The other failure - Afghanistan.

While the press has been focusing on the third 'anniversary' of the invasion of Iraq, there has been hardly anything about Afghanistan.

That's probably because there are not so many troops there and the war was not so controversial to being with- nobody challenged the notion that the Taliban were actively supporting terrorism [Not even Chirac - there are French troops there].

But as Senator Joe Biden reminded us, here is another grave mistake of the Bush administration: it has wrongly turned its attention away from Afghanistan.

Yet, in terms of success - and not just military - one can wonder whether anything has changed in Afghanistan:

An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity. Afghanistan's post-Taleban constitution is based on Sharia law, and prosecutors in the case says this means Abdul Rahman, whose trial began last Thursday, should be put to death. (BBC)

So... all that… for that?

Well, that did not seem to bother VP Dick Cheney who praised theU.S. efforts to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban regime and al-Qaida yesterday.

"Afghanistan is a rising nation -- with a democratically elected government, a market economy, and millions of children going to school for the very first time."

A rising nation? With a Constitution saying you should be put to death for what you believe? Maybe I just don't get it. I am not a Muslim after all.... and yes, I like to think of myself as a tolerant person. I even believe that Islam is mostly a religion of tolerance. For a monute I thought the Afghan judge agreed:

"We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him," the judge told the BBC on Monday.

But if he refused to reconvert, then his mental state would be considered first before he was dealt with under Sharia law, the judge added.

... but I guess we just have a different definition of the word 'tolerance'. Unfortunately, according to the BBC, even President Karkai will not intervene.
And I thought he was one of the good guys...