By
Geoff Metcalf
July
17, 2002
NewsWithViews.com
America’s
short attention span and penchant for apathy has been personified in the John
Walker Lindh plea bargain.
The same
government administration that didn’t want to pursue gross abuse of power
under the color of authority and downright treasonous acts by the previous
administration has now cut a deal with a terrorist traitor.
Linda Chavez
asked “Are Americans losing their resolve, perhaps even losing interest, less
than a year after the worst attack on U.S. soil in our nation’s history?”
Not the Americans I talk to but certainly the political elite confronted
with the ubiquitous carcinogens of political correctness.
Many of us
don’t care about the dysfunctional family little Johnny had.
We don’t care that his daddy is homosexual or his mommy confused.
John-boy admitted he provided services to a terrorist organization…
instant felony. Chavez observed, “In
addition, he pleaded guilty to an
additional charge not in the actual indictment, carrying explosives when he
committed that felony.” Less than 20 years in stony lonesome ain’t enough.
The CIA
officer Johnny Michael Spann, who was killed in the prison uprising in which
Lindh participated doesn’t get 20 years of anything.
The
conventional wisdom was notwithstanding potential slick lawyering, Lindh would
have been convicted in any U.S. court, even with a Johnny Corcoran.
As a Taliban
grunt he knowingly, willingly and anxiously became an enemy of the country that
spoiled him.
Debra J.
Saunders says, “Break out the champagne. Monday's plea bargain announcement
means that America has been spared the trial of Marin Taliban John Walker Lindh,
21 -- and more important, the circus that inevitably would have surrounded it.
D.J. is
jazzed that there will be “no daily post-trial Lindh family press conferences.
That families
of those serving in the military no longer will have to hear the defense team's
whining about Lindh's living conditions in Afghanistan.”
Yeah
but……
What about
all that tough talk from government and civilians alike in the wake of 9/11?
What about that Old Testament eye for an eye stuff?
What about the overwhelming epic unbridled bubbling bile for vengeance?
All transitory and fleeting as a network executive’s attention span.
If our
government doesn’t have the steel (or stones) to deal with a maggot like Lindh
there were other options other than a smarmy 20-year vacation on our dime.
-
We could have just left him
with the Afghans in THEIR prison.
-
We could have released him
to a halfway house….in Manhattan.
-
We could have held a short
military tribunal and sentenced him to 240grains of lead and buried him in
pig hide.
-
We could have sentenced him
to five minutes with every family of 9/11 victims.
There are
many options (from a C4 enema to public stoning) that could have been
considered. Instead our government chose
to be merciful and politic.
However as I
have too often observed, there ARE consequences to the things we do and don’t
do in life.
In ‘Julius
Caesar’ Mark Anthony says, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of
war."
Several
columnists chose to use that line in the wake of 9/11.
It was universally felt that the time to kick ass and take names was at
hand. I noted, there have been
times during the kumbaya-feminazi dark ages (1992-2000) when I really felt like
a dinosaur … a cultural anachronism … who still believed in duty, honor and
country. John Wayne was a role model and guys like Ted Williams, Audie Murphy
and Rocky Versace were proof that ideals, courage and principle could and would
be personified.
When I read
Peggy Noonan's "Welcome Back, Duke" http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=95001309
in the Wall Street Journal my involuntary response to the stimuli was a
tear. It was a tear of pride.
The tear sparked by the Lindh plea bargain was a tear of shame.
In May1998,
Osama bin Laden told an ABC television reporter, "We have seen, in the last
decade, the decline of the American government. This
was proven in Beirut, when the Marines fled after two explosions. This was also
repeated in Somalia. After a few blows,
the soldiers ran in defeat and America forgot all the media propaganda about
being the leader of the world. ... The U.S. is a paper tiger."
Bin Dirtbag
was frankly kinda-sorta right – however, in a classic case of his reach
exceeding his grasp, he had almost single handedly done what decades of
political correctness cancer prevented. He awakened a sleeping atrophied giant
and breathed fire into his soul. So
what happened?
When
and how was “Let’s roll” allowed to atrophy into “Let’s roll over.”?
© 2002 Geoff Metcalf - All
Rights Reserved
