| Friday, March 24, 2006 |
| The perfect storm |
How did we get here? Having touted the grandiose but historically unfounded theory that spreading democracy through invasion will bring freedom and pluralism to the lesser developed nations of the Third World, the Bush administration finds itself at the center of a whirlwind, full of the debris of religion, instability, politics, right and wrong, death and calamity. And so all of these things are supposedly true:
- Afghanistan is a free, sovereign democracy, thanks to the blood, sweat and treasure of the U.S. and European powers...
- Afghanistan has a new constitution, based in large part on Sharia law...
- Afghanistan is, by that theory, free to carry out its own internal policies regarding the punishment for religious transgressions, and to ignore the American and European powers who feel compelled to intervene to stop that country from executing the accused apostate, Abdur Rahman... Right?
And yet...
Americans went to Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban as punishment for secreting Osama bin Laden, and, by Mr. Bush's extended theory of democratic war, to free the people there from the opression of an extremist Islamic government. So if Afghanistan remains captive to the same extremist religious element it was before we arrived, only with the veneer of democracy layered over Kabul, it raises the serious question of what, in the end, have more than 255 American troops given their lives for? (The question asked by Christian conservatives like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins here but also by people on the opposite side of the political spectrum
In this situation, the U.S. is damned if it intervenes (we appear to be pushing around a supposedly sovereign nation, and Hamid Karzai becomes the puppet president of a client state) and damned if we don't (Mr. Bush's Christian base in the U.S. is already feeling neglected by him on issues like gay marriage and abortion, and they won't brook any backing down on Rahman). If Mr. Rahman is executed, there will be hell to pay for the Republican Party. If he is not, the Islamists could erupt in a new, and possibly deadly, round of fury that could threaten the already shaky stability of Karzai and Afghanistan.
In Palestine, the U.S. has already demonstrated that we like democracy and free elections only so long as we approve of the result. If not, up go the blockades. In Iraq, we have tinkered so often with that supposedly independent government, few really believe it is sovereign at all. And in that once secular -- even Stalinist -- country, we appear to have given birth to little more than a baby Iran -- ruled by Shiite mullahs and lawless in the extreme.
Much the same could be expected were Egypt to have truly free elections, resulting in executive power for the Muslim Brotherhood. That's the kind of democracy we don't cotton to at all.
So what to do in Afghanistan? Our hearts tell us to intervene, because the idea of executing a man because he changed religions sounds ... well... crazy to us. But throw out cultural relativism and you have to admit that we really have no right to dictate the cultural and political systems of a free nation. How man times have the international community, the Vatican, foreign governments and Nobel laureates have called, begged and pleaded with the U.S. to stay executions, including recently in California? We have typically answered those calls by telling the world to stay out of America's business. Apples and oranges? Yes (or rather murder suspects and converts). But the bottom line question of sovereignty is still valid.
If the world cannot interfere with our application of the death penalty (and if we don't bother to intervene in the policies of countries like China, who regularly execute dissidents, but who also fill our Wal-Marts with cheap toys) how can we credibly intervene in Afghanistan's internal affairs?
As a death penalty opponent, I am appalled by the prospect of Rahman losing his life, and I wouldn't complain if the Bush admnistration found a way to get the Karzai government to stand this sentence down (striking a blow for political interference with the courts, by the way). But I would recognize the ironies, and the hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan: Top Muslim clerics: Convert must die
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Senior Muslim clerics are demanding that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."
In an unusual move, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned President Hamid Karzai on Thursday seeking a "favorable resolution" of the case of Abdul Rahman. The 41-year-old former medical aid worker faces the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for becoming a Christian.
His trial has fired passions in this conservative Muslim nation and highlighted a conflict of values between Afghanistan and its Western backers.
"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.
The trial, which began last week, has caused an international outcry. U.S. President George W. Bush has said he is "deeply troubled" by the case and expects Afghanistan to "honor the universal principle of freedom."
Rice spokesman Sean McCormack said she told Karzai it is important for the Afghan people to know that freedom of religion is observed in their country.
Her direct appeal to a foreign leader in a judicial proceeding in their own country was unusual. But in deference to the country's sovereignty, Rice evidently did not demand specifically that the trial be halted and the defendant released.
"This is clearly an Afghan decision," McCormack said. Well there we are.
Tags: Afghanistan, |
posted by JReid @ 10:26 AM   |
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