The 'American Taliban' will be free after 17 years. Is the U.S. ready to welcome him back?

[IronLionZion]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/05/20/american-taliban-will-be-free-after-years-is-us-ready-welcome-him-back/?utm_term=.c22915907017



John Walker Lindh’s eyes, dark and wild, were ubiquitous across magazine covers and cable news channels, alongside militants in Afghanistan, after he was captured in November 2001. He was a long-haired guerrilla with a California address — a traitor to some, a misguided kid sucked into Islamic jihad to others.

Dubbed the “American Taliban,” Lindh was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to supporting militants who harbored al-Qaeda as it planned the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But in a surprise move, Lindh will be released from federal prison on Thursday, three years early, federal officials said.

Lindh and other incarcerated American supporters of the Islamic State present a quandary with growing urgency: Is the United States prepared to try to rehabilitate extremists and foreign fighters, and welcome them back into society?

“There is very close to nothing in terms of de-radicalizing programs at the federal level,” said Bennett Clifford, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “The current model is hoping long prison sentences for material support of terrorism will be a deterrent.”

We'll see how many DUers support revoking citizenship when it's a white male. I'm guessing not nearly as many as for the brown girl.

[Johonny]

1. He might find the current US to religiously conservative for him and move to Canada :)

[walkingman]

2. the description " long-haired guerrilla with a California address" pisses me off. WTF does long hair

or California have to do with anything?

[IronLionZion]

4. Those dirty hippies

they're trying to associate the hippie life with Taliban, which is quite the opposite.

[ProudLib72]

3. He can start his own radio talk show expressing radical Islamic views

as counterpoint to the talk shows expressing radical Christian views we already have.

See, everything has a way of balancing out in the end.

[gratuitous]

5. Lindh was born in Washington DC

Which makes him a natural-born U.S. citizen. I'm not sure how his citizenship could be revoked. Do you have more information on that?

[IronLionZion]

6. The only information that matters

is that he's white. American-born brown people have lost their citizenship for being ISIS brides and left in Syria without citizenship to any country. DUers supported citizenship revocation when it was a brown American.

[gratuitous]

7. Whoops, sorry

You weren't talking to me.

[VOX]

8. Steve Earle's "John Walker's Blues" says it all.

[Blue_Tires]

9. meh...

[Marengo]

10. Looks like your attempt at race baiting was a flop.

[IronLionZion]

11. DUers support Trump revoking citizenship from American-born ISIS brides

if they are brown or had brown babies. 0 DUers want that for John Walker Lindh.

[Rambling Man]

12. Incarceration has a way of killing you inside

He's probably not the same person as he was back then.

Probably even MORE fucked up.

[Jake Stern]

13. Is there a legitimate (and still unresolved) question

of whether or not Lindh's father held diplomatic status at the time he was born as in the case of Muthana Hoda?

If not then all you have is an OP dripping with race tinged whataboutism.

I say bring her back and offer her the same deal Lindh got: a 20 year stint in the hoosegow in exchange for a guilty plea.

[IronLionZion]

16. Brown Americans are perpetual foreigners and not considered real Americans

The Trump administration wants legal precedent to invalidate the 14th amendment and take away citizenship from people born in America, and some DUers are part of the problem.

[struggle4progress]

14. IMO he's been a confused halfwit but never did anything to deserve a twenty year prison sentence

He happened to have gone to Afghanistan in 2000 as a nineteen year old

In May 2001, George Bush gave the Taliban $43 million

Lindh was still in Afghanistan on 9/11

About a month and a half later, he was captured in Afghanistan and suddenly hit the news as "American Taliban"

Here's his lawyer on the 2002 plea deal:

... We weren't going to plead to an al-Qaida count. We weren't going to plead to a conspiracy to kill Americans. And the reason was that John didn't do any of those things. The plea we did agree to today was true; that is to say, he was a soldier in the Taliban army, one of I guess what, 50,000 perhaps. But he was, and he was there ... John, having converted to Islam, having studied in Yemen, both Arabic and then later in Pakistan, having studied the Koran, went to Afghanistan to serve as a soldier in the Taliban army. That's all he ever wanted to do and that's all he ever did. Once he got there, he never did fire his gun ... He never did fire his gun – never did hurt anybody. And we had one meeting in negotiations where my colleagues on the prosecution side were sitting there, and I said who did he ever hurt? And I got no answer to that. He never hurt anybody ... But the very first thing that John told his interrogators the third day, on December 3, was that after September 11, he was quite troubled by the events because, first of all, he doesn't believe in attacks on civilians. He feels very strongly about that. That's wrong. It's not in the Koran as far as he is concerned. It is not his brand of Islam. He thought it was very wrong, but he couldn't get out for fear of death. He couldn't just leave the district of Qatar. He would have been killed ... To find by accident a 21-year-old fellow at the bottom of a basement who is there for religious reasons is not a great victory in the war on terrorism ...

[malaise]

15. Had the same thought - how many members of the

Aryan Nation/White Supremacists leave prison without a word about their potential for future terrorist acts?