...the Left has no credibility on this issue [separation of church and state], because it’s now the chief American defender of theocracies abroad. It simply amazes me that the Left doesn’t get that the people who attacked us don’t just want God in some pledge; they want to execute "blasphemers," beat women into burqas, stone gays—America was founded by escapees from such theocracies.
--Ron Rosenbaum in this week's New York Observer

In 1998 Physicians for Human Rights did a well-publicized study of Afghan women's health [under the then-current Taliban regime], showing grave depression and suicidal tendencies; Amnesty International has declared the entire female population of Afghanistan prisoners of conscience....

Together with the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Committee of Women for a Democratic Iran, RAWA [the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan] held a small but vigorous rally in Lafayette Park in front of the White House on April 28, [2000]....Eleanor Smeal spoke eloquently without notes; there were messages of support from Representative Carolyn Maloney [D-N.Y.] and Senator Harry Reid [D-Nev.]...

America...romanticizes as noble freedom fighters thugs and fanatics who throw acid in unveiled women's faces and have no interest in anything but their own power.
--column in The Nation by Katha Pollitt, May 29, 2000, reprinted in her essay collection Subject to Debate

Oh, but I should cut Ron Rosembaum a break, right? After all, he was probably too busy leading the resistance against the jackbooted fascists at Starbucks to notice at the time that virtually all of the righteous anger in this country at the actions of the Taliban was on the left.