Welcome to the Party, Bitches: Christian Right Outraged Over Afghan Trial of Convert:
Oh, shit, this is funny. Not ha-ha funny, but more like "goddamn, you got punked good" funny. As you know by now, over in the wilds of Afghanistan, in the only part of the "nation" that's got any kind of democratic government, this guy Abdul Rahman was arrested and is now on trial, facing the death penalty for convertin' from Islam to Christianity back over a decade ago. And, oh, how the nutzoid Christian right is in a twitter now that they have to backtrack like a mudbug in a ditch on even a little of the Jeeezus-inspired love they give President Bush.

Said the Family Research Council's Tony "No, I Didn't Even See Psycho II" Perkins, "Democracy is more than purple thumbs," a line that if, say, Howard Dean said, he'd be impaled on Ann Coulter's hip bones. Perkins went on to say, "Americans will not give their blood and treasure to prop up new Islamic fundamentalist regimes. Religious freedom is not just 'an important element' of democracy; it is its cornerstone. Religious persecution leads inevitably to political tyranny. Five hundred years of history confirm this. Americans have not given their lives so that Christians can be put to death." No, Americans have given their lives so that Muslims could be tortured, but that's another issue, innit? Well, no, not really.

In his letter to George W. Bush (and Condi and others), Perkins writes, in a statement that could have come straight from the ACLU with a couple of numbers or treaties adjusted, "This trial belies any idea that Afghanistan, under its constitution, is committed to fundamental human rights. Such a trial is a flagrant violation of Article 18 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights—to which Article 7 of the Afghan Constitution mandates state adherence." So let's get this straight - the Family Research Council, which backs the actions of the President at Guantanamo and elsewhere in blatantly violating international law now demands that the Afghan government abide by it. Cool. It's kinda like Keith Richards tryin' to tell a classroom full of kids that drugs'll ruin 'em while three naked groupies fight to see who gets to lick his balls that are resting inside his golden jockstrap.

"The most recent reports that Abdul Rahman may be found unfit for trial due to mental illness do not alleviate our concern. The substitution of Soviet-style psychiatric repression for a more lethal form may be only death by slow-motion," Perkins says, thus comparing a government the United States helped create with the Soviet Union, and then he begs Bush to help.

But help ain't comin' any time soon. The judge in Rahman's Kabul trial has said that, despite the international outcry, "There is no direct pressure on our court so far, but if it happens we will consider it interference," and then he wiped his ass with a New Testament taken from the rotting corpse of a raped and mutilated Gideon missionary. And putative leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is more or less fucked, since the Ulema Council, the Islamic scolds who really run the show, ain't likely to budge. Shit, they made sure the editor of a magazine was jailed for just fuckin' writin' that convertin' from Islam ought not bring the death penalty. And because "irony" ain't just what Reagan said in his last earthly gasps, a spokesman for Karzai said that the decision was up to the courts because "The judicial system is an independent system."

So this is all causing convulsions on the Christian right, with Chuck "Sodomized in Prison for Tricky Dick" Colson writing, "Is this the fruit of democracy? Is this why we have shed American blood and invested American treasure to set a people free? What have we accomplished for overthrowing the Taliban? This is the kind of thing we would expect from the Taliban, not from President Karzai and his freely elected democratic government."

In December, Dick Cheney told troops over there that they had fought for "the victory of freedom in Afghanistan." And while we may shake our heads sadly, since many of us over here in Left Blogsylvania have said for the last three years that the fundamental changes to a culture do not come about simply because people go to vote, that the naivete of that notion is breathtaking, that it might take a couple of generations to make the kinds of sweeping changes the Bush administration thought were possible with some guns and bombs, while we may welcome the crazy Christian right to the party of those who think the whole situation is FUBAR (even though we know they won't stay long), the Rude Pundit finds himself thinking about the poor, abused bones of Pat Tillman. First a hero, then a victim, and now he left behind his football career and died for what? For who?