As Steve Coll, a journalist very familiar with the culture and politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, writes, there's not a whole lot of spiritual and religious space between the Taliban and Justice Alito.
Tehrik-e-Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, is a closely held, profit-making enterprise organized on religious principles. One of its principles, announced as public policy in July, 2012, is that children should not be inoculated against polio, because the vaccines violate God’s law. So sincere are the Taliban’s religious beliefs that its followers have assassinated scores of public-health workers who have attempted to administer polio vaccines in areas under Taliban control or influence.
This year, three out of five of the world’s new polio cases have been found in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, particularly in North Waziristan, where the Pakistani Taliban and groups like it have run a de-facto state since about 2008. The great majority of the polio victims are children under two years old.
If the Pakistani Taliban, aided by clever lawyers, organized a closely held American corporation, and professed to run it on religious principles, might its employees be deprived of insurance coverage to inoculate their children against polio? And would the Supreme Court, by the five-to-four decision issued on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and in Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Burwell, endorse such a move? ...Coll,NewYorker
Well, saved by a technicality, Justice Alito. Coll points out the Taliban might never have the chance to impose their Alito-like values on the American people. They'd have been stopped in their tracks -- not by a just and wise Supreme Court but by our Foreign Terrorist Organization law.
But that's it. Alito's form of terrorism -- towards whole groups of people like women, non-Christians, and secular Constitutional law -- is here to stay. He has a lifetime claim on that Court seat. We're as stuck with him and his "values" in much the same way the world seems to be stuck with the "values" of the Taliban. Why we're fighting the Taliban in South Asia but not at home is the question America has yet to answer.
