The "American Taliban" Goes Free
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2019
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. forces scoured Afghanistan for Taliban fighters. They weren’t expecting to find John Walker Lindh, a young man from California who had converted to Islam and moved abroad to study the Quran. Lindh was dubbed the “American Taliban,” but his case ended in a plea deal, leaving his treatment while in custody a secret. At the time, Lindh’s story seemed uncomplicated: He was associating with extremists. Now, years later, his case feels like a missed opportunity. How did it happen that he went through our criminal justice system, but we learned so little about extremism and the nation’s treatment of detainees?
Guest: Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. Her book is Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | He's American citizen, right? |
| 0:06.7 | Yeah. |
| 0:07.8 | Well, right now you're a prisoner. |
| 0:09.6 | When I think about John Walker Lind, I think back to the first time I saw him on TV. |
| 0:16.6 | He's in pain, in a hospital gown, He's got a dirty face, full beard. |
| 0:21.9 | He's talking about why he'd been caught fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. |
| 0:27.4 | Was your goal to be Shahid or martyr? |
| 0:30.3 | Our reporter asks, was it your goal to be martyred? |
| 0:33.7 | Yes, the goal of everyone. |
| 0:35.7 | Was it your goal, though? |
| 0:36.9 | Huh? |
| 0:38.3 | Was it your goal at that time? |
| 0:39.3 | This was just a couple of months after 9-11, a 20-year-old from California saying he wanted to be a martyr, saying he thought all Muslims did. |
| 0:48.3 | I'll tell you, to be honest, every single one of us, without any exaggeration, every single one of us was 100% sure that |
| 0:57.0 | we would all be shahdha, but Allah chooses to take a person's life when he chooses, and we have |
| 1:06.0 | no control. |
| 1:07.0 | The idea of finding an American over there in this circumstance was not really in the calculations. |
| 1:13.8 | And so part of what happened with John Walker Lind was sort of like shock. |
| 1:18.4 | Karen Greenberg is a historian, an expert on national security. |
| 1:22.6 | I feel like he's a little bit of a ghost to me because I remember so clearly seeing this video of a man with a beard who looks quite young, quite skinny, and that's sort of where my memory ends. |
| 1:37.5 | Well, that's because that's where our knowledge of him in many ways ends. There are no other images to really have in your mind. |
| 1:45.6 | It's sort of frozen in time there, so that actually makes a lot of sense. |
... |
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