You speak in jest, but honestly, a concerted effort to improve the situation of women in the Middle East would do more to win the War on Terror than any number of preemptive invasions. Did you serve in Iraq? We had these little decks of cards with different wanted people on them. I still have mine somewhere in an Altoids tin, if memory serves. Saddam was the Ace of Spades, of course. Anyway, the Five of Hearts was a woman who ran Saddam's military R&D program. An Iraqi woman, with a PhD, running a major government program. Now that we've thrown out the secularists and let the theocrats take over, I can't even imagine that happening in Iraq today. That's what I call the Law of Unintended Consequences. That's what a Shiite cleric would call progress. I wonder if this university will even allow women. If it does, I imagine it will be bombed in very short order.

Perhaps It Takes a Village isn't the right book, though. I suggest 10,000,000 copies of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in Arabic translation be dropped all over Iraq with little parachutes attached. And then I suggest Saudi Arabia be subjected to similar bombardment without delay.

Cultural weapons for a cultural war. :-)