Defending The Indefensible Part Two:

Getting Warm & Fuzzy Over John Walker

While the American judicial system prepares to decide the fate of John Walker, it is worth examining why people support him. Many note his age, twenty, as reason for his defection to the Taliban - a kind of "youthful exhuberance" or irrationality which many fall prey to at that age. American Culture has become permeated with a view that twenty today isn’t what it used to be, that it is more childish and less responsible than say the age was back in the 1970s or 1950s. Gail Shehey’s book New Passages makes this very same point, that twenty today is more akin to the adolescent years a generation ago. Back up everything by ten years is her opinion, one which finds great appeal to our youth-obsessed culture.

Unfortunately, neither the law nor common experience validates this view when it comes to important matters. In fact in today’s society, we find ourselves regressing in a way when it comes to punishment and crime. More children find themselves charged as adults today than they did a generation ago. Current society is struggling with increasingly sadistic crimes being carried out by increasingly youthful offenders, and moving to treat children using adult standards of justice. The crimes committed by a twenty year old lose their youthful luster in comparison.

Leaving aside the question of Treason, John Walker has by his own admission fought in Kashmir in violation of the Neutrality Act. Exactly what was he doing there? How many did he kill in that land? While the CIA isn’t the favorite agency of the Left, especially Northern Californian Liberals, one of their men was killed in an uprising supported by Walker. That man had a wife, three children, parents and other loved ones. The door is pretty much open to charge this man with just about any crime.

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid

It is also worth noting that the average age of American soldiers in Afghanistan is twenty. Should these soldiers commit an atrocity in Afghanistan, say a My Lai style slaughter, would these same voices of support for Walker rise up for the “youthful indiscretion” of laying waste to a village? Would we as a nation allow twenty year old Marines from minority and lower class homes the same latitude the Walker family expects us to grant a child from a white, suburban, upper-middle class background?

Walker supports the September 11 attacks in which four thousand men, women and children were slaughtered, and calls the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole completely justified since “bringing the U.S. destroyer into a Yemeni harbor was ‘an act of war’ against Islam” (Newsweek, December 17, 2001 – pg 34). Perhaps Marin County is far removed from the Pentagon and the seemingly eternal pall rising from the Manhattan skyline, but it is worth remembering that this was the “side” Walker chose to be on. Unlike Patty Hearst, he had not been kidnapped nor involuntarily brainwashed (while it is possible he indeed has been brainwashed, it appears that his fundamentalist views started in his teens while still in American and were not the result of a low-protein diet at a madrassa in Pakistan).

It is also worth remembering what the Taliban advocated and which appealed to Walker.

For brevity’s sake, let’s look at one example, one which should hit quite close to home to those in Marin County: The Taliban's treatment of homosexuals.

From a letter dated June 12, 1998 to Kofi Anan, Secretary General of the United Nations, from the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute:

“On February 24, 1998, three Afghan men convicted of sodomy survived an attempted execution in which they were buried alive for 30 minutes according to reports reports promulgated by the Afghan government through its official news agency, Afghan Islamic Press (AIP). It was reported that the local commander of the Taliban (the political party and military force now comprising the government of approximately two-thirds of Afghanistan's territory) Islamic militia was one of thousands of people who witnessed the punishment outside the southern city of Kandahar. …

Government leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the three victims to be left for half an hour under the rubble of a stone wall which was felled on top of them by a military tank. It was reportedly stated that their lives would be spared if they survived.

The men were found alive when the pile of stones was removed and were taken to a hospital to be treated for their injuries, which are said to have included fractures of varying degrees of severity of most of the bones of their bodies. The three, named Fazalur Rehman, Ahmad Shah and Abdul Qahir, had all been convicted by an Islamic court of committing sodomy. The execution ceremony took place at Kotal Morcha, just north of Kandahar. ...

On March 22, 1998, two homosexual men in Afghanistan were buried alive. The young men of 18 and 22 years in age were sentenced to death by a court of the Taliban government militia, after they had confessed their homosexuality, according to official announcement, which specified further that in those parts of Afghanistan which are controlled by the Taliban government, homosexuals are punished with the death penalty without exception.

The two, Abdul Sami, 18, and Bismillah, 22, residents of Herat province, were placed beside a wall of dried mud which was bulldozed upon them. They had been detained four months earlier accused of sodomy and sentenced by a Shari'a court to death by crushing a wall upon them. …”

While crushing Gays is not a part of Northern California culture, it is definitely part of Fundamentalist Islam as interpreted by the Taliban. Depriving homosexuals of rights is also part of other cultures, including those found in America such as Fundamentalist Christians, Southern Red-necks and the “macho” subcultures of African-American, Hispanic and the West. Did Walker’s supporters write in support of the three convicted in the death of Matthew Shephard?

Cultural relativism is based on moral relativism which denies the existence of absolutes, namely Absolute Truth. Human Rights such as the right to life for gays are themselves Absolutes which cut across all societies and cultures. Therefore one cannot state that killing gays is okay in one culture and not another unless one gives up on the idea of Human Rights. Since those same supporters of Walker are probably driving around with “Free Tibet” stickers on their bumpers and support Amnesty International, I doubt this is the case.

Which leaves us with the fact that John Walker was a white suburban youth who never wanted for anything in his short life. Whether as a consequence of this pampered upbringing or from some simple choice he turned his back on this liberal way of life is immaterial at this time. John Walker chose his path and now should be forced to walk it… to the gallows.