This is a horrendous mistake. LAHORE, Pakistan — American officials won the release on Wednesday of a C.I.A. contractor under investigation for two counts of murder here by making a payment of about $2.3 million to families of the two victims, Pakistani officials and the lawyer for the families said. There are many reasons that this is a tremendous blow to the safety and security of all Americans overseas and our countries security. First it completely undermines the concept of diplomatic immunity and will certainly result in kidnappings, captures and threats against State Department personnel world wide. Davis shold never have been taken into custody; the second he flashed that special passport, the Pakistanis should have said "Crap!" and then turned him immediately over to us. They would have had every right to boot him from the country, but they had an obligation to release him. This alone sets an awful precedent and if the mighty US can be forced to pay blood money for the release of protected personnel, what about the rest of the countries? Their diplomats are now fair game as well. That would be bad enough, but the blood money we paid falls under a particular tenet of Islamic sharia law as Andy McCarthy points out. As Robert Spencer explained a few days ago at Jihad Watch, the sharia principle involved is qisas, or “retaliation,” which allows blood money to be paid by one who causes an accidental killing, or even by a murderer, to the relatives of the deceased. It is essentially a guilty plea that suffices as punishment for the killing if the relatives agree to the arrangement and amount of compensation. As is always the case with Islamic law, qisas pegs the value of a Muslim’s life substantially higher than that of a non-Muslim, and a man’s substantially higher than a woman’s. So now we have subjugated US and international laws and treaties to the religious extremism contained in sharia law. WOW! What an absolutely insane precedent to set. It is one thing for Hillary to throw on a scarf when she is parleying with some of the marginally-civilized, misogynistic bastards we deal with and even sometimes call allies. It is quite another to overturn centuries of hard won safeguards for diplomatic personnel that enable us to deal with friends and enemies to hopefully avoid continuations of diplomacy by other means. Now that Islam has the last word, we might all want to do some boning up on Ilsamic do's and don'ts in case we decide to set foot outside the US. And of course this is another example of the gutless, cringing whipped-dog, bong hit diplomacy our President specializes in. The correct answer to the Pakistanis when the took custody of Davis would have been the ticking of a clock counting down. If an ally is willing to do this, then they no longer need to be an ally. The only reason we have put up with all the train loads of shit from the Pakistanis is that we need their help to whack tangos, oh and they have nukes. Well we are leaving Afghanistan now and while the nukes will always be worrisome does anyone really think that we have any effective control over their possible use of proliferation? We throw satchels of cash at the many factions of the Pakistani government to try and get their help and keep them in line. It is well past time to consider whether the investment is working. So well done Barry, you undermined the safety of every diplomat from every country in the world. You submitted the United States and by example the entire international community to the religious dictates of Islam. And you have shown that America is damn sure not the strong horse. Nice.
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Posted
Mar 16 2011, 03:42 AM
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