It’s not enough for Abdul Rahman to get off on a technicality. Afghanistan is supposed to be “the good war,” the one even the French supported, albeit notionally and mostly retrospectively. Karzai is kept alive by a bodyguard of foreigners. The fragile Afghan state is protected by American, British, Canadian, Australian, Italian and other troops, hundreds of whom have died. You cannot ask Americans or Britons to expend blood and treasure to build a society in which a man can be executed for his choice of religion. You cannot tell a Canadian soldier serving in Kandahar that he, as a Christian, must sacrifice his life to create a Muslim state in which his faith is a capital offense.
this is where the neo-con theory is tested. the new democracy that the united states helped to create with the sacrifice of many of our military men and women is still struggling with sharia law. i don’t think this is what we had in mind when we kicked out the taliban — that a man could be executed under this new government’s laws for converting to Christianity . the legitimate question that should be asked here is whether our sacrifice has produced the kind of democracy that we intended to bring to afghanistan. based on the current state of affairs, that’s a debatable question. we cannot allow the sacrifice of american lives to be trivialized by allowing an execution like this to take place.
at this moment, the case against abdul rahman has been dismissed. this isn’t the end of the story. he could still be put to death. there is still the possibility that islamic radicals could take their own vigilante action against rahman regardless of what the government decides about him. we cannot allow this. the united states and its allies have sacrificed the lives of their men and women to bring freedom as well as self-governance to afghanistan, and we have the right to object to the treatment of rahman.
more reading:
Afghan Christian Rejects Islam— the koran vs. christianity (california conservative)
Free Abdul Rahman–washington times op-ed
Steyn: Will we stick our necks out for his faith?
Michelle Malkin: ABDUL RAHMAN TO BE RELEASED
Technorati Tags: abdul rahman, afghanistan
You are an utopian by saying “the united states and its allies have sacrificed the lives of their men and women to bring freedom as well as self-governance to afghanistan, and we have the right to object to the treatment of rahman.” So why you invade Afgan (or Iraq) in the first place? No body ask you to invade?
You call invasion in Afgan and Iraq as a liberation (or crusade by the mouth of Bush), but people there call it occupation by a new imperialist..
I don’t believe in utopia. It’s an impossibility in this world. I think it’s a fair statement to acknowledge the sacrifice of the US military in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Here’s what has happened. We invaded Afghanistan because that’s where we believed that Al Qaida and Bin Laden were. It was a logical move when we connected the dots and found that Bin Laden /Al Qaida was behind 9/11. We invaded Iraq because we believed Saddam had WMDs or was in the process of getting them.
I agree with you that the view of our invasion is very dependent on your view of the United States and its intentions toward the rest of the world. I don’t recall Bush ever using the word “crusade”, but I am skeptical of his approach toward spreading democracy to the rest of world. Democracy needs certain conditions to be successful, and it’s not a perfect system of government when there are not social/cultural foundations in place that will support it.