The obvious is painful, hence the "judgemental" question, this young man committed an act of treason by taking up arms against the country of his birth. The death penalty is appropriate in this case.
Perhaps he also needs better research help , as well. There HAVE been articles, and talking heads , who have been just as hard on Johnny Jihad, and his parents, about his converting to Islam. It is also ridicculous, that Sobran doesn't know that American born citizens are proscribed from going overseas, and fightig in other nation's Civil Wars.
Only those with VERY little knowledge, can read this drivel and applaud it.
How do we know if it was not Johnnie Boy's Terrorist Taliban Bullets that Killed...Murdered our CIA Agent Mike Spann???
When found Guilty..."NUTTY" Johnnie Boy should either be HANGED BY HIS DISGUSTING TRAITOROUS NECK ~ OR ~ Sent To Sit On Old SPARKY To FRY..HIS "NUTTY" Behind!
AND...SHAME ON HIS PARENTS For allowing their "NUTTY" Little Johnnie Boy to run off and become what he is TODAY:
A TRAITOROUS MURDERER WITH INNOCENT BLOOD ON HIS HANDS AND HEAD!
I wonder if these two have gone to New York City to "SEE" for themselves what: THEIR..."NUTTY" Little Johnnie Boy HELPED to do to INNOCENT AMERICANS AND OTHERS.
THE PARENTS OUGHT TO BE JAILED FOR THEIR FAILURE TO BE PARENTS...Self Serving Socialistic, New Age Humanists!
AND...They ought to take X 42 and HillzeBeast along with them!
WHAT A LEGACY THAT THEY ALL LEAVE IN THEIR WAKE.
GOD'S JUDGMENT DAY IS COMMING!
If he can convince the third worlders that he didn't turn on OBL like he turned on the States, maybe he'll be fortunate enough to pick up an AK, and maybe a Marine/Seal/Green Beret will see him and finish him off for good.
In God We Trust.....Semper Fi
This is really silly. A crime is rare, so it shouldn't be punished. Cannabilism is too, so why were we so harsh on Jeffrey Dahmer?
Crimes are punished because they are crimes, not to "make an example."
Maybe he felt closer to God in Islam than in liberal Catholicism. And maybe he was right. The Taliban is pretty far from God, but perhaps not as far as lukewarm Christianity.
Baloney. "Lukewarm Christians" don't crash hijacked aircraft into office buildings.
Is secularism rampant because people were pulled away by our unprecedented material prosperity (as Mr. Sobran, and many of his admirers on FR, seem to think), or pushed away by churches more concerned with their own earthly sovereignty than with the doing of the Lord's will? I don't know, but the instinct among people like Mr. Sobran to refuse to look inward is all too common these days, and all too unfortunate.
Physician, heal thyself.
No, Joseph. He is not technically still a US citizen. Read page four of your passport again.
Your point about turning his back on Christ before turning his back on America, however, is well taken. America will judge him in the secular realm now. Spiritual judgement is out of our hands, but it WILL come in the near future.
Sobran is also dissembling here by trying to insinuate that citizenship is as free from legal definition as religion is in the US. Any of us may change religious affiliation at will and the government has no power to require that we notify them. The same is not true of citizenship.
None of this really matters, since we have a President with very elastic scruples. Walker will skate because Bush hasn't the backbone to face the outcry that liberals would raise should he let the traitor be hanged as he so richly deserves.
Bingo. There is more outrage shown at the fact that he decided to live somewhere else. He's not an Amerian. And thus he can't be called guilty of treason. Nor can it be proven that he made war against us.
I guess I understand the indignation, but I don't share it. What is all the uproar about a single eccentric? Is it amazing, or shocking, that a country this big should produce such a freak, or even a few more like him? Letting him off is hardly likely to encourage hordes of young Americans to follow his bizarre example. There is no need to make an example of a unique case.The same could be said about Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacey, Ted Bundy, "Mumia," et al.
Let's not be judgmental.
I guess I understand the indignation, but I don't share it. What is all the uproar about a single eccentric? Is it amazing, or shocking, that a country this big should produce such a freak, or even a few more like him? Letting him off is hardly likely to encourage hordes of young Americans to follow his bizarre example. There is no need to make an example of a unique case.
No, Lindh's significance is purely symbolic. He affronts prevailing notions of American patriotism. But he effectively renounced his citizenship, even if he didn't do the paperwork, and he transferred his allegiance to another country. How was he supposed to know it would be attacked by US forces? If Cassius Clay could become Muhammad Ali, why can't John Walker Lindh become Suleyman al-Faris? "In the U.S. I feel alone," he once said. "Here I feel comfortable and at home."
I've never seen Joe Sobran so muddle-headed. He seems to be beside himself with glee, that a child of American decadence would take up with an enemy army. Well, that's decadent as Hell of YOU, Joe! An American boy walking around Marin County quoting from the Koran to the local pagans and wiccans, is eccentric. Joining the Taliban, and fighting your own country, constitutes treason. Whatever your religious beliefs, it is Caesar's due, that you not seek to destroy your own country. Since Sobran knows this, and even made it his title, I can only see this essay as a case of intellectual perfidy.
T.S. Eliot renounced his American citizenship for the Crown's. Ezra Pound did not. That's why, when Pound made broadcasts on behalf of Il Duce, he was guilty of treason.
More perfidy: Sobran brings up the example of Cassius Clay changing his name. Since when is a name change the same as fighting in an enemy army against your own nation? Sobran neglects to mention, that when Clay-Ali was drafted, and refused to serve in the American armed forces, he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for draft evasion. And rightfully so!
I think Sobran is dead wrong, when he claims that letting this particular traitor off will not encourage others to be traitors. (And I wonder at his sincerity: judging by the tenor of this essay, he seems to praying for a harvest of traitors!) I guess he's been off somewhere sleeping, the past forty years. You know, while we're at it, why did we ever execute those lovable eccentrics, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg? Surely, giving them the chair was purely symbolic. Surely, letting them go, would not have encouraged others to commit treason.
Does Joe Sobran secretly identify with John Walker Lindh? Has he come to hate America so much, that he wants to encourage more treason? Has he totally lost his mind?