In one of the more recent "out of the frying pan and into the fire" scenarios arising from U. S. foreign policy the American government has announced that while they are withdrawing American troops from Iraq they plan on increasing our troop numbers and military commitment in Afghanistan. This plan is defended as a way of preventing the Taliban from regaining control of a country that has a history of being a slow and painful death trap for any invader.
And, while the Taliban's record of crimes against humanity and logic fill volumes perhaps it is time to consider the culture and regime that we seem to be prepared to sacrifice thousands of American lives and trillions of American taxpayer dollars to preserve.
Which brings us to Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh who has been sentenced to death by a kangaroo court for downloading a file from the internet that was critical of Islam's view of women.
Kambakhsh was arrested on October 27, 2007, in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. He was accused of downloading an article from the internet that criticized, in fairly harsh terms, Islam’s position on women. Kambakhsh is further accused of having distributed the offending material to three or four of his classmates in the journalism department of Balkh University.
For this he was condemned to death, in January of 2008, in a kangaroo court in which he had no representation, no witnesses and no opportunity to defend himself. He was deserted by his lawyers, who were threatened by unnamed sources, and abandoned by his friends, many of whom later said they had been pressured to sign affidavits condemning Kambakhsh.
Somewhere Jack Thompson and Pat Robertson are smiling.