I'm glad you deigned to mention the plight of Afghan women (albeit in a mere "update")

Are you in favor of invading Saudi Arabia and changing their government, or do you favor the ongoing oppression of women there?

How about in Yemen?

And what do you plan to do about the plight of women in numerous parts of Iraq - should we re-invade and change the government again, or are you fine with what's happening to them, too?

I know that people can be easily propagandized, but the people who think we're sending our army halfway around the world to improve the plight of women go beyond merely being propagandized.

Let them have their government of men, by men, for men, but don't abandon women to gender apartheid.

Click on the link in the update to read about how Afghan women will fare under warlords.

How are Iraqi women faring now versus under Saddam?

What do you want to do about the oppressed women of Saudi Arabia? And Yemen? And scores of other countries? Do you just want to abandon them?

Far Left

Your history here is that you pop up to make factually false claims about public opinion, and then when polls are shoved down your throat proving your statements to be false, you crawl away without having the tiny amount of integrity to acknowledge them. From a new NBC/WSJ poll released just today:

45 percent support withdrawing all U.S. troops from [Afghanistan].

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33495798/ns/politics-white_house/

How large is the "Far Left" in this country -- the same "Far Left" that supported a withdrawal from Iraq.

Don't let Glenn Greenwald subject little Afghan girls to Taliban rape

They're way worse than Roman Polanski.

Do you favor the invasions of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Colombia and Cuba, or are you in indifferent to the human rights abuses there?

Did you favor the invasion of Iraq, or were you in favor of Saddam's rape rooms?

No, I'm just saying it's absurd to suggest that intolerance of gays in Alabama is even remotely comparable to intolerance of gays in countries where they are subject to imprisonment, torture and execution as a matter of state/church policy.

I wasn't trying to claim they're equal. I was pointing out that there is intolerance for gays among both SOME Christians and SOME Muslims. That was the whole point of my criticism of Douthat.

How about predominantly Christian Jamaica. How are gays treated there?

http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14460193

What does that tell you about Christianity? Anything?

I really wish that Glenn Greenwald would stop this Muslim lovefest he keeps wallowing in, get down off his liberal high horse, and just come right out and admit what people who live in the real world already know: that it's obviously true that some Islamic extremists are inherently incompatible with the Western tradition of reason.

I'm too stubborn ever to acknowledge this. Deep down, I know it's "obviously true that that some Islamic extremists are inherently incompatible with the Western tradition of reason," but I just can't bring myself to admit it.

intolerance towards homosexuals, women, religious minorities, etc. in Alabama is as bad as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, etc.

So what you're saying is that you read what I wrote and this is the point you concluded I was making? That "intolerance towards homosexuals, women, religious minorities, etc. in Alabama is as bad as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, etc."

That's what you came away with?

There is a thriving gay life in Beirut, the capital of a Muslim country.

In Jamaica, an overwhelmingly Christian countries, gays are as oppressed as they are anywhere, not infrequently killed (http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14460193).

Therefore, I've proven that Islam is tolerant and compatible with freedom - and Christianity isn't.

I expect Glenn to pack up his suitcases and move from that awful Catholic hellhole In Rio de Janeiro to Islamabad any day now. Because they're 100% morally equivalent.

Why is it that you think if you can find the most extreme place for Islam that you've proven that Islam itself is inherently bad?

Can I use the behavior of West Bank settlers to indict Jews and Judaism generally? Can I use the relative liberalism and tolerance of Gulf States or Lebanon to praise Muslims? If it's better to live as a gay man in Dubai or Beirut than it is in Jamaica -- or in the slums of the Brazilian interior -- does that prove that Muslims are more tolerant than Christians ("Beirut is now one the hottest international destinations for the gay set looking for a party" - http://mydailyclarity.com/2009/09/beiruts-flourihing-albeit-illegal-gay-scene/)?

Let me repeat what I wrote for those like you who didn't comprehend it the first time:

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.