By Any Other Name [Walker committed treason.]

Investor's Business Daily | 13 Dec. 2001

[flamefront]

Terror: John Walker left America, endorsed military attacks on it, then joined arms with those attackers. If this isn't treason, then what is?

The Walker case is no small matter. How America responds to it will reveal much about how seriously it takes the war on terrorism. Will America uphold the laws that protect it? Or will if neglect them as it slips back into the very relativism that made America vulnerable to Walker's Taliban brethren in the first place?

President Bush has said America will make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them. Why, then, should his administration make an exception for an American who fought with them?

Treason is the only crime listed in the U.S. Constitution for a reason: It is the direst threat to the common good. If it is left unpunished, free republics fold.

Walker is not a "misguided" boy, as the usual chorus of apologists assert, but a self-described "jihadi," the same age, 20, as many of the American soldiers his Taliban friends tried to kill.

The Constitution says, "No Person shall be convicted of Treason, unless on the Testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on Confession in open Court." Will Walker's case meet these requirements?

This is an open question. The two CIA agents who questioned a surly Walker in a prison in Mazar-e-Sharif might have satisfied the Constitution's requirement. But one of them, Mike Spann, died in a prison revolt that Walker's stonewalling helped, at least indirectly.

Walker still might confess, or other witnesses to his conduct may still be alive. Whatever happens Walker should not escape trial for political reasons, or on loopholes a la Alan Dershowitz.

Perhaps only in the relativistic redoubt of Northern California's Marin County -- where Walker first imbibed his anti-Americanism -- would treason abroad form a legitimate destination point on a young adult's search for self-identity.

In the real world, treason kills people, and a society that treats it as an eccentric joke is on the path to ruin.

American's cannot justify Walker's conduct without jeopardizing their own future safety. They cannot release Walker on a rationalization without at the same time insulting all the men his age who are making equally free choices in defense if American freedom.

Punishment and reward presuppose that humans, beyond the age of reason, are free moral agents. If John Walker isn't responsible for his treachery, then his contemporaries in the Marines aren't responsible for their heroism.

This is an abominable conclusion to draw. But it necessarily follows from a philosophy that considers 20-year-olds automatons of fate, not humans with free choice.

A writer for the San Francisco Chronicle says Bush should welcome Walker back to America, and "let him get his life back on track. We'd want nothing less for our own children, who could easily have found themselves in a similar mess."

Freeing Walker would only deepen the mess. After decades of anti-Americanism -- long indulged by craven politicians -- Americans, particularly young Americans, need a clarifying lesson in law and civic duty. Sure, let him return to the Bay area. But to a cell in San Quentin.

[flamefront]

but we know that Spann interrogated Walker, then the riot broke out, Walker was wounded and Spann killed. It may be that Walker was a principal, an aider and abettor, or a conspirator. If the facts are there, I'd go with that.

According to some recent informed posts Spann was bitten to death, and if the teeth marks match the hands-bound Walker, its a done deal.