..In Afghanistan, three American soldiers were disposing of various damaged and unusable religious materials at NATO’S Bagram Air Force Base north of Kabul. Included in the items they were burning in the base’s burn pit, were several copies of the Koran. These were Korans that the American government had purchased to provide free of charge to the jihadist prisoners held on the base. However, several of these books were damaged and some had been used by prisoners to pass messages and information, so the authorities decided to discard them.
When some Afghans who are employed by the U.S. government as workers on the base discovered that copies of the Koran were being burned, they pulled some of the unburned pages from the ashes and made a beeline for their friends. From there, word quickly spread that the Americans were desecrating the Holy Koran. Of course, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were only too happy to help spread the word and fan the flames, so to speak.
Before long, rioting spread across Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf region. Over the next several days, supposedly “loyal” Afghans turned on their American counterparts and killed them. As of today, six American soldiers are dead. The overall death toll now stands at about 40.
So the Obama Administration quickly got its act together and issued an… apology. In fact, several apologies. The President, the Defense Secretary, the American general leading the coalition forces all apologized. Obama by letter to the treacherous Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the others by television. The President even promised to “hold accountable those responsible.”
So, how is that going to work? Unless something is buried deep in the Obamacare bill that former Speaker Pelosi hasn’t discovered yet, I don’t believe U.S. law forbids the burning of a Koran. On the other hand, some observers say that Afghan law may require the death penalty for desecration by a non-Muslim. American service members are governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which is predicated on U.S. laws. Afghan law in this case could be translated “Sharia” law.
One can guess that this is going to be quite a headache for President Obama. Should he hand our soldiers over to the Afghanis to be tried in a Sharia court? That would be a sticky wicket for a government that screams about the “wall of separation” between church and state at every opportunity. That would also imply that he honors Sharia law above our own. Or, should he insist on whatever “discipline” — if any — that might be called for under the UCMJ. Keeping in mind, of course, that in America you can burn a Bible, a stack of Bibles, a cross, a flag, even a bra!
However, the thing that I find interesting is that the President can dash off a personal apology to an entire country and require his top military people to do the same over the proper (by the way) disposal of some already-desecrated Korans. Yet, all he and the State Department can manage are tepid press statements scolding Iran for sentencing a Christian to die for choosing, as a teenager, Jesus Christ over Mohammed. We should not be apologizing to Afghanistan and Karzai. We should be demanding that Karzai bring to justice those who have taken the lives of six Americans and dozens of Afghans. And, we should be demanding that Iran release Pastor Nadarkhani or suffer the outrage of America and the West.
from The Hal Lindsey Report -March 2, 2012
