Her eyewear and looks were a bit trendy for a roving journo, but her nonconformist approach helped me get over my initial reaction.  She didn't just spout the same-old info, and seemed to really try revealing as many sides to an issue as possible.  Her reporting in Afghanistan was most memorable.

Then, as you say, she was gone.

...to some Americans is trying to consider both sides of the story. I remember talking to my conservative father who was justifying drone attacks in Afghanistan. I asked him to consider that if one of his neighbors was a known enemy of the state, was it then OK to carpet bomb the street my Father lived on to take out this enemy? Would it be ok with him if Mom died in the effort to take out someone who might have tried to kill her?

 He looked at me like I was speaking ancient Greek, because in his mind, innocent people don't live outside of America and our allied countries. Everyone outside the shadow of the holy cross is guilty or expendable. 

 What Banfield was saying was that the world is not a clear-cut, bordered world of Good v. Evil. many do not seem to understand that terrorists are MADE, often by anti-terrorist violence improperly executed. I love my country, but if the military killed my wife or destroyed my home and then told me "i shouldn't have been in the way..." well... let me just say, the most dangerous person in the world is the man who has nothing left to lose. Terrorist are made when ideology is fitted into their desperation. By denying Americans full disclosure of what their war or terror is doing to the world, they condemn us to propagate more terrorists through our ignorance, and help justify the ideas and propaganda by anti-American cells that we ARE the Great Satan, and really don't care about the rest of the world. 

~majority.fm