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I can't get the story out of my mind. An Afghan Muslim, Abdul Rahman, admits to becoming a Christian, and as a result could be put to death. Is this the liberty President Bush boasts about bringing to Afghanistan?

And it's not just the radical fringe who wants Rahman executed:

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate.

Even if Rahman is set free, there's a good chance he'll be killed by ordinary Afghans, who will be encouraged to "pull him into pieces" on the street.

At Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo reminds us that the Iraqis are also not quite sure what to make of the gift of liberty. He quotes the Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leader of the majority Shi'ite sect, doing his best Ann Coulter imitation on the subject of homosexuality:

The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.

Raimondo is indignant that this extreme intolerance is possible in an Afghanistan and Iraq that have been "liberated" at great cost to the American taxpayer:

The paradox of American power is playing a cruel joke on the "liberators," as well as the "liberated." In exporting "democracy" to the Middle East, we have enthroned a political force that executes – executes! – religious dissenters and homosexuals. We have spent $201 billion – up to last year – "liberating" Afghanistan so Abdul Rahman could face the death penalty, and $250 billion and counting in Iraq (with the total cost estimated by some as close to $1 trillion) to stop Muslim men from sodomizing each other at the first opportunity.

Not to mention the great cost in lives. Lives lost so Afghans and Iraqis could be free to persecute whoever they wish.