To be honest, I’m not sure what this piece is trying to argue, but I think it’s an interesting read for some of the information, especially three years after the fact.
Related Posts
What is an appropriate response?
Over 120 dead today. Pray for the victims and their families. I hope this doesn’t turn the insurgency into a Sunni-Shi’ah civil war. The country is in bad enough condition as it is. Hopefully Sistani will issue a call for peace, and will be allowed and encouraged to do so. Hopefully Sadr won’t get any ideas in his head to launch the end of the world. Pray for peace.
The Beginning of the End
The October 2006 issue of Vanity Fair contains two important articles, which are worth reading: Empire Falls, by Niall Ferguson, and Under Egypt’s Volcano, by Scott Anderson. In Empire Falls, Fergusson uses historian Edward Gibbon’s theories on the decline and fall of Rome to make an interesting, if not convincing, case for the same state of conditions currently in play in the West. Gibbon’s blamed Rome’s decline on external military overreach, internal corruption, social decadence, religious transformation, and barbarian invasion. Fergusson counters with the War on Terror, the cult of personality, superficiality, reality TV, cultural decline, immigration, and the rise…
Central Asian Elections
First hat-tip here. The NYT is not allowing perma-links on the issue. Try to check out their coverage. Tajikistan, the country with which I’m most familiar, has a great deal of potential in terms of human capital. It would be a shame if the corruption of the government kept it from realizing its potential. While the initial blush of post-Soviet headiness in the international community has faded, I believe there is enough aid and interest in Tajikistan that it still has a short window in which it could develop a sustainable economy.
One thought on “John Walker Lindh”
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It’s funny how Lindh was first an example to civil rights activist as to how a prosecution of an enemy combatant should work (especially compared to Hamdi and Padilla), and now he’s an example of how a prosecution should not have worked. I remember all the complaints that the white boy from Marin County was treated better (in that he had the opportunity for a trial and well-heeled counsel) than Hamdi and Padilla. Now, the same people see Lindh as a victim treated far worse than Hamdi (and we’ll see how mi cabron, Padilla, will end up).
Plenty of smarmy ideas in the article (it’s Mother Jones, after all) and I don’t have time to whack them all — one lie is that Lindh had no support outside his family at the time. Not true, a handful of Salafis were protesting and praying outside EDVA every day Lindh was there. You can google “free john walker lindh” and take a look at the support now for this moron (am I telegraphing my opinion here?). But I do have a suggestion: he can sue his lawyer for malpractice for counseling him to cop the plea. Just kidding, Jimmy (if you’re a blog reader) — I don’t advocate suing lawyers : ^).
One other comment — the article clearly takes the view that the war on terror is a legal problem the success of which can be judged by the number of convictions the government has won. And that is probably the biggest problem of all — the idea that we can depose, subpoena and “Mirandize” our way in this fight.