I remember the video, all those years ago, of American and Afghan Northern Alliance forces riding across the plains on horseback. I remember the dancing on tanks in Kabul and the footage of Afghan men shaving their beards for the first time in years, finally able to be defiant of Taliban rule and it's accompanying warnings that shaving was blasphemus and thus punishable by frickin' death.
This impermeable mountainous landlocked region, where some of history's most brazen bullies had, for years and years, imposed their version of Holy Submission on God's wary sheep, had finally found it's voice; it's freedom to celebrate Freedom. Oh, yeah, baby. The casting away of theocratic tyranny was a cause for celebration, indeed.
Then came Abdul Rahman.
The problem with bringing the fullness of Liberty to a region that has never known it is that that region doesn't know what Liberty looks like. We can try to dismiss the appologists of slavery, f'rinstance, on the grounds that they were merely uncomfortable with changing the world, overnight, in such a dramatic way. They were more comfortable with the ordinary. They were willing to choose the devil they knew rather than the devil in the dark; the undiscovered country; the Future.
And so Rahman faced death for leaving Islam and becoming an "apostate". A Christian, in this case.
Condi Rice inexplicably (very nearly) excused Afghanistan's recent tribunal as a symptom of a "young Democracy"; a work in very early progress, if you will.
I disagree.
Ferphuqusake, the case of Abdul Rahman is not symptomatic of a "young democracy", it is symptomatic of an old theocracy.
Our founders didn't allow any wiggle room for arguments of religious persecution on this continent.
They not only vehemently opposed it, they decisively defeated it.
The first act of a tyrant is to disallow your disapproval of their tyranny. The next act of a free People is, then, to reclaim their sovereignty. If Afghanistan is to join the community of Free nations then it must renounce, reject, repel, relinguish and rejoice in the extinguishment of religious government. Only a free People can define their society, and only a Free society can prosper.
The Future has spoken.
Sic semper tyranus.
Posted by Tuning Spork at March 27, 2006 09:35 PM | TrackBack