If this fellow is executed, that small act could be decisive for our whole M-E project. After all, Afghanistan is our "success." If this is where their moderates are, I expect it would signal the American people that their suspicions of the hopelessness of this civilizing mission are well founded. They may refuse to invest more blood and treasure. (I have no idea how we would pick up the pieces from such a collapse of our will.)
I fear that many of your concerns to be dead on. I fear that this Islamic extremist part of the world is like trying to tame a crocodile to jump through hoops.
"If this fellow is executed, that small act could be decisive for our whole M-E project."
This "incident" will be a hard one for the Bush administration to cover over in their attempt to sell "democratization" of the Middle East. Bush's "mission" will be seriously harmed in the American public's opinion of why we should bother to invest our blood and treasure in the hard-core reactionary Middle East. The Islamic religion is just too much an impediment in making any serious headway. Islamic irrational thought, be it that of the ideologues or the fearful moderates, is just too deeply entrenched in the collective psyche.
We are on a collision course with this religion in the not-too-far future, and we shouldn't waste any more of our money on a hopeless cause when we will need that money to build and buy armaments for what's coming next with these Islamofascists. It's about historical time for another major war and it will be with Muslims, and it will be a messy one, as there are Muslims in just about every country, including our own. A built-in fifth column, all over the world. This will not be a traditional war, with armies clashing in conventional fashion. Afraid we will end up having to drop nukes on some of these countries eventually, if we ourselves want to survive as nations. The West will end up with their backs to the Muslim wall, and only then will they drop their "appeasement" mode. It will be do or die time, and that time is getting closer and closer. The next Armageddon.