Juan Cole comments on George Bush's judicial appointment history in Afghanistan

i sure do appreciate juan cole... he keeps right on top of things that otherwise might pass wholly unnoticed, makes connections that need to be made and doesn't talk down to anyone...

Great Justices Installed by Bush

As the Alito confirmation hearings begin, it is worth considering some of the judicial consquences of George W. Bush's various campaigns. When the US overthrew the Taliban and installed the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the Bush administration implied that everything had changed. What few observers seem to have noticed is that Hamid Karzai immediately appointed as Afghanistan's chief justice, Fazal Hadi Shinwari, whose philosophy of life was little different from that of the Taliban!

One can only imagine that Bush, who kept thousands of troops in the country and oversaw the evolution of the Afghanistan government, had no objections to the man's judicial philosophy.

Among Shinwari's rulings:

• Amputation of hands and stoning to death will continue to be the punishment for thieves and adulterers in post-Taliban Afghanistan, country’s new Chief Justice Fazal Hadi Shinwari was reported today as saying.

• Afghan Chief Justice Bans Cable TV.

• Afghan chief justice wants co-ed schools to be shut.

• Fatwa for "Blasphemy" Journalists: The supreme court proposes the death penalty for two journalists who criticised Islamic practice.

Was all this to make his own nominees to the Supreme Court, who merely want to install a king-president over Americans, uphold the privileges of rich white males, and work against women's rights and one-person, one-vote rights for racial minorities, good in comparison?

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