The great Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taliban in 201. It was a great loss for the cultural heritage of all humanity. Roger Cohen reflects on that loss today, following a recent visit to the site.

People still speak of the Buddhas as if they were there. The Buddhas are visited and debated. A “Buddha road” just opened. It boasts the first paved surface in Afghanistan’s majestic central highlands and stretches all of a half-mile.

But the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan are gone, of course, replaced by two gashes in the reddish-brown cliff. They were destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban in their quest to rid the country of the “gods of the infidels.” The fanatical soldiers of Islam blasted the ancient treasures to fragments.

“It is easier to destroy than to build,” Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal, then the Taliban information minister, noted on March 3, 2001. True enough, but few in New York or elsewhere listened.

Memory, however, is another matter. It is stubborn and volatile and hard to eradicate. The keyhole-like niches in the rock face are charged. Absence is presence. The visitor is drawn into the void as if summoned, not by vacancy, but by the towering Buddhas themselves.

Cohen clearly intends this to be a call for peace, but I think that the quote from Mawlawi Qudratullah shows the problem we face in the current conflict. Our enemy thinks nothing of destruction for destruction's sake, to the point that bombarding Buddhas or flying planes into buildings, not to mention engaging in terrorists bombings and beheadings, are not only not unthinkable but are instead second nature to them. We are faced, then, with new barbarians whose goal is nothing less than the destruction of our society, and we must continue to stand against them or allow them to succeed due to a pacifism born of laziness. Our society has been one of of great building in every field of endeavor. What lasting contribution to the world has our enemy built in the last six centuries?

Cohen ends by noting that fear is not the answer. He is right -- but neither is surrender to the forces of evil that would engulf us in a tidal wave of destruction.

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