Lindh, Fonda – And Treason?
By
Sam
Francis
The demon of the day is John Walker Lindh, the
hapless American sap captured in Afghanistan while fighting for the
Taliban and who may
wind up facing charges of treason in this country. Since Mr. Lindh,
or Suleyman al-Faris, or Abdul Farid, or plain Mr. Walker, as he now
calls himself, is an American citizen, he can't just be hauled
before one of President Bush's secret military
tribunals and executed.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld assures us he "will have all the rights
he is due." It's refreshing to learn that high government officials
still acknowledge that American citizens have rights
at all.
As for the treason charges, it's by no means
clear that what Mr. Walker has done comes anywhere close to real
treason. What he did was convert to Islam at the age of 16, go to
the Middle East and live as a Muslim. Somewhere along this profound
spiritual odyssey, he also wound up fighting for the Taliban in the
last few weeks. But as far as can be determined, he was fighting
against the Taliban's enemies, the Northern Alliance—not U.S.
forces.
The Constitution, in its succinct definition
of treason, defines it as consisting "only in levying war against
them [the United States], or in adhering to their enemies, giving
them aid and comfort." Fighting for the Taliban might be construed
as "adhering" to the enemies of the United States—if Mr. Walker had
been fighting against us. But you also need two witnesses to prove a
charge of treason, and that's another problem in itself.
If it's real treason you want, you don't have to
go to Afghanistan. There's plenty of it in this country, dating from
at least the 1960s, when such patriots as Jane
Fonda and her regiment of Viet Cong sympathizers openly propagandized
for a communist victory against American troops. There was never any
question that the U.S. government regarded North Vietnam and its
surrogates in South Vietnam as "enemies," and there's no question
either that Miss Fonda and her pals "adhered to" them and gave them
aid and comfort.
Hanoi Jane even went to North Vietnam and
broadcast messages to American troops urging them not to fight.
After World War II, "Tokyo
Rose," William Joyce ("Lord Haw Haw") and
American poet Ezra Pound were
all tried for treason for doing much the same thing, though only
Joyce was executed. But there were hundreds or thousands of others
in the Vietnam era who, just as clearly, gave aid
and comfort to the enemy in this country, at a time when the
enemy was actually killing American soldiers.
Yet not one of the real traitors involved in
"protesting against the Vietnam war," as the media liked to call
their efforts to subvert anti-communist forces and defeat their own
country, ever faced charges of treason. Years ago, a former Justice
Department official told me that his colleagues did consider
charging Miss Fonda with treason but didn't do so because they
couldn't come up with the required two witnesses to her broadcast.
Maybe not—the witnesses against her could only have been North
Vietnamese who happened to be with her during the broadcast—but
there are plenty of others who saw and heard her comrades beating
the drums for the enemy in city streets and on college campuses.
At least Mr. Walker, for all his weird religious
meanderings, actually took up arms and fought for something he
believed in, unlike the Viet Cong's American
fifth column that got no closer to combat than smashing the
windows in the dean's office and pouring chicken blood on the ROTC
building. Even outright terrorists of the 1960s, like "Weather
Underground" leaders Bernardine Dohrn and her husband Bill Ayers,
are now lawyers and college professors.
A few months ago, the New York Times
carried a story
about Mr. Ayers, now a "distinguished professor of education at the
University of Illinois at Chicago," while his wife, Miss Dohrn, who
once crowed in admiration of Charles Manson and his murder of
actress Sharon Tate, is director of the Legal Clinic's Children and
Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. "I don't regret
setting bombs," Professor Ayers smirked. "I feel we didn't do
enough." [VDARE.COM note: Professor
Ayers can be reached by email at [EMAIL PROTECTED], Professor Dohrn at
[EMAIL PROTECTED].
Professor Dohrn’s biography
and CV
have surprising gaps in them, stemming from her years as a fugitive
from justice.] The date the story ran in the Times was
September
11th.
Mr. Walker or whatever his name is this week may
or may not have committed treason against the United States in
Afghanistan, but even if he did, whatever treason he committed
didn't harm this country or anyone in it.
When the same government now "waging war against
terrorism" halfway around the world settles a few scores with the
real and unrepentant traitors who actually helped communists win
wars in Indochina and the terrorists that helped them, then we can
worry about small fry like Mr. Walker.
COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
December 13, 2001