Posted on 12/11/2001 6:02:51 AM PST by sweetliberty
If you want to understand the appeal of evil to a young mind, you can't do better than to read "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie".
In this brilliant and much-misunderstood novel, the great Catholic writer Muriel Spark gave us, among other things, as close as we're likely to get to a sympathetic explanation for the world's most famous 20-year-old -- young John Walker, or Suleyman al-Faris, or Abdul Hamid, or Johnny Lindh, or whoever the boy happens to be this week.
Walker is, of course, the young man who went to Yemen to brush up on his language skills, vanishing from view (at least, from parental view) until he re-emerged this November in Afghanistan, bearded and begrimed, fighting for the Taliban on international TV.
He was described wondrously -- and, it is very much to be hoped, accidentally -- as a "Taliban American" in the CNN chyron that scrolled beneath his too-familiar face throughout the weekend. (Luckily for my peace of mind, CNN eventually got around to reversing the order of the words. American Taliban is bad enough -- to hyphenate betrayal, though, is just plain weird.)
As for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," set in the 1930s when the world was (as it so often is) a turbulent and terrible place, it is a novel about good and evil, about the impulse to fascism and the malignant nature of false authority.
Above all, it is about the pernicious influence exerted by Jean Brodie, a charismatic and truly wicked teacher, on her young pupils. One of these children -- the hopelessly dim Mary MacGregor -- is so beguiled by Miss Brodie's raptures over the Spanish Fascists that she runs away to join her soldier-brother in Spain, where the Civil War is raging.
Alas for Mary MacGregor: under Miss Brodie's spell, she joins the 'wrong' side, blundering off to join Franco's Fascists in the false belief that she'll find her brother there. On her way to the front, she is killed.
It is this that redeems her, I suppose. If she had succeeded in her quixotic mission, she would have become, not a figure of tragedy and pity and heartbreaking absurdity, but a Johnny Walker Suleyman Abdul Lindh, a lame-brained child drawn into evil because no-one had offered her anything better to do.
The point of all this is that any pang of sympathy I am tempted to feel for the boy comes chiefly from my memory of Miss Spark's acerbic story (in one of the more delicious ironies in the history of literature, by the way, most of the people who have read the book or seen the movie believe, like Mary MacGregor, that Miss Brodie is a heroine, when in fact she is a profoundly monstrous character).
Children -- especially lost children, like Mary MacGregor or John Walker -- are notoriously vulnerable to false prophets if no-one is willing to provide them with true ones, and it's all too apparent that Mr. Walker's parents and teachers and mentors, indulgent to the point of anomie, saddled him with what Joni Mitchell once called "the crazy that comes from too much choice".
Still, we must live with the consequences of what we choose to do. While culture-critics gnaw at the young man's privileged Marin County upbringing, and lawyers fuss at each other over the precise requirements for proving a case of treason, one fact is clear: even before a state of war existed, young Mr. Walker had made his choice.
What was the nature of that choice? Out of some deeply perverted spirit of idealism, he cast his lot in with a band of fascists -- bloody tyrants who beat women for speaking and children for smiling, and who have a nasty little habit of blowing people to smithereens every now and again. His own father admits that Walker once defended the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the young man's refusal to identify himself as an American to two CIA interrogators -- one of them the late Mike Spann -- has swiftly become the stuff of legend.
The best case you can make for the boy just isn't all that damn good.
Predictably, if paradoxically, he has begun to arouse a certain popular sympathy. Words like 'misguided kid' can be heard floating through the ether (although 'unguided kid' might be more precise), and almost no-one believes he's going to pay much of a price for his outlandish sins.
My own particular 20-year-old, who is unenlightened enough to wear the uniform of his own country, is angered but not especially surprised by all of this. He has rather bitterly discerned the sympathetic murmurings that are beginning to ooze forth in the press, though these murmurs are cautious and muted at present -- patriotism is still 'in', at least for the duration, and that most reliable of political barometers, Senator Hillary Clinton, was careful to call Mr. Walker a traitor in a recent television interview.
Around the edges, however, reporters fret that he isn't having a very good time in captivity. He must endure the unpleasantness of interrogation, he has to put up with being guarded by 'unsympathetic' U.S. servicemen at Camp Rhino in Afghanistan, and he hasn't been allowed to talk with his worried parents on the telephone.
This is a tired old reflex, of course. From the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss to Andrea Yates and Louise Woodward, the Killer Nanny, we've seen it all before. The more the right demands John Walker's head on a pike, the more the left will see in him a kind of martyrdom, or even some deep, untapped vein of tragic greatness. It was ever thus, and if you're not used to it by now, you'd better get started.
As for me, I do regard the boy as a traitor -- and also a fool, and also a wasted life. Much as I despise him, though, I reserve my greatest anger for those who taught him everything about freedom save how to use it. Theirs was the real betrayal, and they will continue to give aid and comfort to our enemies long after Mr. Walker has disappeared into St. Elizabeth's, or some such posh sanctuary.
The author seems to magnify this mentality by saying that it is unlikely that this young man will pay any real price for turning on his country. I sincerely hope she is wrong and that an example will be made of him. The way many of these liberals want to handle this guy with kid gloves is a pretty clear indicator that most have never been exposed to war and are completely incapable of comprehending the seriousness of matters pertaining to it. I would suggest that the way we handle this one pseudo-idealistic punk could set the tone for the rest of the war and determine if it is indeed a war or just another soapbox for liberal-speak.
One of the reasons teenagers are so damned unpleasant to be around is that they're busy figuring out how much of what they've been taught is true. A surprising number of them stumble out the other end having made pretty good choices, often in spite of appalling parents and schools.
By twenty, you are usually pretty much the person you're going to be (if a bit green and unfinished), and all of those choices are yours.
In fact, I'd put twenty as the age beyond which no-one is permitted to blame their parents for anything.
I feel little pity for him; he is quite literate and knows what the Taliban did is totally against Islam.
Death to the perverters.
But if he has indeed renounced his citizenship, how can he be tried for treason. Isn't that a crime that can only be charged against an American citizen? And even if there had been no active renunciation, or if, as the liberal mouthpieces wold have us believe, he didn't know what he was doing, isn't the very act of taking up arms in the military of another power against the United States grounds for revokation of citizenship?
For people who seem to be so persnickety as regards the rule of law there sure seems to be a lot of ambiguity in this case.
We can't let him walk away from this. He's committed the worst of crimes against his country. He must be tried--preferably in a military tribunal (after they've stripped him of citizenship--which they can do, after he's fought with a foreign army against his own country)--and he must suffer the full consequences of his crime. Our Constitution requires it. Justice demands it.
I know it won't be long before the Johnny Jihad apologists show up on the thread to tell us we're acting like a lynch mob, but in truth, this is no lynch mob. We are citizens demanding justice through the courts. Only Constitutional justice will do, not the treacly platitudes of the Left about feelings and "finding himself." (Newsflash: he's been found--in the company of our enemy, and armed to the teeth.)
Deb Weiss is a pearl among columnists, but in this one, I pray she is wrong.
Justice must be served.
I believe that is about as clear a rejection of US citizenship as can be. Even when filling out the yellow form to buy a firearm, you must answer questions whether you have renounced your US citizenship or plotted to overthrow the US government. This guy is no longer an American. I think a fitting punishment would be to simply declare him persona nongrata, deport him back to the Islamic paradise of his choice and deny him any future entry to the US.
How about we let him decide? If he still wants to be an American citizen then we try him for treason in a civil court. If not then we try him for murder and conspiracy in a military tribunal. Or just give him back to the Northern Alliance and let them deal with him.
I understand you get bombed pretty quick.
1 part Johnnie Walker Black
1 part UbL
1 part Mullah Omar
1000 parts Taliban
Mix in cave, chilled.
Add 15,000 pounds high explosive slurry just before serving.
Serves approximately 5,000 (justice for WTC)
Traitoress; born in California. Of Japanese descent, she went to Japan in 1941 to visit her sick aunt. Caught there by the outbreak of World War II, she became one of the voices on Tokyo Radio known to American soldiers as "Tokyo Rose." She was convicted of treason (1949) and spent six years in prison. She was pardoned in 1977 and worked in a Chicago gift shop.
She was born in 1917 and may be still living.
I agree with the author. I am not adverse to seeing Walker punished, but is death, as so many suggested here, really the appropriate penalty? I think we need to know more about what Walker was doing in Afghanistan before making that decision.
And one more thing. As much as I disapprove of his parents' way of life, I will not criticize them for doing everything possible to save their son.
I have seen many here make this claim. I wonder if anyone has any historicial examples to back this up. IIRC, weren't there many American volunteers in the RAF prior to the point at which the U.S. officially joined WWII?
It should also be remembered that Walker joined the Taliban before any hostilities with the U.S. Members of Bush's administration actually sponsored a meeting with the leaders of the Taliban in Washington, so it cannot be claimed that they were always perceived as an enemy of the U.S.
He was found with an AK-47. He was present when the uprising occured that took the life of Michael Spann. He knew that Americans were engaged in hostilities against the Taliban (where did he think the Daisy Cutters and AC130 gunships were coming from?).
He knew the Taliban had engaged the United States in battle and he continued to remain and fight.
Your arguments don't wash.
Now philosophically you may be opposed to the death penalty. So be it. Personally, I believe traitors should be shot.
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