Perhaps the only aspect of Abdul Rahman’s case more horrific than his possible execution was the fact that we paid for it. And that America’s self-proclaimed “Christian” administration put the thugs itching to murder him in power.
Mr. Rahman is the Christian convicted of converting from Islam in Afghanistan. This “crime” hurts the state rather than his fellow man and therefore carries the death penalty. However, thanks to international pressure, Mr. Rahman will likely escape execution, though he has courageously confessed both his creed and his crime throughout his ordeal: “I believe in the [H]oly [S]pirit. I believe in Christ. And I am a Christian.” Given that joyous proclamation and the lessons in democracy America has been teaching, the Islamic Leviathan assumes it has every right to kill him: after all, as the prosecutor persecuting him explained, “He is known as a microbe in society, and he should be cut off and removed from the rest of Muslim society and should be killed.” “The people,” democratic theory’s highest authority, agree. One of the guards at the jail where Mr. Rahman was imprisoned wants to “cut him into little pieces.”
But then there’s the money. Lots of American money. Leviathan calls it “foreign aid.”
Figures on welfare to other governments are about as scarce and slippery as greased pigs in Kabul: neither Our Rulers nor theirs want us knowing precisely how much they’re stealing from us. Anyone hoping to penetrate the murk must cope with contradictory estimates, mismatched fiscal years, and exchange rates that would stump a physics professor. But it seems Americans gave Afghanistan $931 million in FY2006 (these figures exclude “food, refugee, and disaster assistance. Totals…are likely to be significantly higher with the addition of emergency disaster relief aid”). Next year, administrations both here and there dream of even greater larceny and largesse: Hamid Karzai and his cronies will loot American taxpayers of $1.124 billion. Curiously, this exceeds the country’s operating budget for 2004-2005, which seems to have reached only $608.5 million in US dollars.
However unreliable these numbers may be, we can safely assume that we pay most, if not all, of Afghanistan’s bills. And that makes the Feds doubly culpable for the evil wreaked: not only did they install these dictators in the first place, they shovel the money at them that keeps them in power.
Afghan bureaucrats are a proud set, however. Despite their feeding frenzy at the US trough, they’ll run their own charade, thank you very much. Amin Farhang, Afghanistan’s minister for what little economics the country has, sniffed that threats to staunch the flow of Western money into his country in an effort to save Mr. Rahman’s life “were nothing short of blackmail.”
Remarkably, the Bush Administration agreed. And so we had the hypocritical spectacle of a White House with an insatiable desire to run other countries’ business, one which hasn’t let the Constitution stop it yet, suddenly shy about sparing a Christian from martyrdom. The State Department’s Sean McCormack reportedly kept a straight face as he said, "This is clearly an Afghan decision to take. They are a sovereign government. It’s a sovereign country…." Tell that to Bush, who often brags about destroying Afghan sovereignty. For example, on April 2, 2002, at a fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher in Philadelphia, Bush crowed: “…as a result of our military action in Afghanistan….for the first time, many young girls got to go to school. I’m so proud of the compassion of America” u2014 “compassion” being defined as “American troops compelling sovereign Afghanis to do things Bush’s way.”
Afghanistan is not the only dictatorship we fund. Our supposedly Christian nation subsidizes governments worldwide as they abuse Christians. We send over $700 million per year to Pakistan ($754 million for FY2005 and an estimated $738 million for FY2006), a country whose population is about 2% Christian. Nor is this tiny minority left in peace. As I write, Amjad Masih has spent the last 2610 days in prison on trumped-up charges of burning the Quran. Also imprisoned is Parvez Masih, the headmaster of a Christian school. Like the other Mr. Masih, he is charged with breaking Law 295C, which prohibits blaspheming Mohammed. Both men can consider themselves fortunate: violating Law 295C usually earns the “criminal” an execution.
Only the details and not the themes change in Egypt. The regime there got $1.822 billion of American taxes in FY2005 and an estimated $1.78 billion in FY2006. Next year that will climb to $1.758 billion. And how does a government so lavishly supported by a Christian nation treat its Christians? Voice of the Martyrs reports on Hani Samir Tawfik, a 28-year-old believer who has “been jailed without charges since March 2003. He has been tortured with electric shocks and beaten. Now he is emotionally disturbed and has lost vision in one eye as a result of his treatment….Tawfik was released from prison after two years of torture and hopelessness…. Pray [that] doctors will be able to repair his eye that was damaged while in prison.”
These nations, as well as Leviathan’s other franchises, will no doubt practice their barbarities with or without our aid. But Bush’s Great Giveaway strengthens and emboldens these tyrannies. It also violates the Constitution, which nowhere authorizes the Feds to steal from us and give to them.
Bush famously disdains the Constitution, however, so we’ll turn to a Text he claims to revere. The Bible says, “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people’s matters.”
Hmmm. Seems that pretty much prohibits Leviathan’s favorite activities. For good measure, Bush can meditate on Galatians 6:10: “Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”
I’d say that precludes allowing the puppets on your payroll to torture and kill your fellow believers. Bush’s hypocrisy stinks to high Heaven as the martyrs’ faith shines.
