Hmmm...I'd prefer not, but this is a good article anyhow.
The perfect fate for the American Talib
--(Link to online article)
Daniel Velton Thursday, December 6, 2001
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YOU'VE HEARD by now of our homegrown Talib. John Walker is tall and thin, shy and sweet. He likes helping poor people. He tries to volunteer. He had plans of becoming a doctor.
But something about Bay Area life left the 20-year-old discontented, so as Abdul Hamid Walker he ended up with the Taliban "to help build a true Islamic state."
Several weeks have passed since he was in Kunduz, firing an AK-47 at people with whom he might have gone to elementary school. He was there, four days ago at Qala-i-Jangy fortress, where CIA undercover operative Johnny Michael Spann was brutally kicked by prisoners during an uprising before being shot to death.
And we saw John yesterday on CNN, captured, with bullet wounds in both legs.
Here was a pale-faced American boy weakly proclaiming himself a jihadi, then being asked by a Newsweek correspondent "if he supported the September 11 attacks."
He hesitated, stalled, and then answered. At that moment, the few crumbs of sympathy you might have had for him crumbled further. Filled with disgust, you thought "torture or tribunal -- for an American who favored the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers?"
There's one punishment, however, that fits the crime.
A man I know, who had fought on the side of his homeland's enemy, has suffered that punishment for 50 years. He told me of it at his dacha in Zelenogorsk, in the north of Russia.
When I met him, 75-year-old Andrei was living alone in the low hills where winter snow makes leaving his birch shanty nearly impossible. He is tall and thin, shy and sweet. His days are spent reading Dostoevsky and feeding the wood stove in the corner.
In 1941, his home city of St. Petersburg came under siege, strangled into hunger and freezing by an Axis blockade. At the time, Andrei ranked as a lieutenant in the German army.
And he wasn't the only Russian, for one reason or another, who had joined the Germans.
After the war, most of those who were captured faced a firing squad.
But very few, Andrei among them, were subjected to a far more devastating fate. They were set free.
Uncuffed, changed into clean clothes, given a kick in the pants and a train ticket to their hometown.
Andrei returned to his St. Petersburg apartment. His mother and father were there. His remaining brother (two others had died) still lived two blocks away.
"On the train back to St. Petersburg, I couldn't understand it," he said. "I was supposed to be dead. But then I entered the city and saw corpses everywhere, some whom I recognized, on my own sidewalk, and I understood.
"Everyone I met knew what I had done.
"Outside, I couldn't look anyone in the eyes. Nor at home. Nobody would speak to anybody that knew me. My parents lost their jobs. My brother drowned himself.
"And I had to live there, free as a bird. The only restriction placed by the authorities was that I couldn't leave the city.
"Here I am now. I have never had a wife or children. You are the first person in a year I've spoken to for longer than 20 minutes."
As far as John Walker . . . I'm not the judge. But no one doubts that serious measures must be taken. An example needs to be made. I suggest somebody pay for his return ticket to America. Then take him on a tour of ground zero.
Daniel Velton, 18, is a student at UC Berkeley.
The perfect fate for the American Talib
--(Link to online article)
Daniel Velton Thursday, December 6, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YOU'VE HEARD by now of our homegrown Talib. John Walker is tall and thin, shy and sweet. He likes helping poor people. He tries to volunteer. He had plans of becoming a doctor.
But something about Bay Area life left the 20-year-old discontented, so as Abdul Hamid Walker he ended up with the Taliban "to help build a true Islamic state."
Several weeks have passed since he was in Kunduz, firing an AK-47 at people with whom he might have gone to elementary school. He was there, four days ago at Qala-i-Jangy fortress, where CIA undercover operative Johnny Michael Spann was brutally kicked by prisoners during an uprising before being shot to death.
And we saw John yesterday on CNN, captured, with bullet wounds in both legs.
Here was a pale-faced American boy weakly proclaiming himself a jihadi, then being asked by a Newsweek correspondent "if he supported the September 11 attacks."
He hesitated, stalled, and then answered. At that moment, the few crumbs of sympathy you might have had for him crumbled further. Filled with disgust, you thought "torture or tribunal -- for an American who favored the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers?"
There's one punishment, however, that fits the crime.
A man I know, who had fought on the side of his homeland's enemy, has suffered that punishment for 50 years. He told me of it at his dacha in Zelenogorsk, in the north of Russia.
When I met him, 75-year-old Andrei was living alone in the low hills where winter snow makes leaving his birch shanty nearly impossible. He is tall and thin, shy and sweet. His days are spent reading Dostoevsky and feeding the wood stove in the corner.
In 1941, his home city of St. Petersburg came under siege, strangled into hunger and freezing by an Axis blockade. At the time, Andrei ranked as a lieutenant in the German army.
And he wasn't the only Russian, for one reason or another, who had joined the Germans.
After the war, most of those who were captured faced a firing squad.
But very few, Andrei among them, were subjected to a far more devastating fate. They were set free.
Uncuffed, changed into clean clothes, given a kick in the pants and a train ticket to their hometown.
Andrei returned to his St. Petersburg apartment. His mother and father were there. His remaining brother (two others had died) still lived two blocks away.
"On the train back to St. Petersburg, I couldn't understand it," he said. "I was supposed to be dead. But then I entered the city and saw corpses everywhere, some whom I recognized, on my own sidewalk, and I understood.
"Everyone I met knew what I had done.
"Outside, I couldn't look anyone in the eyes. Nor at home. Nobody would speak to anybody that knew me. My parents lost their jobs. My brother drowned himself.
"And I had to live there, free as a bird. The only restriction placed by the authorities was that I couldn't leave the city.
"Here I am now. I have never had a wife or children. You are the first person in a year I've spoken to for longer than 20 minutes."
As far as John Walker . . . I'm not the judge. But no one doubts that serious measures must be taken. An example needs to be made. I suggest somebody pay for his return ticket to America. Then take him on a tour of ground zero.
Daniel Velton, 18, is a student at UC Berkeley.
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