Posted on 03/22/2006 2:05:31 AM PST by goldstategop
While I have been a strong supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm beginning to wonder whether our mission is moral.
There's no question in my mind that it makes sense to fight Islamic terrorists in their strongholds rather than on our own shores.
But, even assuming eventual military success in these foreign wars, what kind of life will we leave behind for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? That is a question keeping me awake at nights.
Sometimes you have to personalize these big issues – put a face on them. And, for me, the face I'm seeing belongs to Abdul Rahman, a 40-something Afghani convert from Islam to Christianity who is facing a death penalty for refusing to renounce his new faith.
This is taking place in "liberated" Afghanistan – in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan.
What are American military personnel sacrificing their lives for if not to change the very conditions that breed Osama bin Laden-style extremism and Taliban-style oppression?
After freeing Afghanis from the clutches of the Taliban, the new government there is based on Shariah law, which holds that any Muslim who rejects his or her religion should be sentenced to death.
"We are not against any particular religion in the world," explained Supreme Court Judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada. "But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam. … The prosecutor is asking for the death penalty."
This is not the way it is supposed to be during or after an occupation of liberation.
Americans may think they are being "compassionate" and "diverse" and "tolerant" and "multicultural" and "conciliatory" by allowing governments of Iraq and Afghanistan to impose Shariah law on their people.
It was not this way in occupied Germany. It was not this way in occupied Japan.
Americans told the people of Germany and Japan how they were to live after World War II. Can anyone suggest today that those countries are not better off for having embraced the values of freedom and justice?
I was one of those crazy Americans of Arabic heritage who supported these wars for two reasons – I knew they were necessary for the security of the U.S., and I believed they could help ignite a freedom revolution in the Muslim world.
We may have prevented another September 11 with these conflicts. We may have knocked al-Qaida off its game. We may have put the enemy on the defensive. But we have not freed the people from their yoke of oppression under Shariah law.
The problem is not just Afghanistan. In Iraq, Christians, probably the people who most welcomed the invasion by the U.S., have found themselves in more dire straits than under the rule of Saddam Hussein. They are leaving Iraq by the thousands because of increasing persecution that is at least tolerated by the government in Baghdad.
Some will suggest, on the basis of this column, that I am proposing a religious crusade against Islam. I am not. I do not believe in forcible conversions, whereas Islam does. But I do not believe it is moral to overthrow a government in a foreign land and leave its citizens at the mercy of such tyrants and tyrannical systems.
Had we left the emperor in charge in Japan, we understood that the empire might rise again to attack us. We understood that if we left Nazis in charge in Germany, Jews and others would face horrendous persecution.
If we were smart enough to know those things in 1945, why are we so blind today?
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
L
The perhaps he'd like to explain to the rest of us how he would get rid of the "tyrants & tyrannical systems" as they are at the heart and core of the Theocracy. We didn't go to war to liberate a people, we went to war to get the people who murdered 3000 Americans. Liberating a people was not primary, secondary, or even tertiary on our radar. It was something that just happened along the way as we weren't at war with the Afghan or Iraqi people.
IMHO it is another one of those misguided moments we've been having, because we still can't/won't properly define the enemy. Our western minds still can't grasp that a Theocracy exists in the 21st century. The generations have been so brainwashed into the separation of church & state mentality that when confronted with a 'political religion' we sit dumbfounded that we cannot grasp their desire for an islamic state governed by archaic sharia laws.
We continue to struggle with the idea that islam is a religion in our minds, failing to see it a the political evil it is. I myself have struggled with the idea or a theocracy both in the middleast and here back in the USA.
Freedom of religion: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; Why did our founding fathers think this was so important to actually state it as a matter of law, a law that fundamentally bans all theocracies?
The Afghan and Iraqi people essentially don't want freedom of religion. Their desires are still for an islamic state. We went to war to capture those shadows that killed 3000 Americans, what we rediscovered was a people who still desire theocratic rule to democracy.
In a nutshell ISLAM IS THE ENEMY!!!!
The author doesn't think so...nor does our President.
If they don't want freedom of religion then they don't want freedom. Which I do not believe. After the freedom to draw breath, there is no freedom more basic than freedom of conscience. And both freedoms are being assaulted in Mr Rahman's case.
Abdul Rahman's fate is the fate of the world. If we permit his death, we permit ours. It is as simple - and as apocalyptic - as that
Islamic/sharia rule was written into their new constitution. You can choose to believe what you want, but the fact remains they did not choose to have freedom of religion.
The sordid truth is that we need Moose buy-in to put an end to al-Qaeda's ascendancy in the world. So there is a load of compromisin' on the road to our horizon, so to speak.
Amen and Amen. We can no longer be the tolerant peace loving people we once were. Islam has changed the face of what is evil and we can not let them succeed in their desire for world wide dominance under a theocracy. Amen.
I don't think you can expect these people to embrace freedom. They are enslaved by their religion, which seem to me to be the most oppressive. It prevents them from any progress in any way. As long as their governments are set up from islamic law they will remain the same. No advancement ever.
It's really sad, even after we go in there and rescue these people from the Taliban, they're basically back to square one.
There are a whole lot more people who9 think that having a state religion is part of the glue that holds nations together than think people can tolerate religious diversity. I, for one, wonder who got the not so bright idea of importing Muslims into the US.
So, that brings us round-a-bout back to the author's musing...
What is the moral mission here? It was to allow the Afghan and Iraqi people to set up a democracy, but they didn't. Why will this poor Christian die? Why is no one trying to stop this literal outrage?
Because Afghanistan is their own nation, he broke the Afghan law which happens to be sharia. We will not interfere with their exercise of their laws.
I did not support the efforts of the Bush administration to install this kind of duplicity in Afghanistan, nor will I support it in the future.
Sharia is NOT law in the same sense as western legal tradition in the same way Camaroon is not a "country" in the same sense as Germany.
Permitting sharia is defeating our own purpose for being there, unless you don't mind dying to take the same hill over and over again.
The mission is to make us safe in the world. Allowing this murder to happen adds to the things which make us unsafe, and it would be a bad thing to not act to stop it. We can and must -- for our safety -- insist on certain miminal protections under law. More than just "democracy". Democracy alone does not make us safe -- democracy must be had under a minimal but involiate set of duties and liberties that is compatible with our safety.
I understand and accept your point. We have given Afghanistan and Iraq self-determination. As part of the package of their new self-determined constitutions they have chosen the crushing tyranny of Shariah law. The case of Abdul Rahman suddenly throws this despicable legal system into sharp relief.
My point is that if we do not force the proponents of shariah law to disgorge their victim this time - if we do not even make a fuss simply because "they chose it" - then we have become moral relativists. They chose wrong, and we have to stand up to the plate and point out their mistake.
Now this doesn't mean we sod off and leave them to the Taliban/Iranians. Both countries have been vastly improved - dried out as seedbeds for terrorism - by self-determination and stability, and even Shariah-bound countries can progress. But we can legitimately apply gradated levels of pressure to these sovereign states. We don't have to look the other way simply because "hey, they voted". The wretches in Gaza voted too, remember.
"Despite the defeat of the totalitarian Taliban and the existence of a U.S.-backed "moderate" democratic government, it is a capital crime for Afghans to openly embrace any religion other than Islam. Shariah law, embedded in the Afghan constitution, overrides its human rights provisions."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600797/posts
It is part of their constitution. It is the law. And yes we will be taking the same hill over and over. Abdul Rahman's case serves to highlight this. Afghanistan is another theocracy, by choice of the people. It bothers me too, but short of saying we ultimately failed and we're beginning to realize that failure...?
Please understand I do very much agree with you, but we let slip by the time to tell them they are choosing wrong. It is a very sad state of affairs as the realization sets in regarding what we allowed to be established instead of the Taliban.
If I had to give them credit for a comprehensive system of justice that permits this prosecution, then yes, I'd have to say we failed...or rather the administration failed.
"We" did our part.
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