brilliant as usual.

but there's EVEN MORE to attack about their article! for example, the notion that Afghanistan might provide a "safe haven" for terrorists if we "lose", and then they will attack us all over again. Well, the Terrorists don't need the entire country of AFghanistan for Terror Planning. They need an apartment and a cel phone: the Madrid train bombings were planned from an apartment in Madrid and no one called for bombing Germany.

Ah! But it's Different, the Post might say, because the guys who did the Madrid train bombing situation were just a bunch of bad apples in a Berlin apartment, whereas Al Qaeda was actively hosted by the Taliban! Ok, well, that may negate our need to bomb Germany. But the result is the same, isn't it? Innocent people died. And bombing Afghanistan won't prevent more people from dying. (just re-reading that last statement makes me see how absurd it is to think as such).

Then there's this thing where we might "lose". Well if "winning" is going to be accomplished by providing essential services and liberating women, as that one military expert opined, then we should maybe consider it our strategy to leave. RAWA is against the occupation, and Hamid Karzai signed a bill into law allowing Shia men to starve their wives if they are denied sex.

And even if we agree with the idea that we need to be in AFghanistan in the first place, having this health care mess in our country IS a security threat. A study was recently published indicating that recruiters are struggling to meet their goals in part because the young men and women interested in enlisting are too obese to make the basic health requirements.

I put all of this and more in an open salon post btw...link is at my signature.

means not simply keeping the people safe, but providing for the people a series of services -- effective governance, economic development, education, the elimination of corruption, the protection of women's rights.

well, I am a Californian and a graduate student at a UC. can i please have my effective governance? and a side of education with that? and for dessert, a buffet of paid parental leave, equal pay, laws that protect rape victims, non-discriminatory insurance policies, affordable child care, and either enough battered women's shelters or no need for them anymore.

k thanks!

a win for progressives??

really? depending on the poll and how the question is phrased, 52%-65% of Americans support the public option.

isn't it a win for, I dunno, the country? Americans? Democracy?

otherwise we have an awful lot more progressives than i'd ever thought.

Blaming the victim takes place overtly when it happens, say, in a commenting thread, and someone comments that this and other victims were transgressing social boundaries, or acting recklessly, and thus put themselves at undue risk.

it happens much more subtly when it is executed by, say, CNN, or MSNBC. I have read articles about rape wherein the word "rape" is not mentioned once. The headline and article will contain sentences like, "she accused him of continuing to have sex with her even after she said no", or "the perp is accused of forcing a woman to have sex with him even though he knew she was unwilling."

one could say that this is, perhaps, out of fairness to the accused, who are not guilty until they stand trial and are convicted. however, i cannot imagine CNN or MSNBC or even FOX reporting on a victim of a robbery as "accusing the perpetrator of forcing her to give him a loan even though she knew he was unwilling."

the "blame" on the pages of newspapers and on CNN takes place in terms of denying the existence of the word "rape", and of discussing gender-based violence without ever discussing gender or acknowledging the existance of such a problem.

we even speak of rape as though there is no perpetrator. "one in six women are raped" we can all recite duly, but who is raping them? are one in six men rapists? and we speak of women being raped, as if this is a misfortune that befalls them alone and is theirs alone to claim. headlines do not say, "man rapes los angeles woman", they say "los angeles woman is raped".

the blame is there; it's just so subtle that it's difficult to see unless you look.

"Nobody who's anybody still believes that victims of sexual assault ought to be blamed"

really? what about the long list of celebrities, columnists, and pundits who felt that Roman Polanski did not, in fact, rape and sodomize a 13 year old? or that he did but that it's ok, for some reason? if we aren't overtly blaming the rapist we succeed in tacitly blaming the victim.