Playground politics… parents are experts at playground politics. When I was a wee little bugger in the sandbox, there were the good kids — the kids that shared their shovels and really cool castle-making buckets — and there were the meanies — the kids who knocked over the good kids’ castles, kicked in our buckets and chewed our shovels.

Mom and Dad always said, “Yes, honey, they’re mean, but that doesn’t mean you should be mean back to them.”

The “turn the other cheek” attitude remained steady through the lunch money thieves and ‘yo mama’ jokers in junior high as well as the bullies in high school.

Playground politics was centered around passivism and the inner confidence that you were better than that lower-than-the-fungus-between-the-frog-on-the-log’s-toes boy or girl that just gave you a massive wedgie that you’re sure has begun to chafe in the past two minutes.

There were specific rules to playground politics: you don’t retaliate and you don’t let them see you cry.

So, if you’re reading this, I would assume you survived the battlefields of early childhood and adolescence by adhering to these rules and forged your way into the world of adulthood.

Now the rules are suddenly different.

Our battles are fought over individual liberties, not lunch money; sovereignty, not sand castles.

So it baffles me that people, like the members of the Northern Coalition for Peace and Justice, would continue to treat these adversaries with kid-gloves, and under the guise of “America should have known better.”

I must first point out that our beef is with members of the Taliban, the ruling faction in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not in the Middle East. I’m not sure if the writer of the NCPJ’s column was blind to this fact, or if he was under the impression that we’re chasing people in the Middle East as well, but I felt an obligation to my geography teachers of long ago to point that out.

The U.S. did what it did in the ’70s to protect our national interests and to keep the American people — including members of the NCPJ and their families — safe from nuclear war.

I must also point out that the military is in place for a reason. The Army, Navy, Air Force and the Marines were created in their tradition to protect the rights and liberties of United States’ citizens, the same rights and liberties born of labours of revolutionary militiamen.

American soldiers are fully aware of their duties — they know that in the event of a war, they may be called onto the field. Chalk it up to occupational hazard if you must, but this is the reality of the armed services.

The National Coalition for Peace and Justice is stuck on the playground. They have come out against action or retaliation on the premise that violence is just plain wrong.

Nobody bothered to mention that to Mohammed Atta as he slammed the first airliner into the World Trade Center.

My suggestion to the NCPJ: Hold a bake sale to raise the funds to take a trip to Kabul where you can personally deliver your message of peace to waiting representatives of the Taliban. Raise your picket signs and chain yourselves to their missiles and tanks in protest. I would also suggest you make sure Osama bin Laden is home before you go stomping on his turf wasting your last breath.

I’m sure the peace-and-justicers love to express their anti-military sentiments and their human rights rhetoric out in public, but I highly doubt any one of them would sign up for a seat

on the plane to Afghanistan or the Balkans to walk the streets armed with a United Nations charter and a hefty set of vocal chords.

The First Amendment is absolutely wonderful, but don’t use it unless you’re willing to fight for it everyday with your life like the men and women of the armed forces.

And fight with your life. You must, because we’re not on the playground anymore.