Helping them work through some of these contradictions

Zombie party?

The Abdul Rahman case is nearing a resolution: he will be released while his case is being reviewed, whereupon he will hopefully take the hint and spend the rest of his life in hiding or exile; everybody’s happy. Unless, of course, you believe in the rule of (Sharia) law, enforced by a judicial system that includes clerics, which was after all the system Bush had no evident qualms about establishing. But let that system make rulings that get Christian ministers start calling the White House, and orders are issued, pressure applied. Karzai intervenes where he has no legal right to intervene, and the Supreme Court justice who was talking last week about not bowing to outside pressure is suddenly saying that Rahman is unfit for trial, and how do we even know he’s an Afghan citizen anyway. If American Christian groups are now to be an integral part of the Afghan legal system, I hope they’re equally attentive when adulterous women are sentenced to stoning, or homosexual men... you get the idea.

Zombie party?

Update: Condi appeared on several Sunday talk shows. On Rahman, she said this on Fox: “This is a complicated situation.” A man is being prosecuted for his religion. What’s complicated about that? She says the role of the US is “to help them work through some of these contradictions.”

And they’re not the only ones: on Iraq, Condi says that “because the Sunnis had not been a part of the process [when] the constitution was written, they have some very important, really even existential issues that they are trying to deal with”. Well, as Sartre said, “Hell is other Sunnis.”

Still in that philosophical mode, Condi revealed on a couple of these shows a new system of logic tying Saddam Hussein to 9/11. On CNN, she said:

Saddam Hussein, and we have said this many times, as far as we know, did not order September 11, may not have even known of September 11. But that's a very narrow definition of what caused September 11. If you think that what caused September 11 was that the people who flew airplanes in caused September 11 then, no, Iraq has no relationship. But if you think that this was a broader problem of an ideology of hatred, of terrorism becoming an acceptable means in places where there was a freedom deficit and there was no possibility for legitimate political discourse, then you realize that you have to have a different kind of Middle East. And a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the middle of it is unthinkable.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

On Meet the Press, she described the Iraqi insurgents as “a few violent people.” Challenged, she said, “Well, it’s a few in terms of the population of Iraqis.” So that’s okay, then.

Zombie party?