that's what i'm gonna send them, praise allah. 10 million copies.

they will read it and be so moved that a mooselim reformation will take place in hillarys image.

the iraqi wimmins will trade in their black burkas for powder blue pantsuits. they will develop annoying cackles and huge thighs and the world will be safer.

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. :-)

i like the way you think. victory will not be won until every iraqi chick has access to abortion on demand.

The right to participate in the political process, receive higher education, seek employment and not be married without their consent into a state of de facto slavery might be a better place to start. Basic equality (which, ironically, they were a lot closer to under Saddam). Can you think of anything that would strike a deadlier blow at al Qaeda's worldview than the women of the Middle East educated and empowered? That would end them.

Or... we could continue fighting a cultural war with standard ordnance and get nowhere.

Come on, think asymmetrically. :-)

'Come on, think asymmetrically. :-)'

OK, i will. if western wimmins are so satisfied with their lives, how come they are always bitching and acting like they are miserable?

Are they? I hadn't noticed. If that's true, I imagine it must come from all the thinking and speaking that they have a right to do in the West. Either that or it's all your fault somehow. ;-) I'm sure they'd be happier if they were married off as children and never allowed to leave the house or do anything that didn't involve cooking or bearing children. Yeah, that'd solve everything. That's how the Taliban rolls, after all. Irvingchang... are you secretly a member of the Taliban, you sly dog? ;-)

both racism and sexism in the same post, how impressive!

'Either that or it's all your fault somehow. ;-)'

well it is for damn sure never their fault. nothing is ever their fault. the white male patriarchy is to blame for all wimmins ills and angst. you can look it up. that's what they teach them in these wimmins studies programs that they go into massive debt to take. heck, if it weren't for the white male patriarchy, they'd probably get to go to college for 'free'.