statement (via Tamanaha) that

The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is] what your soldiers are dying for.

And

Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban—and now they were marching back to power, supported by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters

truly illustrate the down and dirty reality of American interests in Afghanistan.

What never ceases to amaze me is how often so many Americans fall for the official governmental line about liberation, democracy, and so on. And they accept this even as they witness, from that same government, the pillaging of the treasury, the power of lobbyists who take with one hand while with the other ensure that the treasure chest will remain open for future withdrawals.

Not to get too far afield, I was reading something and came across this from Thucydides, regarding the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens (just change the context to present day America):

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of agression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward ... ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man ... anyone who held violent opinions could be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect ... the plain way of looking at things ... was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist.

The dangers that come with the polarizing nature of propaganda are obvious. What isn't, is why so many humans cannot see this.

I responded (to Cohen's piece) by saying this:

It would be immensely helpful if your four children, assuming they are of age, enlisted immediately in the Army.

Or is this one of those wars for others to fight?

The nytimes.com comment policy requires comments not to be abusive or off-topic.

Was this comment either?

Nope. I, too, had numerous comments rejected by both the Times and the WaPo before I stopped trying. Their sorry attempts at silencing contrary opinion is yet more evidence at how out of touch they are.

Hence the "pajama-wearing, Cheeto-eating bloggers" comments from the best and brightest, like John Harwood.

Relatedly, at that Chicago protest where the banking association was gathered for their annual coven, protesters voiced their anger over bailouts, bonuses and the lobbying efforts currently under way to eviscerate any legislation that might constrain their behavior.

And a CNBC reporter, observing the crowd, said

I can’t believe that people would be out in the streets over something like this.

It's little wonder we're deluged like Noah by balloon-boy stories, an eternity of Michael Jackson's Last Day coverage, etc.

so puzzling:

Riverhill

You (Glenn) accuse the US of "actively waging war in three Muslim countries" while making not a single reference to the terroist armies of Al Queda, the Taliban and Hezbollah, (and the litany of their intentional targeting of innocents to create terror) as if to assert that the US is waging an unprovoked war on Islam itself.

The post is about Douthat's column. It isn't about the things you're objecting to that weren't referenced.

Even so, as he usually does (out of necessity to anticipate certain comments, I'd imagine), he writes

It's obviously true that some Islamic extremists are inherently incompatible "with the Western way of reason," but that's just as true of Christian extremists and Jewish extremists and a whole array of other kinds of extremists. And some measures taken in the name of accommodating Isalm are in tension with core liberties -- just as laws enacted in order to impose Judeo-Christian dogma are.

he (the Pope) explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason ...

Religious belief, by definition, does not inhabit the realm of reason. Even the most superficial reading of Christianity will disabuse anyone of that notion.

The severity used to suffocate alternative interpretations to the nascent doctrinal development of Christian orthodoxy (Catholicism) in the first four centuries after Jesus amply demonstrates the lack of reason in those disputes.

And why, pray, did we have a period of intellectual development named the Enlightenment since, as is obvious, the term presupposes the absence of it in prior centuries?

And here are some choice contradictions

But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel ... Benedict has addressed a range of issues — social justice, environmental protection, even erotic love — that are close to the hearts of secular liberals and lukewarm, progressive-minded Christians.

So even here, what Douthat termed dull ... statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel, suddenly becomes (and seemingly approved by Douthat) a Vatican Okay on a range of issues-social justice (but not Third World debt), environmental protection (but not global warming).

There's nothing that embodies the best of humanity than someone who calls for conflict, but in the politest of ways

Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam ...Christianity's most enduring and impressive foe ...."

Bravely spoken.