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THE ROAD TO TREASON
"If it feels good, do it."
THE ROAD TO TREASON
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
Copyright 2001, The Boston Globe
December 13, 2001
It isn't the case that the parents of John Walker -- the Marin County child of privilege turned Taliban terrorist -- never drew the line with their son.
True, they didn't do so when he was 14 and his consuming passion was collecting hip-hop CDs with especially nasty lyrics.
And true, they didn't put their foot down when he announced at 16 that he was going to drop out of Tamiscal High School -- the elite "alternative" school where students determined their own course of study and only saw a teacher once a week.
And granted, they didn't interfere when he abruptly decided to become a Muslim after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, grew a beard, and
took to wearing long white robes and an oversized skullcap. On the contrary: His father was "proud of John for pursuing an alternative course" and his mother told friends that it was "good for a child to
find a passion."
Nor did they object when he began spending more and more time at a local mosque and set about trying to memorize the Koran.
Nor when he asked his parents to pay his way to Yemen so he could learn to speak "pure" Arabic.
Nor when they learned that his new circle of friends included gunmen who had been to Chechnya to fight the Russians.
Nor when he headed to Pakistan to join a madrassah in a region known to be a stronghold of Islamist extremists.
His parents also didn't balk when he went to fight in Afghanistan -- but that, at least, they didn't know about: Walker hadn't told them. Perhaps by that point he had learned to take their consent for granted.
Only once, it seems, did Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker actually deny their son something he wanted. When he first adopted Islam and took the name Suleyman, they refused to use it and insisted on calling him John. After all, he had been named for one of the giants of our time: John Lennon.
Their refusal must have amazed him. For as long as he could remember, his oh-so-progressive parents had answered "Yes" to his every whim, indulged his every fancy, permitted -- even praised -- his every
passion. The only thing they insisted on was that nothing be insisted on. Nothing in his life was important enough for his them to make an issue of: not his schooling, not his religion, not his appearance, not even whether he stayed in America or moved -- while still a minor -- to a benighted Third World oligarchy halfway around the world. Nothing.
Except, of course, their right to call him by the name of their favorite Beatle.
Devout practitioners of the self-obsessed nonjudgmentalism for which the Bay Area is renowned, Lindh and Walker appear never to have rebuked their son or criticized his choices. In their world, there were no absolutes, no fixed truths, no mandatory behavior, no thou-shalt-nots. If they had one conviction, it was that all convictions are worthy --
that nothing is intolerable except intolerance.
But even in Marin County, there are times when children need to hear "No" and "Don't." They need to know that there are limits they must respect and expectations they must try to live up to. If they cannot
find those limits and expectations at home, they are apt to look for them elsewhere. Newsweek calls it "truly perplexing" that Walker, who "grew up in possibly the most liberal, tolerant place in America . . .
was drawn to the most illiberal, intolerant sect in Islam." There is nothing perplexing about it. He craved standards and discipline. Mom and Dad didn't offer any. The Taliban did.
Even when it was clear that their son was sinking into Islamist fanaticism, they wouldn't pull back on the reins. When Osama bin Laden's terrorists bombed the USS Cole and killed 17 American servicemen, Walker e-mailed his father that the attack had been justified, since by docking the ship in Yemen, the United States had committed "an act of war."
Lindh now says that the message "raised my concerns" -- but that didn't stop him from wiring Walker another $1,200. After all, says Dad, "my days of molding him were over." It isn't clear that they ever began.
It undoubtedly came as a jolt to his parents when Walker turned up at the fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, sporting an AK-47 and calling himself Abdul Hamid. But the revelation that their son had enlisted in Al Qaeda and supported the Sept. 11 attacks brought no words of reproach -- or self-reproach -- to their lips.
Walker deserved "a little kick in the butt" for keeping them in the dark about his plans, his father said, but otherwise they just wanted to "give him a big hug." His mother, meanwhile, was quite sure that "if he got involved with the Taliban he must have been brainwashed. . . . When you're young and impressionable, it's easy to be led by charismatic
people."
Yes, it is, and it's a pity that that didn't occur to her sooner. If she and Lindh had been less concerned with flaunting their open-mindedness and more concerned with developing their son's moral judgment, he wouldn't be where he is today. Walker is responsible for his own behavior and he will pay the price the law requires. But his road to treason and jihad didn't begin in Afghanistan. It began in Marin County, with parents who never said "No."
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
Copyright 2001, The Boston Globe
December 13, 2001
It isn't the case that the parents of John Walker -- the Marin County child of privilege turned Taliban terrorist -- never drew the line with their son.
True, they didn't do so when he was 14 and his consuming passion was collecting hip-hop CDs with especially nasty lyrics.
And true, they didn't put their foot down when he announced at 16 that he was going to drop out of Tamiscal High School -- the elite "alternative" school where students determined their own course of study and only saw a teacher once a week.
And granted, they didn't interfere when he abruptly decided to become a Muslim after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, grew a beard, and
took to wearing long white robes and an oversized skullcap. On the contrary: His father was "proud of John for pursuing an alternative course" and his mother told friends that it was "good for a child to
find a passion."
Nor did they object when he began spending more and more time at a local mosque and set about trying to memorize the Koran.
Nor when he asked his parents to pay his way to Yemen so he could learn to speak "pure" Arabic.
Nor when they learned that his new circle of friends included gunmen who had been to Chechnya to fight the Russians.
Nor when he headed to Pakistan to join a madrassah in a region known to be a stronghold of Islamist extremists.
His parents also didn't balk when he went to fight in Afghanistan -- but that, at least, they didn't know about: Walker hadn't told them. Perhaps by that point he had learned to take their consent for granted.
Only once, it seems, did Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker actually deny their son something he wanted. When he first adopted Islam and took the name Suleyman, they refused to use it and insisted on calling him John. After all, he had been named for one of the giants of our time: John Lennon.
Their refusal must have amazed him. For as long as he could remember, his oh-so-progressive parents had answered "Yes" to his every whim, indulged his every fancy, permitted -- even praised -- his every
passion. The only thing they insisted on was that nothing be insisted on. Nothing in his life was important enough for his them to make an issue of: not his schooling, not his religion, not his appearance, not even whether he stayed in America or moved -- while still a minor -- to a benighted Third World oligarchy halfway around the world. Nothing.
Except, of course, their right to call him by the name of their favorite Beatle.
Devout practitioners of the self-obsessed nonjudgmentalism for which the Bay Area is renowned, Lindh and Walker appear never to have rebuked their son or criticized his choices. In their world, there were no absolutes, no fixed truths, no mandatory behavior, no thou-shalt-nots. If they had one conviction, it was that all convictions are worthy --
that nothing is intolerable except intolerance.
But even in Marin County, there are times when children need to hear "No" and "Don't." They need to know that there are limits they must respect and expectations they must try to live up to. If they cannot
find those limits and expectations at home, they are apt to look for them elsewhere. Newsweek calls it "truly perplexing" that Walker, who "grew up in possibly the most liberal, tolerant place in America . . .
was drawn to the most illiberal, intolerant sect in Islam." There is nothing perplexing about it. He craved standards and discipline. Mom and Dad didn't offer any. The Taliban did.
Even when it was clear that their son was sinking into Islamist fanaticism, they wouldn't pull back on the reins. When Osama bin Laden's terrorists bombed the USS Cole and killed 17 American servicemen, Walker e-mailed his father that the attack had been justified, since by docking the ship in Yemen, the United States had committed "an act of war."
Lindh now says that the message "raised my concerns" -- but that didn't stop him from wiring Walker another $1,200. After all, says Dad, "my days of molding him were over." It isn't clear that they ever began.
It undoubtedly came as a jolt to his parents when Walker turned up at the fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, sporting an AK-47 and calling himself Abdul Hamid. But the revelation that their son had enlisted in Al Qaeda and supported the Sept. 11 attacks brought no words of reproach -- or self-reproach -- to their lips.
Walker deserved "a little kick in the butt" for keeping them in the dark about his plans, his father said, but otherwise they just wanted to "give him a big hug." His mother, meanwhile, was quite sure that "if he got involved with the Taliban he must have been brainwashed. . . . When you're young and impressionable, it's easy to be led by charismatic
people."
Yes, it is, and it's a pity that that didn't occur to her sooner. If she and Lindh had been less concerned with flaunting their open-mindedness and more concerned with developing their son's moral judgment, he wouldn't be where he is today. Walker is responsible for his own behavior and he will pay the price the law requires. But his road to treason and jihad didn't begin in Afghanistan. It began in Marin County, with parents who never said "No."
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Are you saying if more kids were punished, we would be better off? Well, you can stay right here in America, where around 25% live below the poverty line and have little or no medical care. Let alone what happens to millions of little kids every day in any given third world country. 5,000 a month die in Iraq because of sanctions. Should we spank them too?
Who's guilty of treason, when our military is being used to attack a nearly stone age country that never did anything to us? "Harboring terrorists"?! They offered repeatedly to extradite bin Laden to a neutral 3rd country if Bush would provide evidence of bin Laden's guilt. BUSH REFUSED.
If a foreign nation accused you of crimes against them, and demanded the US extradite you, wouldn't you want at the very least for the US to demand evidence of your supposed crimes before handing you over?
And if that nation then decided to bomb your entire STATE in retalliation, what would you call it? "Sorry Arizona, but you were harboring terrorists so we had to decimate your entire state."
You people must be continually reminded of the facts. Afghanistan never attacked America! The bombers were all Saudi Arabians - furthermore, being suicide bombers they were already dead.
Yeah, overnight Bush decides that he needs to liberate the poor Afghan people. What a nice guy, eh? Nevermind his buddies at Unocal who had recently given up on negotiations for the pipeline, and declared that the Taliban must be removed before Unocal can ever cash in on all that Caspian oil. Nevermind that Cheney's old employer is gonna be building that pipeline. Nevermind that Bush had a failing economy, and from the Republican perspective wanted an excuse to pump $billions into the military-industrial complex, both for "the economy" and all his MIC campaign contributors - not to mention his personal family portfolio.
*SJ
Most importantly Bush **did not need** to provide proof about Bin Laden, because there was already an international indictment for his arrest for his role in the 1993 Africa Embassy Bombings. It is not like this is the first time the US had asked for Bin Laden to be turned over!!! The Taliban had been refusing for years, under one guise or another.
Now after Sept 11th we **demand** him turned over, and they first refuse, then ask to "review evidence", then "agree to try him in an Islamic Country"-- yeah right!! Enough already with those jokers.
Oh-- and get off your horse about bombing afghanistan-- the vast majority of Afghans cheered the arrival of our troops. Our military action may have killed a few thousand innocents, but hundreds of thousands/millions who otherwise would have starved will live as a result.
Think of it as the lessor of two evils if that helps you get over it.
Somehow you people believe you have all the facts and everyone else is just stupid. Well, I've got news for you-- you're the suckers if you believe "the Taliban was trying to be helpful and we refused and bombed their entire country". Give me a break!
As far as the parents of Walker-- are you high? What parents let there kid drop out of high school and go away for 2 years and have no idea where they are, and just keep sending money?? Don't you think there is a connection there?
Yes, you got it right--- what's missing is discipline (which he found in the Taliban), and moral absolutes-- instead of relativity.
25% below poverty line with little or no healthcare? Ok, even I know that is a hairbrained statistic if I ever heard one. Tell me your source. And, try travelling outside the country before you sing a tune like that...no one starves in this country unless they want to, or are forced to by their guardian-- not a single person.
Similarly, if you train someone to fight a common enemy (Russians), and over time they turn against you and your ideals-- is it your fault?
Is the USA responsible for the actions of every single individual it has trained, financed, helped out, or supported at one time or another?
I think you can make an argument for partial guilt along the above lines-- and mistake have undoubtedly been made but to lay the blame entirely on the US is silliness. Further, to extract out the fact that Bin Laden was funded at one point by the CIA and to infer from that that the WTC attacks are the US's fault is also lunacy.
Yes, that's right - people WANT to starve. What a ridiculous troll you are.
According to this 1995 report by the USDA, "hunger existed in 4.2 million households....In 817,000 ...households, hunger was severe, and 692,000 children lived in these households."
http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/insight8.PDF
AS HTML (but you'll the tables get all screwed up):
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.usda.gov/cnpp/insight8.PDF
The CIA when they recruited the muslim fanatics that are now known to us as the Mujahideen, knew that they were maniacs from the onset. That is why they recruited them. Ideals? What ideals. People like Madeleine Albright, Dick Cheney, and Henry Kissinger have no ideals, they are descendants of Maciavehelli's philosophy.
The US apparently wants muslim nations to be politicially weak. If they have problems with arab fundamentalists(that we fund and teach how to fight) then Arab leaders cannot oppose US policy because and will be forced to look toward the US to help them with military assitance.
Rumsfeld was furious when this leaked out. "Can't we have this Chomsky guy shot?" he asked.
"Uh, no, sir," Karl said sheepishly. "We're maintaining the formal trappings of democracy to facilitate our secret police operations."
"Damn!" Rummy said. "Well, round up some illegal immigrants and shoot them instead."
"Yes, sir."
You'll notice, yet again, how little input I have into so-called Homeland Security issues. I'm even more powerless than W. Where's Cheney, you ask? That's a damn good question, now that I think of it. Uh oh....
-- Mark Twain, in The Mysterious Stranger. 1916.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/lind-f09.shtml
As his attorney, James Brosnahan stated, "They have brought up the cannon to shoot the mouse."
Lindh was clearly and viciously tortured by the US military and denied a lawyer. Thus, any "confession" must be thrown out. Further, Lindh has only been charged with conspiracy as the US has not declared war on Afghanistan. As the labor lawyer, Clarence Darrow stated, conspiracy charges should have been thrown out with the thumbscrew and the rack as they exact a maximum penalty without proving an overt act.
I urge everyone to read the article to see what lengths the US military will go to torture a person, all paid for with our tax dollars, and all done in the name of fighting for democracy. This is fascism, not democracy.
This is clearly a case of scapegoating not just to silence dissent as the article states, but also, as the article states, "it is being used to conceal who is really responsible for the tragic events in New York and Washington." The evidence is overwhelming that this was a Reichstag Fire to perpetrate fascism at home and blood for oil wars abroad.
As to Marin County, for the majority who are upper middle class, it is no different from any other upper middle class community, such as the kind in which George War Bush has always lived. Before the Vietnam War, it was rock-ribbed Republican. Since the Vietnam War, it is about 50/50 Democrat-Republican and like the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and much of the nation, has a peace community. There is also a workingclass in Marin County, and it is from that community that this writer came and grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, after having been born in San Francisco. John Walker Lindh is an individual who made a decision to study one religion. As far as I am concerned, all religions are superstitution and no educated person has any business believing in any religion. Lindh is just another kid who went out into the big wide world without sufficient understanding of that world and is now being used as a political scapegoat for an extremely reactionary and criminal administration, which clearly despises any political thought to the left of Hitler's ideology.
I urge the well-to-do parents who may be reading this to take their children to the poor communities of the San Francisco Bay Area so they can see poverty close up. If possible, have them work with some community organization that serves the poor so they can hear the stories and see the daily lives of the poor. That will end the romanticism that upper middle class young people sometimes have about people living in poor societies. Law students usually volunteer their services at legal aid societies and tenant organizations, and that certainly wakes them up to the realities of this world.
Meanwhile, it is mandatory that all scapegoating of John Walker Lindh end for he is a victim of circumstances and now a victim of a rigged judicial system. The louder we protest, the more defensive War Bush will become because there is no solid case against Lindh. Lindh needs to go to college and to work with the poor right here. I am sure that will do him and all the rest of us a great deal of good. Just remember, if the government can get away with attacking Lindh, it can get away with attacking anyone who opposes the warmongers. Three cheers for all peaceniks, civil libertarians, immigrants, and the workingclass.