Toeing the Hard Line

I support the war on terror. I value my safety, and the nation's, over just about everything else. I support the stated goals of bringing to justice Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, who were directly responsible for the attacks on 9/11, as well as those who granted them aid or support, past or present, such as Afghanistan's Taliban regime. also support the unstated benefit of freeing frequently oppressed peoples living under dictatorial regimes, introducing democracy into that part of the world, and hopefully setting up areas in a turbulent region that will at least deal with the West diplomatically, if not as outright allies.

But a very disturbing question came to me during the early stages of the war on terror, not long after we had officially vanquished the Taliban government in Afghanistan and was preparing to set up a constitution and a system of free elections. I've asked it of virtually everyone I've spoken to about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and no one, including myself, has been able to provide me with a satisfactory answer. And that question is this: Given the population makeup of the region, what will the U.S. do if the citizens of one of these countries elect a hardline Muslim government that is unlikely to be friendly to Western countries and interests?

Now, an Afghani man has had to flee his homeland under threat of the death penalty, his only crime being his conversion to Christianity. The U.S. and other free nations have, of course, denounced this. And if this were Iran or Syria, something like this would be glossed over with hardly a second thought, just "business as usual", a token denunciation, and back to the latest Jessica Simpson gossip. (OK, that last part pretty much happened anyway.) The salient point here, at least for me, is that this radical Islamist government is one that we enabled. We set up the elections, we made sure they were handled fairly, and we endorsed the new government when it took power. Aren't we, in some small way, responsible for this government's actions that are so clearly at odds with everything that we stand for? Are we correct in giving them the freedom to choose not to be free? Just how many liberties does the populace as a whole have the right to surrender on behalf of every single individual, including those who didn't vote to surrender said freedoms? These aren't rhetorical questions--I'm still searching for the answers. And I suspect I still will be for a very long time.