Yeah, remember them? That other country somewhere in South Asia? The one that harbored the people who actually spearheaded the September 11 attacks? The one where it seemed unarguable that not only did we have a right to attack and depose the government, but that it would ultimately be a good thing for the people of Afghanistan?
Well. They been having some fun now, let me tell you!
...I vowed, after September the 11th, that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. And my attitude, of course, was affected by the attacks.
I knew we were at war. I knew that the enemy obviously had to be sophisticated and lethal to fly hijacked airplanes into facilities that would be killing thousands of people, innocent people, doing nothing, just sitting there, going to work.
I also knew this about this war on terror: that the farther we got away from September the 11th, the more likely it is people would seek comfort and not think about this global war on terror as a global war of terror.
And that's good, by the way. It's hard to take a risk if you're a small-business owner, for example, if you're worried that the next attack is going to come tomorrow. I understand that.
But I also understand my most important job, the most important job of any president today, and I predict, down the road, is to protect America.
And so I told the American people that we would find the terrorists and bring them to justice and that we needed to defeat them overseas so we didn't have to face them here at home.
I also understood that the war on terror requires some clear doctrine. And one of the doctrines that I laid out was, if you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty as the terrorist.
And the first time that doctrine was really challenged was in Afghanistan. I guess the Taliban didn't believe us -- or me. And so we acted. Twenty-five million people are now free, and Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for the terrorists....
Apparently, the president subscribes to some definition of the word "free" that doesn't actually include, you know, freedom.
An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Abdul Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and could face the death sentence under Sharia law unless he recants.
He converted 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan. His estranged family denounced him in a custody dispute over his two children. [...] Afghanistan's post-Taleban constitution is based on Sharia law, and prosecutors in the case says this means Abdul Rahman, whose trial began last Thursday, should be put to death. When he was arrested last month he was found to be carrying a bible and charged with rejecting Islam which is punishable by death in Afghanistan.
Trial judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah told the BBC that Mr Rahman, 41, would be asked to reconsider his conversion, which he made while working for a Christian aid group in Pakistan.
"We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him," the judge told the BBC on Monday. But if he refused to reconvert, then his mental state would be considered first before he was dealt with under Sharia law, the judge added....
How nice.
We destroyed significant portions of Afghanistan, toppled its conservative religious government and encouraged them to write a constitution ... that installed a conservative religious judiciary about which the vaguely secular government can do nothing.
In the meantime, in Iraq, we've got a lovely little civil war that we unleashed.
Yep, I'd say that the doctrine of the war on Terra is working really well, wouldn't you?
The problem with a doctine as simplistic as "if you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty as the terrorist", is that it doesn't get you anywhere. The proper response to that from our country would be, "Yes? And? So? What are you going to do after you bomb people back into the stone age to keep those conditions from re-emerging? As many women of Afghanistan said at the time, the reason that the Taliban were able to get such a strong foothold in the country was that it matched the way most of the men of the country wanted things to be in the first place. You're not going to root out those types of ingrained attitudes by simply sweeping the old regime out of power.
About the only thing to be thankful for at this stage is that this administration has so little time left in office. It's going to be difficult for them to extend the war on Terra to Syria or Iran or North Korea with our current severely overstressed military -- and in the cases of Iran and North Korea, even making the vague attempt would be foolhardy in the extreme. (This, of course, is no doubt why they bait both regimes almost daily.)
Purely a side note: the conservatives who support the president must be having absolute snit fits at the thought that this presidency has installed regimes that are both deeply hostile to Christianity. That was just not in the global crusade's -- pardon, the war on Terra's master plan, now was it?
Posted by iain at March 21, 2006 02:04 PM
