The "All American" Traitor

Really, California…it’s nothing personal.

I actually feel sorry for you, in a way. It’s too bad that California, of all states, would produce the war on terrorism’s first homegrown terrorist.

For decades, I’ve harbored nagging doubts about the Golden State. Ever since Johnny Carson referred to it as the "Land of fruits and nuts," and Jerry Brown won the title of Governor "Moonbeam," I knew the state was a little off kilter.

And now…John Walker Lindh.

Attorney General John Ashcroft says he will not seek the death penalty for the treasonous acts allegedly committed in Afghanistan by this 20-year-old who is best known to the media as John Walker.

Clearly this is a great comfort to his parents and those who remember him as the "All-American" freckle faced kid from California.

Things took a strange turn for the worse in 1997, though. Walker converted to Islam and began a spiritual quest that would take him half way around the globe…with a world view seen through the business end of an AK-47.

The most recent details of the case against Walker being assembled by the Justice Department claim the American Al Quaeda member was informed by his handlers last June of pending suicide attacks in America. The Feds say Walker was told his group would be fighting America.

He reportedly decided to stay and volunteered to serve on the front lines.

What was the high point of Walker’s service to his inglorious cause? According to the Reuters report, it was the arrival of Osama bin Laden, himself…profuse in his thanks to one American who apparently saw it as his spiritual duty to turn his back on the glorious nation and improbable state that raised him.

No, America and California are not to blame for the creation and deviation of John Walker Lindh any more than the three thousand victims that died in the World Trade Center were responsible for their own premature deaths.

Let’s lay this at the doorstep of the "spiritual wickedness in high places" that has seduced untold millions of Mohammed’s pious deceived. These days, we have all the proof we need. It’s possible to be totally sincere.

And sincerely wrong.

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