a popular revolution from the masses, not through Washington imposing a puppet state. The current war just helps the Taliban victimize innocent Afghanis even more - in addition to the Taliban & NA terrorizing the population you have the US&UK doing it. Furthermore, this war is not being waged to liberate the Afghanis. Washington doesn't care about things like human rights - whenever they claim they're doing something to defend "human rights" or "democracy" that's just propaganda they're using to mask their real objectives and dupe you into supporting their mass murder.
And one can use the exact same logic your'e using to justify the Sept. 11th attacks. Allowing the US with their guns to rule over and terrorize the world is wrong. If it's acceptable to kill innocent Afghans to get at the Taliban why is it not acceptable to kill innocent Americans to get at the American Empire?
It seems to me one can take one of three mutually exclusive positions on this: 1) The Sept. 11th attacks were an acceptable means of retaliating against the American Empire, which has waged far more death, destruction, and terror across the globe then the Taliban. Any "collateral damage" killed in the attack, while unfortunate, is justified to strike against the "evildoers".
2) Killing innocent people is wrong. Thus both the Sept. 11th attacks and the current war are wrong.
3) American lives are more valuable then other people's lives. Thus, the Sept. 11th attacks are wrong, because they killed innocent Americans, but the current war is okay because the innocents being killed are just Afghans and they're inferior anyway.
I happen to take position 2. Most Americans I have spoken with take position 3, though they don't always phrase it that way. What position are you taking, Brad?