Frank Lindh: America's barbaric treatment of my son John Walker Lindh

[FourScore]

THERE IS NO WAY TO DO THIS ARTICLE JUSTICE WITH JUST 4 PARAGRAPHS. IT IS A MUST-READ.

Frank Lindh: America's barbaric treatment of my son John Walker Lindh
Frank Lindh
The Observer, Sunday 10 July 2011


SNIP

...I think it was apparent that Spann and Tyson were American agents, but because they were in the company of Dostum's forces, unaccompanied by American troops, it clearly was not safe for John to talk to them. They meant business when they said John might be killed by Dostum, and that the Red Cross could only "help so many guys". John was in extreme peril at that moment, and he knew it.

John was then returned to the main body of prisoners, while others were still being brought out of the basement and forced to kneel in the horse pasture. Then, suddenly, there was an explosion at the entrance to the basement, shouts were heard, and two prisoners grabbed the guards' weapons. According to Guardian journalist Luke Harding's account: "It was then… that Spann 'did a Rambo'. As the remaining guards ran away, Spann flung himself to the ground and began raking the courtyard and its prisoners with automatic fire. Five or six prisoners jumped on him, and he disappeared beneath a heap of bodies."

Spann's body was later recovered by US special forces troops. He was the first American to die in combat in the American–Afghan war. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington.

As soon as the uprising began, the Northern Alliance guards turned their weapons on the 400 bound prisoners, killing or severely wounding scores of them. Some prisoners tried to stand and run; they were gunned down. It was a slaughter. John tried to run, but he was shot in the right thigh and fell to the ground. For the next 12 hours he lay motionless, pretending to be dead...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/10/john-walker-lindh-american-taliban-father

[PDJane]

1. I have to believe that this barbarism

is some kind of throwback to the colonial days.

Nor, frankly, do I believe that 9/11 was more than pretext.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Well, I can post two additional paragraphs here.

from the same article.

In early September 2001, days before the 9/11 attacks, John arrived at his military post in the province of Takhar in the far north-eastern corner of Afghanistan, near the border of Tajikistan. This was the frontline in the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. John was issued with a rifle and two hand grenades – standard issue for an infantry soldier. He performed sentry duty and did some cooking for the Taliban troops. He never used his weapons. He served with a number of other foreign volunteer soldiers. They were called Ansar, an Arabic term meaning "helpers".

The training camp in Afghanistan where the Ansar received their infantry training was funded by Osama bin Laden, who also visited the camp on a regular basis. He was regarded by the volunteer soldiers as a hero in the struggle against the Soviet Union. These soldiers did not suspect Bin Laden's involvement in planning the 9/11 attacks, which were carried out in secret. John himself sat through speeches by Bin Laden in the camp on two occasions, and actually met Bin Laden on the second such occasion. John has said he found him unimpressive.

:patriot:

[PDJane]

3. So the boogeyman of Osama bin Laden

rationalizes the torture of a 17-18 year old man? Really?

[bluestate10]

4. Lindh's own account dramatically contradicts what the article claims.

Lindh stated before cameras that he went into the basement with taliban that fought the northern alliance troops and only surrendered after their sanctuary was pounded by Special Forces AC-130 gunships and northern alliance troops and Special Forces got close enough to run a torrent of freezing water into the basement. Spann was a hero and a patriot. Walker Lindh is neither, nor infinitely close.

[EFerrari]

6. When he said that the kid was in pain and under the influence

of god knows what drugs.

[Poll_Blind]

20. BTW, Spann wasn't a hero. He was a harsh interrogator who CAUSED the riot at...

...Qala-i-Jangi. That Spann's behavior has been worked up into such a lie of a fantasy is disgraceful.

Unlike most CIA operations, the events of Qala-i-Jangi were well documented by the German film crew who was present at the time, both on film and anecdotally.

PB

[RaleighNCDUer]

27. This does not contradict that. Not at all.

Try reading it again.

As for Spann, he was there as the NA was murdering hundreds of prisoners - doesn't make him sound like much of a hero to me.

[dionysus]

5. he whitewashes the taliban hardcore in this piece.

:shrug:

[MADem]

7. Far be it from me to play Doctor Frist on the Senate Floor, but....

John Walker Lindh always gave me the impression that he was somewhere on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum. Not a diagnosis, just an impression.

I do think that if he had been a blonde haired lad, instead of a rather robustly dark haired and bearded young man, he would have gotten a shorter sentence.

I often wonder if the "Walker" in his name (as in "George Herbert Walker Bush") didn't save him from the death penalty.

[pennylane100]

8. I know that Lindh was a young man that made a lot of bad choices.

and I have no doubt that he was treated harshly when he was captured. Unfortunately, I can never get past the fact that he voluntarily went to a country where fifty per cent of the population (women) were subjected to the most barbaric treatment imaginable.
The taliban believed that the face of a women was a force of corruption.

Okay, so he was young and impressionable, but what kind of a person is attracted to such a movement. It was well known that girls were not allowed to be educated under the taliban government that was in place when he went there. Well educated women were pushed out of the work force and if no male member of their family was able to provide for them, they just starved to death.

I know this was not his fault and I have no doubt that he had not planned on fighting US soldiers when he went there, and while it may be time to let him out of jail, let us not forget what little concern he showed about the plight of half the citizens of the country he was captured in. The female half.

[EFerrari]

9. Oh, for Chrissake, he was a teenager.

He did not put the Taliban in power and they were our allies when he got there.

[dionysus]

10. i wouldn't go so far to say they were our allies, that's a bit of a stretch.

[Poll_Blind]

11. We did give them $43M, 4 months before 9/11. Before 9/11, we had far different...

...plans for the Taliban. After all, who do you think we were laying out cash and weapons to, to fight the Soviets?

In fact, after 9/11 those weapons came back to haunt us...all the way back from the Reagan era.

PB

[dionysus]

12. i dont consider the taliban and mujahideen one in the same. there were northern alliance troops who

fought the soviets as well.

i am aware of the 43 million, which was a bribe to stop making so much heroin, but that does not mean they were bosom buddies at all.

[Poll_Blind]

15. We've given almost $12Bln to Pakistan and we openly call them allies but....

...I don't think they're bosom buddies, either.

I know the CIA was talking with Shah Massoud but to the best of my knowledge up until the time he was assassinated he never received anything substantial in the way of aid from the United States, if at all. Whether you call them allies or paid henchmen or what, the US threw in with the Taliban over Massoud. Admittedly, it is more complex than that but Massoud died frustrated by the lack of support from the US. He was actively trying to warn us about the dangers of the Taliban & Pakistan who, along with Bin Laden, all played some part in his assassination on September 9, 2001.

Yes, both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance had fought against the Soviets, but in 2000 we were supporting the Taliban/ISI over the Northern Alliance. If you have something deeply contrary to that assertion, I'd like to know about it. Massoud's fight against the Taliban and his warnings to the US are some of the most fascinating (IMO) and overlooked aspects of the 9/11 saga.

PB

[RaleighNCDUer]

30. I think the 43 million dollar bribe was so NOT stop the heroin.

The taliban had, over several years, virtually eliminated the heroin trade. It was the NA that supported it, and, since the NA kicked out the Taliban, the heroin trade has skyrocketed, protected by Karzai and his brother.

BushCo has been DEEP in drugs for decades.

[pennylane100]

13. Would you have the same kind of compassion for a young nazi skinhead

that joined a movement to prey on innocent black people or a young gang member whose goal was to terrorize his helpless neighbors.
Somehow I do not think so. What is so different about the victims of the taliban government that he appeared to support.

The fact that the taliban were there when he arrived only makes his actions more reprehensible, he knew about them and how they treat their female citizens. I would think that at seventeen a young man would at least know the difference between right and wrong. If he was still attracted to such a violent cause, let us at least acknowledge that and while we spend time considering his treatment by his own country, think of the brutal treatment that the women of Afghanistan endured. the country that he went to willingly.

[EFerrari]

14. Your comparison doesn't work. Walker Lindh was a religious tourist.

He was there to study, not to oppress women or to join a hate group.

[dionysus]

17. the madrassas had many aspects of hate groups, if it was wahabi islam.

[pennylane100]

19. What kind of religion did he plan on studying.

He went to a country that was a hate group, against its own population. To go to such a country, where women and their children were starving to death because of their gender was condoning the oppression of women. To want to study the religion of such a barbaric nation is reprehensible, even for a seventeen year old.

While he may have been treated harshly by his own country, that does not negate the fact that he was drawn to a country whose brutal treatment of its own people was disgusting. Apparently the brutal suppression that was incorporated in their particular religion did not deter him. Is that what he went there to study?

[EFerrari]

22. There is an entire article linked in the OP for your reading pleasure.

[Cirque du So-What]

37. John Walker Lindh could have gone to Dearborn, MI, to study Islam

if that was the extent of his interest. His travels to Yemen & Pakistan indicate to me a desire for armed conflict that goes beyond mere theological interest. I would go so far as to speculate that the 'flavor' of Islam to which John Walker Lindh immersed himself was a de facto hate group, and I further speculate that oppression of women was a component of the screed that he was studying.

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/nsci-ecrsn/radical-eng.pdf

Let me further say - preemptively, mind you - that I find his subsequent treatment at the hands of CIA interrogators abhorrent throughout every fiber of my being. This abhorrence extends even to the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose confessions - under torture - ran the gamut from involvement in the 9/11 plot to putting the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder. Not only is torture inhumane, it produces intelligence of dubious value and in some cases is actually counterproductive to the intelligence-gathering effort.

So...what to do with John Walker Lindh? Although I believe the 20-year sentence was harsh, it beats some possible alternatives. I cannot bring myself to argue that Lindh was an innocent babe in the woods, seeking out the most radical forms of Islam available on the planet as he was. Some good emerged from his capture, however, in that he gave a face to torture conducted on behalf of the United States, bringing it to the attention of the entire world.

[dionysus]

16. i'm no fan of lindh, but i think he was way,way in over his head.

[FourScore]

38. You're going off on a tangent that has nothing to do with Lindh's capture or imprisonment.

No one here is arguing with you that the treatment of women in the Arab world was reprehensible. But it has nothing to do with what happened to Lindh. Many good Americans traveled to those corners of the world prior to 9/11, and that does not mean they condone the way women were treated.

[Maru Kitteh]

18. Yeah, when I was a teenager, I understood that opressing women and stoning them to death for being

raped was wrong. Maybe that's just me.

[EFerrari]

21. He was an American with money in a very poor country.

A naive one, at that. I doubt he was treated to such scenes by whoever he was staying with. But in the article, his father describes how and why he came to fight against the Northern Alliance

"John's decision to volunteer for the army of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban was rash, and failed to take into account the Taliban's mistreatment of its own citizens. But his assessment of the Northern Alliance warlords was neither exaggerated nor inaccurate. The brutal human rights violations committed by the Northern Alliance were thoroughly documented in the US department of state's annual human rights reports throughout the 90s. They did indeed include massacres, rape (of both women and children), torture and castration."

RAWA has nothing good to say about the Northern Alliance and the black and white cartoonish impression of Afghanistan we get from the media is not accurate.

[pennylane100]

23. Yes, me too.

I always thought that it was something that a seventeen year old from a middle class family in this country would also be able to understand. Apparently, if they find that understanding conflicts with their quest for spiritual enlightenment and mostly affects members of the opposite sex, they are excused and should not be faulted for their total lack of humanity.

[EFerrari]

25. You have no evidence whatsoever that Walker Lindh displayed a

lack of humanity -- even as you yourself demonize him, gotta love the irony.

On the other hand, there is evidence that he took up arms to defend civilians, that would be women and children, against the atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance.

[pennylane100]

29. Not sure that joining the taliban is the best way to show humanity.

It was admirable that he supposedly defended women and children from the Northern Alliance, I have no problem believing them to be monsters. Unfortunately, the people saved were then at the mercy of the taliban, his team. The fact that the taliban, was even more brutal was just their bad luck, after all he meant well.

[EFerrari]

32. What makes you think the Taliban was more brutal

than the Northern Alliance? I don't think that's actually true. The Taliban held more ground, that's all.

He never should have gone into Afghanistan as he did at all. But what he did was not a crime and it certainly wasn't terrorism.

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. He went from a madrassa in Yemen to a madrassa in Pakistan

to a training camp in Afghanistan to the Northern Alliance front lines in Afghanistan.

He probably hardly ever SAW a woman, much less saw any being mistreated. They were propagandizing a naive American - they would not have taken him to watch the beheadings. You, here in the states, knew more of what was going on over there than he did. They didn't let him see anything that might turn him off the movement - and at the same time they were watching him night and day to make sure he was not a CIA spy.

You cannot make an informed decision if you aren't getting the information.

[hlthe2b]

35. May I remind you that little was being reported about the Taliban

prior to 911-- except propaganda pieces--in terms of their fight against Soviet troops. We were actively propping them up and their lead lobbyist was Laila Helms, daughter of former CIA director, Richard Helms. You are judging him, armed with all the horrific information that we all know about the Taliban and related groups in Afghanistan. I think that is wrong as well.

More on Laila Helms:
The Accidental Operative
Richard Helms’s Afghani Niece Leads Corps of Taliban Reps

http://www.villagevoice.com/2001-06-12/news/the-accidental-operative/1/

[RaleighNCDUer]

26. He was immersed in the propaganda from the moment he landed in Yemen.

"It was well known..." Well known to a naive suburban 17 year old kid who was moving into an entirely foreign culture?

[MH1]

34. I agree, and of all the MANY people wrongfully imprisoned for MANY reasons,

Lindh isn't high on my list to care about.

Sure he was an impressionable kid who got corrupted into an evil belief system and is paying the price. How many kids does that happen to, and where are their stories?

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. He did not deserve what happened to him, but that said, he was an idiot.

"I had learned from books, articles and individuals with first-hand experience of numerous atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance against civilians. I had heard reports of massacres, child rape, torture and castration."

How did he NOT hear of beheadings of heretics and adulterers in the football stadiums by the Taliban? How did he not hear of the murders of women for going to school? How could he not have heard of the cultural crimes, such as the destruction of the Bumiyam Buddahs?

He was a naive kid who was way over his head, being fed propaganda.

And for that, he did not deserve a 20 year prison sentence.

[EFerrari]

28. The statues were blown up in 2001.

RAWA's clip of the public execution was filmed in 1999 and got out to the Western media later. So he was already in that area when these things happened. It's not as though there was a brochure with those items about Afghanistan before he left. Plus, he wasn't staying in Afghanistan. He was in Yemen and then Pakistan.

I was trying to figure out what I knew about the Taliban and women before 9/11 and remember that I was following RAWA as best as I could. But the information was not readily available as it is now.

[hlthe2b]

33. I've long waited for a detailed update on Lindh...

Just saved to "Instapaper" so I can read fully later today...

I find it so sad that this young man has basically been "sacrificed" in the name of 911-justifed "terror-reactive" bullying. Yes, he was undoubtedly a bit naive'... Sadly, I've often wondered if people write to him or if they are scared off by knowing just the act of reaching out to Lindh would put themselves under a governmental spotlight (and probably on a TSA flight risk list).

I hope something can be done for Lindh.. Who would have thought that Obama would so closely retain the policies of Bush* that that possibility seems equally remote under current administration.... It makes me very sad. Our country has turned its back on its ideals in the name of "terror" and expediency.

[alsame]

36. I think he was used as a canary in a coal mine to see if there

would be public outrage if Bushco started treating American citizens as terrorists. There wasn't.

[eridani]

39. The only thing he was ever guilty of was being born 15 years too late

The CIA recruited Muslim militants from all over the world to join the fight against the Soviets, including at mosques within the US, knowing perfectly well that they were religious reactionary whackjobs. Why is it an ignorant kid's fault that our foreign policy establishment changed sides? We have always been at war with Eastasia. We have never been at war with Eurasia.