Posted on 12/12/2001 3:56:39 AM PST by IronJack
The parents of John Walker, the American-turned-Taliban POW who is being held by Marines near Kandahar, have predictably risen to his defense as have a handful of other hand-wringers on the Left. He's just a good boy who made some mistakes, they claim, a nice, happy boy-next-door type who has always been free to chase his dreams, wherever they led him.
This time, they led him to a jumbled cellar in northern Afghanistan, huddled in cold, creaking darkness while American bombers circled overhead and opposition forces dropped hand grenades all around him. He and his compatriots were the last of the Taliban fighters who had briefly recaptured their prison fortress outside Mazar-e-Sharif. They gained the upper hand for a brief spell, then US warplanes and Alliance tanks smashed the compound and the rebels retreated into the ruined cellar of one of the larger buildings. When Northern Alliance soldiers began to fill the hole with water, Walker joined 80-odd walking dead in a mass surrender. After a 3-day seige, their end had finally come. With guns in their backs, they crossed a courtyard strewn with bodies and parts, and were locked into a metal shipping container, there to await their final destiny in a land known for its barbarity to prisoners.
The future hadn't always looked so bleak. John Walker is the son of Marilyn Walker of San Francisco, who is currently married to Frank Lindh, wealthy, "open-minded" parents who encouraged him to select from a wide palette of personal experience. They report that he has always been a strong-willed child, introverted, and given to experiment. He converted to Islam at 16, then traveled to Yemen to study Arabic. He wound up in Pakistan, in one of the madrassas, the religious indoctrination centers the Taliban sponsors to bolster the ranks of its fanatics. When the Trade Center was attacked and America retaliated, he was given a rifle and sent to Kunduz to pursue the jihad against Allah's wicked enemies.
Those "enemies" happened to be wearing American uniforms. John Walker, boy next door, was shooting his own countrymen.
Now, behind the razor wire at Camp Rhino, he has time to contemplate his folly. It's hard to know what thoughts go through his head as the minutes drag into hours, the hours into days, and the future remains a distant haze of dread uncertainty. But back in the land he hated so much, his mother and father are telling anyone who will listen that this is just another caprice, that their son is a happy youngster who stumbled onto the wrong path.
This path leads to a firing squad. John Walker is a traitor.
Aritcle III, Section 3 of the Constitution explicitly defines one crime: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." John Walker took up arms against the United States, aligned his sympathies with those of the Taliban, and lent his talents to the destruction of American fighting forces. There is no clearer case of treason. No spy who ever sold nuclear secrets to the Reds, no mercenary who switched allegiances because the pay was better, no Benedict Arnold or Ephialtes or Judas Iscariot betrayed their respective causes any more than John Walker betrayed his homeland.
But, in the manner of modern America, John Walker is to be considered merely an errant youth, a misguided youngster who might be teepeeing the principal's house or egging cars from an overpass. Nobody in post-modern America - from a certain President on down - is to be held accountable for his decisions any more. That is an expired construct, a moral relic no longer relevant in the age of situation ethics.
Nowadays, even a "mistake" as egregious as out-and-out treason is simply a youthful indiscretion, a prank that went awry, of no more consequence than flinging burning dog squat on a neighbor's front stoop. No sense of honor prevails, no onerous recognition of social responsibility. If young Mr. Walker didn't give a Muslim's damn about his country, maybe he could at least have considered the agony his decision would cause his parents. But the only important thing was that he indulge his latest whim, his wandering penchant for strange causes and childish idiocy. He shouldn't be blamed for that.
At least, that's the way Mr. and Mrs. Walker-Lindh want it. They don't want their son to suffer the righteous outrage of other mothers and fathers whose sons were the targets of Johnny Taliban's rainbow chase. They want compassion, forgiveness, understanding for their boy, not a body bag.
It should not be. John Walker, crushed into a cage in the wastes of Afghanistan, should be treated by the conquering forces the same as any other prisoner of war. If the Alliance decides to execute the troublesome guerillas, then John Walker should face the same fate. If the foreign prisoners are allowed to return to their homelands, John Walker should be tried in the United States as a traitor and at the very least spend the rest of his days making road ballast at Leavenworth. If justice prevails, he should stare down a firing squad.
Every day presents its decisions. Sept. 11, 2001 offered a lot of options for billions of people. But the folks in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon, and on those four fateful flights didn't have much in the way of options. Someone else wrote the final chapter to 5,000 lives that day. Some preening, pretentious, blinded zealots usurped the ultimate prerogative and decided that that day would be a good one for these strangers to die.
And John Walker made a decision somewhere in his life that led him to Pakistan, to Kunduz, and now to his feculent cell. It was a bad decision if the final goal was some kind of spiritual enlightenment or an ideological home. At the very least, the cost is awfully high. But it was a cost that any reasoning man would have seen beforehand. One doesn't go to war with one's country for cavalier reasons, or without expecting some retribution if the cause is lost.
The day of reckoning is nigh for John Walker. It is an offense to America to treat him lightly, or to regard his betrayal as inconsequential. The war is against terrorism, and if nations who harbor terrorists are our enemies, people who fight beside the terrorists must earn our enmity as well. Just as prosecution of this war is vital to project American outrage, so is a vigorous pursuit of the enemy's foot soldiers.
The distant star of "revolution" has always twinkled seductively to the young and disenfranchised. Over the years, countless youths have been drawn to experiment with alternate ideologies, mostly as a way of antagonizing their parents and asserting a pretentious independence. Soft-hearted parents tolerate such cultural defections because they are afraid to demand obedience from their children. They've bought the "self-esteem" nonsense purveyed by the liberal establishment, and fear that forcing any standards on their offspring will crush their nascent spirits and lead them to a life of bland uniformity.
So, in their search for a meaningful ethic, the brats run off and join the Black Panthers, the Peoples' Temple, the Trenchcoat Mafia. It's usually just a passing fancy, the mock rebellion of self-absorbed children, a tempest in a B-cup. But more and more frequently, the dalliance becomes an obsession and consumes the dabbler. A lark becomes an albatross, the scarecrow a tar baby. And a machine grinds slowly, inexorably toward disaster.
That seems to be the case with John Walker. He may have thought this was just another game, a way of thumbing his nose at Ward and June. But like the dead in Oakland and Guyana and Columbine, the bodies in Mazar are not pawns that can be replaced on the chessboard to await another contest. Their journey was one way, no takebacks, no rewind, no "do-overs." Their mistakes were fatal. John Walker's should be too.
If he gets a .30-caliber ticket to Paradise, he can ask Allah all those questions that have been burning in his soul these 20 years. Of course, if he's WRONG …. it could be that the last words John Walker will ever hear will be "Ready. Aim. Fi …"
And the 5,000 dead in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
Outstanding article. And I fully agree with the above sentiment. This is a big chance for America to show what it's about! And whatever the outcome, we will do that. However, the pessimism that many of us feel in this case has good causes, the main one being the feminization of America as the root of the softness and "understanding" for this scoundrel now being demonstrated by many including, if I'm not mistaken, the President himself.
I've wondered that too. Can you imagine having to hire a PR firm to worm your son out of a firing squad?
You are so right. How many times have I heard, "He was such a good boy," "She was such a good Mom," "S/He was such a good student," "He was such a good Christian," over and over ad nauseum when friends/relatives of obvious murderers are interviewed? Our perception of what is "good" is sickeningly distorted.
But then again, look who ran the country from 1993-2001. Mr. "Morality" himself. What a wonderful role-model people of Walker's age have had. Add to that affluent parents from Kalifornia, absence of religion in public schools, teachers who scoff at the Bible but are more than willing to teach "fisting," the proper use of a condom and to be anti-liberal-thinking is to be a right-wing extremist hate-monger and you have the PERFECT ingredients for:
A) a mass murderer
B) a traitor
C) a gang-banger
D) an amoral leftist bedwetting anti-American hate spewing politician
E) All of the above.
And the press just eats it up. How disgusting. I forsee another OJ debacle due to public outcry and the press right behind feeding the flames.
I'm thinking of Roe of "Roe v. Wade". She was a miserable liar, but since her converstion to Christianity she has done much good to expose the depravity of the abortionists.
Just a thought.
posted 10.6.01:
"For three days there's been a "Give Peace a Chance" mob perched on the steps of Fairfax, CA's bus stop. They have no permit. Their right to demonstrate was allowed by Les Tremayne, local left-wing extremist and town council member, in conspiracy with the new town manager. No permit, no meeting with other members of the council, no fees, all restrictions waived by oral agreement between the two of them. The police were ordered not to dislodge the demonstrators and the fire department was alerted to wash off the graffiti when they left each night.
"Over nineteen complaints were registered by townsfolk bringing the majority of disgust to 7.
"The police are angry at being expected to do the bidding of the petty despot Tremayne. They agree that the special treatment given the peace mob constitutes conspiracy to break the law which is a felony. They agree that having firemen wash the steps is misappropriation of town funds. They agree that the mob misrepresents Fairfax and that it is exercising its free speech by special fiat of one man in power."
We called all the local TV, radio stations and newspapers. As far as I know, nobody was interested. Fairfax, as a municpality, is controlled by the left who operate it as a private show place. We are a nuclear-free zone. We cannot plant a non-native tree in our own yard. Our Representative is Lynn Woolsey, local welfare mother, who threw a tantrum in Jesse Helms Committee. Is it any surprise that Walker-Lindh cut his hate-America teeth here?
I just don't think he should pollute these shores again, unless it's in irons on his way to the scaffold.
By the way, I think the poor deluded saps who believe Islam is peaceful will continue to believe that until the day some smelly Hamas terrorist slits their throat.
Keep preaching it bro.
The pain from 9/11 is still too fresh for me to think in terms of "saving" him. Yes, Roe was saved, but could a sociopath such as Jeffrey Dahmer be saved? Not everyone that walks on the dark side can be saved. Once acquitted of his crimes, this Walker character could not be tried again. What if he pulled a "fast one" and claimed to be saved when in fact he was just saving his sorry behind? It wouldn't be the first time it happened and it would be a grave affront to the brave men who died.
Sorry. The older I get, the more jaded I become. I can't help feeling empathy for those that suffered because of one man's folly. I can't stop crying every time I see footage of 9/11. I can't stop praying for the pathetic state of the world and the end times that are so apparent. At the same time, I also pray for patience and guidance and to not judge others.
But, I'm only human. And I can't stop feeling. My feeling is, this man needs the ultimate punishment for what he has helped to perpetrate.
I have to admit that's one possibility I hadn't considered. Not that I consider it too likely ...
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