Posted on 10/04/2004 1:55:07 AM PDT by kattracks
Last week, John Walker Lindh petitioned the president to commute his 20-year sentence for fighting with the Taliban, imposed in 2002. It’s a shame that this pampered child of Marin County is sitting in a cell for something as trivial as treason.
Under a plea bargain, Walker Lindh (AKA: Abdul Hamid, AKA: Sulayman Al-Lindh) pleaded guilty to supplying services to the Taliban regime and carrying explosives for Afghanistan’s former rulers.
Which is like to saying that Benedict Arnold supplied services to George III.
Johnny Jihad trained in an al-Qaeda camp – where he learned to fire an AK-47 and rubbed elbows with Osama bin Laden – fought for the Taliban (as part of its al-Qaeda auxiliary) and, as a prisoner, took part in a riot in which CIA agent Mike Spann was killed.
If he were sacrificed with a blunt instrument on the ruins of the World Trade Center, it would be small punishment for his crimes.
Still, what distinguishes Lindh’s treason from that of the ‘60s radicals, who shot bank guards and blew us research labs, is his choice of prophet – Mohammed instead of Marx. Johnny Jihad’s background is remarkably similar to that of the children of privilege who joined the revolution in the Vietnam era.
In 1991, the Lindh Family moved to the trendy San Francisco suburb, sent up in the 1980 movie “Serial.” Lindh’s mother, raised a Catholic, converted to Buddhism. Papa Lindh would later move in with his gay lover. Little Johnny was enrolled in alternative schools.
A fan of rap music (with its violent, sadistic lyrics), at one point, Johnny tried to pass as black. The “Autobiography of Malcolm X (another inveterate America-hater) led him to what is increasingly the home of the angry and alienated: fundamentalist Islam.
Eventually, his ideological pilgrimage took him to an Arabic language school in Yemen and a radical madrasah in Pakistan. There, he studied Taliban literature and – he says – “my heart became attached to that.” That being a creed that placed women under permanent house arrest, murdered those deemed heretics and tortured a nation for the better part of a decade.
In an e-mail exchange with his father, Lindh expressed sympathy for the terrorists who bombed the U.S.S. Cole (the October, 2000 incident in which 17 of our sailors died).
There’s no way of knowing if Lindh fought U.S. troops. Unquestionably, he fought with the murderers of more than 3,000 Americans and for the regime that harbored this scum. And Marilyn Walker to this day maintains that her little Johnny “has never had any sympathy or involvement in terrorist activity.” Queen of Denial, please call your office for an important message from the real world.
The Lindhs probably are pinning their hopes on the election of John Forbes Kerry. The antiwar Left is terribly tolerant of treason (in its many guises), when it isn’t actively promoting betrayal of America.
Recall Nicholas De Genova, an assistant professor at Columbia, who told a 2003 teach-in at the university, “The only true heroes are those who find ways to help defeat the U.S. military.” Also: “Peace is not patriotic. Peace is subversive, because peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live – a world where the U.S. would have no place.”
De Genova has an interesting definition of peace. “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus” the professor told the assembled peaceniks – this in reference to the 1993 incident in Somalia, when 18 Americans soldiers were killed and their bodies dragged through the streets.
Such psychic treason has become the left’s stock in trade. One can see why Mama Lindh feels her boy was ill-used. Celebrity leftists have been getting away with treason for decades.
Jane Fonda is the classic example. During a two-week tour of North Vietnam in 1972, Fonda: made propaganda broadcasts in which she called U.S. leaders “war criminals,” posed with an anti-aircraft battery and paid a visit to the notorious Hanoi Hilton.
POWs were beaten and tortured to persuade them to meet with the visiting “American peace activist.” When several passed her slips of paper about the real conditions in the prison, Fonda promptly turned the messages over to guards, who beat and tortured them some more.
Upon her return to America, Fonda assured the nation that our prisoners of war were in “remarkably good health.” After the war, when returning POWs described the horrors they had endured at the hands of Fonda’s commie friends, the actress called them “hypocrites and liars” whose reports of torture were “laughable.”
Fonda’s ex-husband Tom Hayden (now a California state senator) is another member of the Left’s Benedict Arnold Brigade. As David Horowitz disclosed here (“Tom Hayden, LA, and Me,” March 3, 1997), during the war, Hayden traveled to North Vietnam, Czechoslovakia and Paris where he met with Viet Cong leaders to instruct them on waging psychological warfare against America.
Horowitz: “He (Hayden) arranged trips to Hanoi for Americans perceived as friendly to the communists and blocked the entry of those seen as unfriendly…He attacked as ‘propaganda’ stories of torture and labeled American POWs returning home with such stories as ‘liars.’…When anti-war activist Joan Baez protested human rights violations of the North Vietnamese victors, Hayden called her a tool of the CIA.”
No need to ask whom Fonda and Hayden will be voting for this year. Compared to the incomparable service John Kerry performed for Hanoi, the commie couple are Betsy Ross and Nathan Hale.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have a new ad, which began running on Friday of last week, featuring wives of former POWs. In these 60-second spots, the women mention Kerry’s notorious 1971 “war-crimes” testimony before the Senate.
Phyllis Galanti – whose husband Paul
was a guest of Ho Chi Minh and Company from 1966 to 1973 – says he told her: “John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam, in prison camps, took torture to avoid saying (that America was committing atrocities)…It demoralized us.”
After 4 months and 12 days in country, Kerry came home and reported for duty with the antiwar movement.
The future Senator organized the radical Vietnam Veterans Against the War, consorted with the likes of Fonda and Ramsey Clark (Kerry attended one of the aerobic Marxist’s activist training schools), marched in parades with communist cadres (carrying Viet Cong flags and placards pledging their fidelity to China, Cuba, North Korea, etc.) and pushed the so-called “People’s Peace Treaty” (reportedly drawn up in East Germany). Can you say "commie stooge"?
In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (April 23, 1971) Kerry charged U.S. forces in Vietnam had, “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.”
All of which Kerry claimed to have personally witnessed in 4 months and 12 days.
In recognition of his invaluable contributions to the VC war effort, a photo of the Democratic nominee – taken during a 1993 visit to Vietnam – hangs in a “War Crimes Museum” in Ho Chi Minh City, in a room honoring the U.S. antiwar movement.
Retired General George S. Patton (son of the World War II commander), who led troops in battle in Vietnam, says the reputed war hero had “given aid and comfort to the enemy.” Which, come to think of it, is one of the Constitution’s definitions of treason.
The treason of the left is based on a burning hatred. While they are loathe to admit it – Michael Moore actually has the chutzpah to call himself a patriot – the Left sees America as the product of genocide, racism, slavery and exploitation, as well as the primary force for evil in the world today: an exploiter, despoiler, oppressor and imperialistic power.
Lindh betrayed his country in the name of Islam. Without actually carrying arms for the enemy, the left does so habitually, in the name of multiculturalism, internationalism, world peace and human rights.
Maybe Johnny Jihad did get a raw deal. While he sits in prison, De Genova teaches history at Columbia. Tom Hayden sits in the California Senate. Jane Fonda enjoys the millions she made through American capitalism – from movies and hawking her exercise tapes. And John Kerry is a candidate for the most powerful office in the world.
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.
No sympathy. His mummy and daddy should have not brought him up a leftist who thought playing twiddly winks with terrorists was fun.
When questioned, I hope Bush says he used it for toilet paper!
kerry will probably pardon him.
"Maybe Johnny Jihad did get a raw deal."
No doubt, now he can just suck it up and deal with it. Maybe he will convert to Christianity in prison, that would be an improvement.
He reminds me of that other limo leftist down in Peru or wherever she is. I just remember going to the school where her mother is a professor. Lori Berenson is her name. Imagine being jailed for your crime!
Get a rope.
Whenever I read of this type of thing, I think of one thing...
How very, very dangerous it is to raise your children in a spiritual vacuum.
The most important thing you can do as a parent is give your children the foundation on which to grow and live.
Without it, they will be ripe for picking by anyone and anything. If they stand for nothing, they fall for anything.
Span died that day you treasonous pup. No mercy.
Kill him.
I remember Span's death. I agree with you. No mercy for traitors. This guy should not even be in jail. He was one of the enemy and should have quickly been eliminated, American-born or not.
He had the luck to be discovered by a CNN reporter, otherwise he probably would have met the fate of many other Taliban prisoners.
Pity.
http://www.freelori.org/whoislori.html Mind the first two paragraphs 'social activist'. Whenever I hear those two words, my BS antennae go up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.