And in your example the US is the man stabing his wife & the taliban the tumor. Taking any action which you know will result in the death of innocent people is immoral. The claim that killing innocent people now will save lives later can be used to justify almost anything (including 9-11) since there's no real way to predict the future. It is a double standard to say that the US has a right to self defense yet Arabs don't.
Both sides in this conflict use the same flawed justification - that they're just "retaliating" (another name for vengence) for past transgressions. I fail to see how the retaliation on 9-11 was any more unethical then the US retaliation in Afghanistan. The US Empire is a far greater threat to world peace then Al-Qaeda; as evil as the later may be. Fuck, the US practically _created_ al-qaeda and similar groups will continue to be created so long as the Empire is maintained. The war in Afghanistan has completely failed in its stated goal of capturing or killing bin Laden and has killed more innocent civilians then those who died in the 9-11 massacre. Even the CIA has said that conquering Afghanistan probably won't do much to deter al-qaeda. It has replaced the tyrannical Taliban with equally tyrannical warlords. Instead of making women wear the Burka, rape women and use them as sex slaves. What a big improvement.
-- Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ -- http://www.anarchyfaq.org
"According to the libertarian litany, if an industry or an institution is making a profit, it is satisfying "wants" whose origins and content are deliberately disregarded. But what we want, what we are capable of wanting is relative to the forms of social organization. People "want" fast food because they have to hurry back to work, because processed supermarket food doesn't taste much better anyway, because the nuclear family (for the dwindling minority who have even that to go home to) is too small and too stressed to sustain much festivity in cooking and eating -- and so forth. It is only people who can't get what they want who resign themselves to want more of what they can get. Since we cannot be friends and lovers, we wail for more candy." - Bob Black