You think it is only American bloggers who have a concern? That's nonsense. This is human rights, basic human rights. Women in Saudi are treated like pets, and it should be judged abhorrent by any (relatively) civilised society.

They're treated badly by the state (officially), but it's getting better, AND many Saudis actually do treat each other much more reasonably than the law requires -- behind closed doors, plenty of Saudi women are living decent lives, and spend as much of their time outside Saudi as possible.

It's still bad, but it's not as bad as you might fear.

I’m not sure how that is relevant?

People being treated like that is always completely unacceptable. Nothing can excuse that. Everything you say there really doesn’t matter at all for this evaluation.

Actually and effectively doing something about that is the hard part and there are probably no simple solutions. That doesn’t change the nature of this crass violation of human dignity.

>and spend as much of their time outside Saudi as possible.

Well, they shouldn't have to. That's the point.

>>>Don't be fooled, if the US didn't care their BFF Pahlavi murdered and tortured Iranians, you shouldn't expect they care about women rights or whatever in SA.

I always held a similar belief. I found it ironic to hear liberal women talking about a "war on women" by the GOP, but never seem to muster enough strength to do something about these incredible injustices women endure in Saudi Arabia.

you somehow missed the main point, which was they should mind their own business not "do something to fix a place they are not entitled to fix, a place they don't even understand", especially when modern history shows they don't even mind manslaughter at all as long as the oil/cash/whatever is flowing.