The case of the Afghan man who faced execution for converting to Christianity illustrates the conundrum of "regime change." OK, so your army has just rolled into a foreign capital. You can do whatever you want. However, if you interfere with the internal affairs of a liberated country, and you tell them what to do--you haven't liberated them at all. But if you can't change anything, what's the point?
So while prime minister Hamid Karzai cuts a dashing figure with his green Tajik robe and impeccable English, … U.S.-occupied Afghanistan has a 2004 Constitution that includes a key sentence: "No law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam." There's more paperwork, but nothing new: Sharia is still the law of the land.
[Related to this] article 2(1)(a) of Iraq’s new U.S.-backed constitution reads: "No law may be passed that contradicts the immutable rulings of Islam."
The neoconservative theorists who dreamed up America's regime change policy point to post-World War II Germany and Japan as successful precedents. But we didn't create democracy in Germany from scratch. Liberation works best when you kick a foreign army out of a country that had liberal values before its occupation.
After it came into possession of Afghanistan, with its long history of justice based on brutality and vengeance, the U.S. faced a choice between the harsh totalitarian Soviet and the hands-off "we liberated you, it's all yours" approaches. The Soviets sent girls to school and university, banned the burqa and prohibited the enforcement of Sharia law. We chose laissez-faire liberation, and spread theocracy instead of democracy.
[Excerpts of an editorial by Ted Rall, Yahoo News]
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