IS THERE A BIGGER LOSER in the world than John Walker the American that was found fighting alongside the Taliban?
What kind of a guy grows up in the United States and, by his own free choice, goes to join the Taliban?
Seriously.
What kind of guy who has the name John Walker changes it – voluntarily – to Abdul Hamid? I could understand if this happened under some kind of excruciating medieval torture, but of one’s own free will?
Our first clue about this guy is that he grew up in Marin County, the affluent suburb near San Francisco that’s filled with former hippies. I’m not an expert on Walker’s parents’ background, but we now know that they named their son after the Beatle John Lennon.
That’s all I need to know.
It explains why, by the age of 16, Walker decided to become a humanitarian and to fight poverty you know, like the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century started out.
Before long, Walker rejected his own society and immersed himself in the Koran. He sold off his hip-hop records and began wearing a long white robe and sporting a beard. That’s right: out with Puff Daddy and in with Osama bin Laden.
Shortly afterwards, Walker was pestering people, including his parents, to start calling him "Suleyman" instead of John. "Abdul Hamid" came shortly afterwards.
I can’t help from wondering: did this guy ever have a real job?
Johnny boy was soon off to Yemen and Pakistan to study Arabic and Islam. And guess what? His open-minded parents financed him to do it. Real nice move that one was.
Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, Walker’s teacher in Pakistan, has recalled Walker as saying that, "Every place has its culture, but I like the Muslim culture the most."
I’m a little curious: what is it exactly that he liked about it?
Iltimas says that, while studying in Pakistan, Walker’s "heart became attached" to the Taliban's teachings. Mmm-hmm.Which teachings exactly? The ones about women having to wear the burqas or the ones about shooting women in the back of the head for letting their ankles show in public?
In any case, it wasn’t long before bearded Johnny boy was in Afghanistan receiving combat training in one of bin Laden's camps. According to his own account, he fought alongside the terrorists in Kunduz, Kabul and Kandahar.
Now Walker has been captured. His parents are pleading with us to try to understand that their son has been misunderstood and that he is actually a very good boy. He just got mixed up with the wrong crowd you see.
Right.
What kind of "good boy" decides, of his own free will, to affiliate himself with a regime that tortured its own citizens and treated females worse than dogs?
Walker’s father wants us to know that he understands the seriousness of what his son did. That is why he recently told Larry King that he wanted to give his son "a big hug and a kick in the butt, too."
A kick in the butt?
His son betrays his country by associating with the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center -- and thousands of innocent people along with it and he wants to give him "a kick in the butt?" Does he want to send him into the corner too?
Johnny boy and his father are both entitled to live in their little Wizard of Oz fantasy worlds. But Johnny boy is not entitled to be exonerated from what his and his father’s delusions have spawned.
The choices that Walker made were directly related to why, on Sept. 11, innocent human beings who were stuck on the top floors of the World Trade Center held hands, kissed, and then jumped to their deaths.
The children who were orphaned on that terrible day didn’t deserve their eternal anguish -- no matter what Walker thought that Allah or Osama wanted.
"A good boy."
Mmm-hmm. We know what can happen to good boys, and to good girls.
Let Walker pay for the decisions that he made.
Come on home Johnny boy, come on home.
You have boasted that you knew about, and supported, the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Keep talking buddy, keep talking.
The case for treason will be pretty solid against you.
And guess what? Remember what happened to the Rosenbergs?
Let me give you a little clue, you son of a bitch:
Dead Man Walking.