Since I missed it on the news I was excited to hear from Captain’s Quarters that the Afghani Constitution had not only been adopted but had earned the praise of both the President Bush and the U.N.

Since I had I criticized the draft Constitution in two previous posts last November (Creating Taliban-lite and Fisking a Constitution: The Afghan threat to Religious Liberty) I was expecting to find that significant improvements had been added to protect basic human rights.

That didn’t happen.

The Constitution was adopted with only minor, relatively insignificant, changes. None of the criticisms by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (who noted that the Constitution threatens to institutionalize “Taliban-lite”) were addressed in the final version. But from the way the media and others have praised it, you would think the document was a significant step toward freedom and stability in the region. As Paul Marshall wrote in National Review Online:

President Bush said that the constitutional draft recognizes Afghanistan's "Muslim identity, while protecting the rights of all citizens." In its present form it does no such thing. The administration needs to work with Afghani moderates to amend the draft when it goes to the Loya Jirga on December 10. After that it may be too late. Article 149 provides that the "provisions of adherence to the fundamentals of the sacred religion of Islam...cannot be amended."

Looks like “too late” came too soon.