The Taliban are none-of-the-above. They are mass-murdering fascists.

I think once we successfully deal with the threat of Islamism, we then need to deal with the threat of Christian fundamentalism as well. Any form of religious fundamentalism is a threat to our civil liberties.

BTW, I enjoyed your interview with Christopher Hitchens. I think his views on religion, in general, are 100% spot on. I agree with them 100%. I believe that people have the right to believe in any religion they choose. However, the idea that religion is necessary for society as a whole is just plain silly.

I'm not the one who lumps national security with domestic social issues. It is some of the right leaning neocons that do this. They need to stop doing this. I am aware that many neo-cons originally came from the democrat side. I am economically conservative, but socially liberal. I guess I got overly excited about this. It just that I utterly despise the social conservatives. I just think social conservatism is newly repackaged bigotry. Their positions have absolutely no validity at all and I cannot understand for the life of me why they even exist.

Anyways, back to the issues of jihadism.

Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, most neoconservatives began their political lives on the left and tend to be more socially liberal than others who are right-of-center.

The "neo" prefix means "new," as you surely must know. The phrase "neo-" or "new conservative" was coined to describe left-of-center Democrats in the 1970s who broke with their party over questions of national security.

Social conservatives are an entirely separate group of people, as are paleoconservative bigots like Pat Buchanan.

The social conservative movement in the U.S. is a form of bigotry, plain and simple. Is there any reason to assume that if I were to be gay or a trans-gender, that I would be any less economically productive or any less a loyal member of the U.S. than if I were straight? Of course not. It is irrational to believe otherwise. Yet, this is what the social conservatives claim. It is bigotry to believe this. Social conservatism is a pathologically sick, mentally twisted worldview that has no legitimacy whatsoever in a modern technological society.

If the jihadi threat is real, they need to stop associating with the social conservative bigots and instead make clear the threat it represents to anyone who lives a life that is not compatible with Islamic life-style. They also need to come up with a convincing roadmap with believable milestones that they can present to the U.S. electorate to convince us to support. It is plainly obvious that I despise the social conservatives here at home. I have no problem with killing the same kind of people (the Islamists you keep warning me about) internationally. If the neocons presented themselves as the defenders of the liberties that we so enjoy and stop associating with the domestic political factions that question those liberties, they just might find that their message gets far better traction than it does now.

Al Qaeda was founded in 1988, not in 1979. Osama bin Laden and a few of his friends also went to Afghanistan as freelance guerrillas, but they were not working with the CIA, and it would be nine more years before Al Qaeda was founded.

Diana West and Dinesh D'souza are not neocons, nor do I take either one of them seriously.

I do not wish to ban abortion or regulate anyone's sex life.

If you think the so-called "jihadi threat" is a "fabrication," what do you think happened on September 11?

And why did Barack Obama, who obviously does not wish to ban abortion or regulate anyone's sex life, just escalate the war in Afghanistan?

You are wrong, not I. Al Quida was created by the CIA in 1979 as a guerrilla force to combat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Yes, the Taliban was started by Pakistan's ISI. However, the CIA fully supported their take over of Afghanistan in order to provide a stable government so that the pipeline could be built without having to deal with Iran or to have it go West to the Black Sea.

...the people promoting this fear also use it to justify and promote an illiberal (the Lockean sense of liberalism) domestic social agenda (like banning abortion, regulating our sex lives, etc.) that has nothing to do with combating this threat if it really existed.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Now your the one being rude and impulsive. Of course, its your blog and that's your right. In any case, I do stand by my previous comments here. Notable neocons such as Diane West and Dinesh D'souza are those that link the so-called threat of Islamism to the promulgation of the illiberal domestic social agenda. If these people really did believe that the threat was genuine, they would not be trying to use it as a pretense to promote illiberal domestic social agenda. As soon as they stop doing this, we might take them seriously. Until then, they are nothing but frauds.

I think Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan are right. This whole thing is cooked up to justify the same gravy train (military establishment, spy agencies, and defense contract industry) that has been a plague on our economy for decades. It was Eisenhower who first warned us about this gravy train and he was absolutely right.

This whole jihadi threat is as much a fabrication of the political right as global warming is a fabrication of the liberal-left. Both of these are frauds to bamboozle the American people into providing money for various special interest groups and to restrict both our social and economic freedoms.