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-----Original Message----- From: Kevin Dillon [mailto:kdillon@admin4.hsc.uth.tmc.edu] Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 9:50 AM To: LHammer@BR-Inc.com; kristinwebb@earthlik.net; Lichtenwalter, Blair; Phe= e@hal-pc.org; Cary M. Jones; Morris A Flaum; Irsan Tisnabudi; J. Redford; S= teve Ball; Paul Cooper; Irina Belmont; cathyawagner@aol.com; Victoria S Bri= scoe; 'Jerry Fuller'; Edward R Fullerton; Juanita E Poole; Rives Taylor; Br= ian Yeoman; Rick Miller; Scott Merville; myth@compassnet.com; Wesley Harrot= t; Maria E Hillman; Devin Longuet; Angela Hintzel; Loren Skinner; john@insy= nc.net; loulwi@aol.com; Evans Attwell; pattesrm@bp.com; dredford@dogpc.com;= wfisherman1@earthlink.net; Eileen Smith; Hammer; Donna Ervin; Donald R Woo= ds; Donna Ervin; ccssandy@flash.net; Brad Stuebing; George.Bandy@us.interfa= ceinc.com; cary@dupuyoxygen.com; dmlink1936@yahoo.com; BhamrahT@USA.REDCROS= S.ORG; dhick2@msn.com; tlyates@mail.ev1.net; karlas@fsddatasvc.com; CeciNav= arre@aol.com; welch.cdc@ev1.net; jrennie@io.com; wardjb1@bp.com; Russ Cause= y; kajanj@tirr.tmc.edu; steve@pro-finance.com; curryijc@BP.com; greggme@yah= oo.com; csaxenian@mail.waco.isd.tenet.edu; josephpwolfe@usa.net; wayman@lyc= osmail.com; Pam Stewart; jodorroh@usa.net; cseger@houston.rr.com; curryjk@m= indspring.com; jgray@mcjunkin.com; Kirk.G.Usnick@usa.conoco.com; law@fcl.js= c.nasa.gov; katherine_easterling@hotmail.com; dxanadu@yahoo.com; jkoskoski@= mindspring.com; bts@pdq.net; altoids@pdq.net; rony@austin.rr.com; EAGLEFORD= @aol.com; John Koskoski; Scott Baxter; law@ial7.jsc.nasa.gov; blichte@enron= .com; d.lineman@pentasafe.com; jg73@daimlerchrysler.com; Agnes Chan; Jerry = Ellis; Charlie Hagedorn; Tad Mulder; Alan Parker; Alan Austin; T Lad & Kris= tin Webb; Adele T. Dillon 2; Tom Dillon; the links; David Link; Brother; Ja= ne Brust-Glaeser Cc: SulynDillon@msn.com Subject: Quote for the day, #1,203. "If nothing else, John Walker has usefully nailed one of the self-serving m= yths peddled after the awesome intelligence failure of September 11th: Awfu= lly sorry we failed to see it coming, said the high-ranking suits, but it's= impossible to do any covert deep-cover stuff out in Afghanistan; these fel= lows are all cousins and brothers-in-law -- a guy from Jersey would stick o= ut like a lap-dancer in a burqa. As we now know, instead of being full of f= earsome Pashtun warriors renowned down the centuries, the Omar/Osama ranks = were like a novelty Gap ad, 'Losers of Many Nations' -- misfit Saudis and P= akis, Brits and Californians. Anyone can walk in off the street and be assi= stant supervisor of the third-floor latrine in Tora Bora by nightfall. The = only distinguishing feature about John Walker is that he's such an obvious = compendium of clapped-out clich?s from America's Left Coast the wonder is t= he mullahs didn't automatically take him for a CIA plant. =20 But no, Mr. Walker is for real -- born John Lindh in 1981, and from that ba= stion of well-heeled dopehead progressivism, California's affluent Marin C= ounty. Following the traditional Marin pattern, his parents divorced, his m= other converted to Buddhism and the children were taught Native American sp= irituality. John was sent to an 'alternative' high school. (In the Bay Area= , all the high schools are 'alternative.' The problem for parents is trying= to find any alternative to the alternative.) The set texts included The Au= tobiography Of Malcolm X, and John liked it so much that like the late Mr. = X he too decided to embrace Islam and change his name, to Sulayman. His par= ents, putting their foot down for what seems to be the first and last time,= demanded the right to continue calling him John. They had, after all, gone= to the trouble of naming him after one of the colossi of the age, John Len= non. To this, he consented. In return, they let him study at the Mill Valley Islamic Center= . =20 In 1998, after an awkward trip to their ancestral Ireland in which John tru= dged dutifully round the auld sod wearing his turban and white robes, Frank= Lindh agreed to let his 17-year old son spend a year in Yemen, on the next= stage of his 'spiritual odyssey.' He was just another middle-class kid who= 'd gone off to find himself, but, like most of the others, he always knew h= ow to find daddy when he needed to. Last year, John e-mailed home to say al= -Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole was justified -- oh, and by the way he was = off to enroll in a Pakistani madrassa. So Dad wired him a couple thousand b= ucks, which goes a long way in Bannu. Aside from a glowing school report fr= om his Imam, that was the last Mr. Lindh heard from Junior until he turned = up brandishing an AK-47 while battling U.S. armed forces and declaring his = approval of the events of September 11th. =20 John Walker's CV bears eloquent testament to his parents' scrupulous observ= ance of the Bay Area's First Commandment: 'Thou shalt be non-judgmental.' Y= eah, man, Yemen. Cool. Whatever's your bag. As one headline put it: 'A Prod= uct Of Bay Area Culture.' Exactly, I thought. But, this being The San Franc= isco Chronicle, they were applying the label with pride. Rhapsodizing about= the area's 'religious tolerance' and the way children are taught 'to accep= t other cultures' and value 'critical thinking about the U.S. role in the w= orld,' senior writer Louis Freedberg concluded that Walker's only misfortun= e was that 'his search for identity intersected precisely with the World Tr= ade Center attacks.' If not for this unfortunate 'intersection' Walker migh= t have become an 'idealistic doctor.' The President, he said, should allow = the boy home 'and let him get his life back on track. We'd want nothing les= s for our own children, who could easily have found themselves in a similar= mess.' =20 In fairness to the youth of northern California, that last part is an unjus= t slur. The marvel is that, after labouring under the twin burdens of the e= ducation system's multicultural orthodoxies and the preening moral superior= ity of their Boomer parents, no more Bay Area teens have signed on with Mul= lah Omar. Nonetheless, there is a difference between 'tolerance' of other c= ultures and the moral inertia displayed by the Lindhs. We can, in any case= , guess the limits of Marin County's much-vaunted 'tolerance.' Imagine that= the Marinated Muslim had instead announced that he was going to do what th= e late (CIA agent) Mike Spann did at his age: enlist in the Marines. Would = Marilyn Walker have seen that as a valid part of her son's 'self-discovery'= ? Or would she have got out her joss sticks and wailed, 'Oh, my God, where = did we go wrong?' =20 Mom says she's 'proud' of John, but is taking the line he must have been 'b= rainwashed.' From the look of him, his brain's the only thing that's been w= ashed. John Walker resembles one of those hairy, smelly, cadaverous, vaguel= y deranged guys who stumble up to you late at night at remote Greyhound sta= tions and demand money for medication. But right now that's shrewd image-po= sitioning. President Bush seems to have bought the 'misguided' line, descri= bing Walker as a 'poor fellow' who thought he was fighting for a 'great cau= se.' 'I can't see him as being unpatriotic,' says a neighbour. 'This is whe= re his journey led him.' And, anyway, as everyone says, he's just a 'boy.' =20 John Walker is a 20-year old man -- though one can sympathize if protracted= exposure to the Bay Area's 'critical thinking' (if only) has left him in a= state of arrested development. For four decades, supposedly 'non-judgmenta= l' flower-children like Marilyn Walker have reflexively characterized CIA m= en like Mike Spann as the dark agents of right-wing militarism. We are enti= tled to judge Marilyn's son, the comrade of Spann's killers, as the dark ag= ent of left-wing Marinism. Raised by peaceniks and Marinated in 'tolerance,= ' he took up an AK-47 in defence of misogynists and gay-bashers: not an int= ernal contradiction, but the logical reductio of the new left's moral nulli= ty. Cocooned in one of the most prosperous enclaves on the planet, he was t= aught everything -- from Buddhism to Indian spirituality to Malcolm X -- ev= erything except what it means to be an American citizen. =20 When a 13-year-old girl wants an abortion, the Marin County crowd insists t= hat 'a woman's right to choose is sacred (and even parental notification ta= boo). Twenty-year-old men make choices, too. John Walker chose to go to war= against his own country. Americans should respect his 'right to choose' an= d let him live with the consequences. =20 I'm not in favour of trying him for treason: Alan Dershowitz and the other = high-rent lawyers are already salivating over the possibility of a two-year= circus with attendant book deals and TV movies. But there is another way, = suggested the other day by the Sun's Peter Worthington. In 1944, lacking th= e benefits of an immersion in Bay Area 'critical thinking,' the teenage Wor= thington volunteered for the Royal Canadian Navy, but, unlike Walker's apol= ogists, he at least treats him as an adult exercising free will. As Mr. Wor= thington notes, on page four of John Walker's U.S. passport it states that = any American who enlists in a foreign army can be stripped of his citizensh= ip. Mr. Walker wants to be Abdul Hamid: Mr. Bush should honour his wishes. = Let us leave him to the Northern Alliance and let his fancy-pants 'Frisco l= awyers petition to appear before the Kabul bar, if there is one. It would, = surely, be grossly discriminatory to subject Mr. Hamid to non-Islamic justi= ce." =20 Mark Steyn, British-born journalist, "'Misguided boy' deserves Afghan justi= ce," The (Canadian) National Post, 12/10/01.
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