"I brought you into this world, I'll take you out. And it don't matter to me because I'll make another one that'll look just like you"
- Bill Cosby (Himself)

February 1, 2002

My father e-Mailed me this article a couple of days ago.

Sometimes I think the man is concerned that I'm running out of "rant fuel".

Get a load of this article from The Globe. (I wish I had the title. Once again, their stuff is in purple.)

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, 12/13/2001

IT ISN'T THE CASE that the parents of John Walker Lindh - the Marin County child of privilege turned Taliban terrorist - never drew the line with their son.

True, they didn't do so when he was 14 and his consuming passion was collecting hip-hop CDs with especially nasty lyrics.

And true, they didn't interfere when once he announced at 16 that he was going to drop out of Tamiscal High School - the elite "alternative" school where students determined their own course of study and only saw a teacher once a week.

And granted, they didn't put their foot down when he decided to become a Muslim after reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and took to wearing long white robes and an oversized skullcap. On the contrary: His father was "proud of John for pursuing an alternative course" and his mother told friends that it was "good for a child to find a passion."

Nor did they object when he began spending more and more time at a local mosque and set about trying to memorize the Koran.

Nor when he asked his parents to pay his way to Yemen so he could learn to speak "pure" Arabic.

Nor when he headed to Pakistan to join a madrassa in a region known to be a stronghold of Islamist extremists.

And his parents didn't balk when he went to fight in Afghanistan - but that, at least, they didn't know about: He hadn't told them. Perhaps he had learned to take their consent for granted.

Only once, it seems, did Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker actually deny their son something he wanted. When he first adopted Islam and took the name Suleyman, they refused to use it and insisted on calling him John. After all, he had been named for one of the giants of our time: John Lennon.

Their refusal must have amazed him. For as long as he could remember, his oh-so-progressive parents had answered "yes" to his every whim, indulged his every fancy, permitted - even praised - his every passion. The only thing
they insisted on was that nothing be insisted on. Nothing in his life was important enough for them to make an issue of: not his schooling, not his religion, not his appearance, not even whether he stayed in America or moved - while still a minor - to a benighted Third World oligarchy halfway around the world. Nothing. Except, of course, their right to call him by the name of their favorite Beatle.

Devout practitioners of the self-obsessed nonjudgmentalism for which the Bay Area is renowned, Lindh and Walker appear never to have rebuked their son or criticized his choices. In their world, there were no absolutes, no fixed
truths, no mandatory behavior, no thou-shalt-nots. If they had one conviction, it was that all convictions are worthy - that nothing is intolerable except intolerance.

But even in Marin County, there are times when children need to hear "no" and "don't." They need to know that there are limits they must respect and expectations they must try to live up to. If they cannot find those limits at home, they are apt to look for them elsewhere. Newsweek calls it "truly perplexing" that John Lindh, who "grew up in possibly the most liberal, tolerant place in America ... was drawn to the most illiberal, intolerant sect in Islam." There is nothing perplexing about it. He craved standards and discipline. Mom and Dad didn't offer any. The Taliban did.

Even when it was clear that their son was sinking into Islamist fanaticism, they wouldn't pull back on the reins. When Osama bin Laden's terrorists bombed the USS Cole and killed 17 American servicemen, John Lindh e-mailed
his father that the attack had been justified, since by docking the ship in Yemen, the United States had committed "an act of war." Frank Lindh now says that the message "raised my concerns" - but that didn't stop him from wiring his son another $1,200. After all, says Dad, "my days of molding him were over." It isn't clear that they ever began.

It came as a jolt to his parents when John Lindh turned up at the fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif, sporting an AK-47 and calling himself Abdul Hamid. But the revelation that their son had enlisted in Al Qaeda and supported the Sept. 11 attacks brought no words of reproach to their lips.

John Lindh deserved "a little kick in the butt" for keeping them in the dark about his plans, his father said, but otherwise they just wanted to "give him a big hug." His mother, meanwhile, was quite sure that "if he got involved with the Taliban he must have been brainwashed.... When you're young and impressionable, it's easy to be led by charismatic people."

Yes, it is, and it's a pity that that didn't occur to her sooner. If she and Frank Lindh had been less concerned with flaunting their open-mindedness and more concerned with developing their son's moral judgment, he wouldn't be where he is today. His road to treason and jihad didn't begin in Afghanistan. It began in Marin County, with parents who never said "no."

To this I reply with the following:

They could not have seen this coming.

I simply refuse to believe that parental involvement in the course that Walker had taken would have had very little effect on what was most likely a bad seed in his early "formative" years.

• If I had said "Mom, Dad, I'm going to learn Arabic", it would more likely be viewed that I was interested in other cultures and built a repertoire of a new foreign language, (that would aid me later on in life.) That would not be bad parenting.
  
  
• If I had said that I want to study a different philosophy or educate myself in Islam. It is still good, as many of the children today are forced to take religion, Sunday school, and theology. (Islam in its simplest form, is not to blame. It is the radical belief of Bin Laden's Theocracy that was to blame). That would not be bad parenting.
  
  
• I would also assume that by age 18, If Walker wanted to pursue his own lifestyle, there would be nothing that a parent could do to stop him. Let alone the fact that he would be a legal adult capable of making his own decisions. He also had the freedom of religion. A principle that our country has taken great pride in. That is a time for a parent to let go.
  
  

So, what are we to learn from this article of the Globe? That we should substitute one form of religious brainwashing for another? That after the age of 18, children are still not able to make rational mature decisions? That independent thought is a bad thing? That knowledge is not power to be used responsibly?

Parenting is an imperfect practice. You only know you did the wrong thing after the fact. This crap that Jacoby spouts about their son listening to rap music and not being stopped is purely ridiculous. I listened to Pink Floyd, The Wall, when I was in 8th grade and I turned out fine. I look back now at that album as being a rock masterpiece and still listen to it today.

"That damn rock n' roll and that evil Elvis and Chuck Berry", is what these fundamentalists werespouting out about 50 years ago. AND THEY HAVEN'T STOPPED!

"Journalists" like Jeff Jacoby make me want to puke. He is implying that Walker's parents should have known that their kid had problems because he had turned to the Koran. You can't choose the practice of Islam as an indication of a potential terrorist.

It should have been no mystery to Walker's parents that this kid was having problems to begin with. I am certain that Walker was coming home late at night and hanging out with non desirables. I think the only way the parents missed the signs is that they just had no real contact at all with their child. I am certain that the signs were there. But they were not the ones that Jacoby was implying.

One can do the following and still be a healthy law abiding, free thinking adult AND AMERICAN:

• Read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (Which if it was so wrong, why was there an Academy Award winning movie about it? A teacher in high school had suggested it to me in recommended reading.)
• Be a Muslim. (Like Cat Stevens)
• Wear Muslim garb - White robe and cap. (Gee, I wonder if Catholic nuns get harassed.) (Like Cat Stevens)
• Seek an alternate philosophy. (Like Cat Stevens)
• Memorize the Koran (Like Cat Stevens)
• Go to Yemen to study (Like Cat Stevens)
• Go to Pakistan to study (Like Cat Stevens)
• Listen to Rap music. (Not like Cat Stevens, rap music is better than his new Islamic stuff. Which REALLY sucks.)

I'm not saying that it's right or healthy. But it can be done. Based on those signs, I probably would have thought the same thing given the current American Culture on child rearing. The fact that this "slacker" was interested in anything would have been a parent's godsend. Try talking to one of these brain dead zombies. When a mother of one of them finds that he is passionate about anything, it's great!

I would have been more worried if he had been tattooing swastikas into his back and reading Mein Kampf.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a Muslim and I don't agree with the practices of the Koran. As a matter of fact, if you told me that every Muslim in the world would die of festering boils, I'd still have coffee and donuts tomorrow with little repercussion.

However, I do know Muslims. The typical American Muslim is quiet and goes to worship Allah and they seem normal enough. They came to America to build a better life and to worship their religion. Very much like the Pilgrims did because they did not like others telling them how they should worship. They wanted to worship their Puritan beliefs and they did.

As a matter of fact that should show you how utterly stupid Walker was. He was living in a land that allowed him to seek an alternative religion. Were he born in Afghanistan, he wouldn't have had a choice about it. (And we could have shot him dead, and that would have been the end of it.)

The one thing that I am glad of is that my parents encouraged me to think freely.

I could only wish that I had enough motivation and intelligence to learn a second language like Arabic before I was age 18. Let's not have free thought or the ability to differentiate right from wrong. If, by the time he was 14 or 15, John Walker did not have family fundamentals, he would never get them. And I tell you it was in his early childhood that his parents had screwed up. Not whether he got to listen to rap music, studied the Koran, or even read Harry Potter.

Let me also say this.

People are responsible for their own actions. If you kill several people when you are 22, don't blame your parents. Unless of course they had raised you to always shoot other people instead of shaking hands. Then you might have a case.

His parents had screwed up long before the Taliban had gotten to him.

So, basically, I say that extremism in either form is a bad thing.

We have liberal parents who had a "hands off" approach to child rearing and the child craved discipline. (He must have really been screwed up. What child craves discipline?)

Personally, I think the kid was a bad seed and was just plain stupid and evil. I think the problems occurred early in childhood. Walker lacked fundamental common sense. Which, unfortunately, is common in this day and age.

I think it all boils down to a bunch of liberal government paper pushers, who have no clue on child rearing, telling parents how they should and should not act. Things are not the same as they were 35 years ago. Parents can no longer give children the physical discipline they need to build a good foundation for a responsible psyche. Children as young as my niece, know that their parents can no longer physically punish them for any reason. And in that way the power shifts to the child.

But I think Mr. Jacoby did have a small point. I don't think the parents were completely blameless.

Here's the problem. You can't kill a belief or an idea. There lies the way of Totalitarianism. (Which I believe the government is working on. I just reread Orwell's 1984 and was more terrified than ever.) You can't kill a race of people based on their religion. There lies the path of Hitler and Stalin.

So, what do you do?

Well, you raise your kids. Become part of their lives. Find out about their interests and talk to them. If you find something fundamentally wrong with the philosophy, group, music, dress, or language - tell them you think it's wrong and why.

But I think the Walkers' problem, as parents, was that they just weren't there. They didn't know their son. I don't think they ever knew their son. I think John Walker is a product of an 80's childhood and parents that grew up in the 70's (Too much of Marlo Thomas' "Free To Be You And Me"). They made their money and a screwed up kid.

This entire issue of what we do with Walker doesn't matter anyway. If we had shot him in Afghanistan, his life would have been over. As it stands, his life IS over. He will be lucky if he gets life in a federal prison.

Think about it. If he gets off, who will hire him? Will he be beaten in the streets or killed outright? What kind of future will he have in the States? Send him to regular, "pound him in the ass" jail. He'll end up like Geoffrey Dahmer, killed by the other inmates.

His life was over the moment he was captured.