FDISK: You’re extremely mistaken in your take on when and how Lindh lost his US citizenship. First off, he didn’t. Second off, merely enlisting in a foreign armed service doesn’t revoke one’s US citizenship. Third off, he didn’t even join a recongized armed force.
Please tell me that you’re not a lawyer, not in the military, and certainly not in law enforcement.
I am sure that one of the SDMB’s more learned members will correct me if I am wrong, but, if a guilty plea is entered, and accepted by the presiding judge, then yes, the defendant, in this case JWL, is GUILTY of the crimes as charged.
No amount of message board sputtering can change that. Do you argue with reality much?
Cite:
–Important Information section, US passport (More info at the US State Department Website)
When JWL joined the armed forces of the Taliban, he ceased to be a US citizen, and since this occurred several years before the War in Afghanistan in which he fought against US forces, he never committed treason.
Monty: I think the Taliban counts as a “political subdivision” of a foreign state, at the very least. Don’t you?
milroyj: Methinks being legally guilty and having actually commited the crimes that one is charged with are different things.
I saw his lawyer on PBS Newshour tonight. He said that Lindh expressed regret over 9/11 (he did NOT have prior knowledge of it) and felt very uncomfortable about it, because he did not believe in killing civillians. He couldn’t get out because he would have been killed. Seems to me that he was just a dumb kid who was in waaaay over his head. It’s not like he personally shit down the throat of every American. He never fired a gun at anyone. And he does want to help the US.
Although, this is from a lawyer who may be trying to whitewash the issue. However, it does sound like he isn’t the antichrist that the media first portrayed him as.
Interesting way of looking at it.
If you’ll recall, (although I don’t remember at the moment if I said it here), I said he’d get off with a plea bargain. I’m not the LEAST bit surprised. That’s how this kind of shit works.
Although personally the man turns my stomach.
You’re still mistaken, FD. The Taliban doens’t count as a recognized armed force; therefore, no POW status of Lindh. The loss of citizenship is not automatic for joining up with recognized forces anyway. There are US citizens, who are still US citizens, currently in foreign armed forces, one of which forces is the French Foreign Legion.
Try to look at the case as is and not as you hate the defendant.
If it makes you JWL-haters feel better, I’m pretty sure that no matter which institution he ends up getting housed in, he’s in for no short supply of ass-beatings and/or rapings from the men interred there. Perhaps it will do your bloodthirsty hearts good thinking about JWL’s shattered anus making up for the 3,000 dead Americans.
I, on the other hand, have no interest in putting an undue amount of political pressure on a dumber-than-a-sack-of-hammers ex-Californian kid, that I’m not fully convinced can conjugate a verb, much less carry out a plan of mass destruction. If you look up the phrase, “cog in the wheel,” Lindh’s face is there smiling.
If it were me, ladies and germs, I’d be a helluva lot more interested in the whereabouts of the man who masterminded the whole shebang, and less about how best to punish a kid with the mental capacity of a Hostess Snowball.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, and it’s about to be flamed out by small-minded morons in three…two…one…
Walker is providing more intelligence on al-Quaeda and the Taliban than all of the CIA, FBI, and Interpol put togeter. I’m surprised he didn’t claim to be a CIA spy yet.
I am getting a sense from this thread and older threads that many people here are somewhat sympathetic to JWL.
Many people seem to think he just went to AG on a lark, and got sucked in by the Eevil Taliban. Wrong! The kid had to actively seek out the Taliban to even be accepted. Remember, to them the US is the ultimate evil. As an American he would automatically be viewed with suspicion.
He would have certainly had to at least spend some time cultivating a relationship with someone who would even introduce him in a friendly way to a Taliban militia member.
He fucking KNEW when he hooked up with those psychos that he might be asked to kill Americans! (Or Brits, Aussies, a multitude of countries on the Continent, and whoever else) I say send his ass up for life, in a little cage.
We’ll never know, because that evidence won’t be presented. The little chickenshit copped to two charges, thereby avoiding eight more, including plotting to kill Americans and the murder of CIA agent Mike Spann.
I’ve never read Ann Coulter, but if you are equating liberals with traitors you’re full of shit. JWL is neither a liberal nor a conservative as far as I am concerned, he’s just a traitor. Traitors have been executed for doing less than Lindh has done (read Quisling, who collaborated with the occupying Nazis, but did not bear arms). The Norwegians stood that traitor against a wall and blew his brains out. That’s what should happen to Lindh, in my opiinion.
At any rate, what’s happening now isn’t justice, and the President should have choked on the words when he agreed with this plea bargain.
Ah yes, allowing your child the freedom to make his own decisions about his life when he is mature enough to do so is reason enough to be neutered.
GTF.
His citizenship has never been in question by the US or by himself. He claimed citizenship and the US recognised it. Had he been considered a non-citizen, he’d be in Guantanamo with the rest of the lot.
I’m a lawyer, but law school was a long time ago and I don’t practice in the field of federal criminal law, so there are some basic things I don’t understand about the whole JWL case. I know this is the Pit and not General Questions, but anyway:
How come American federal criminal law was applicable to what JWL did while he was in Afghanistan? Doesn’t American sovereignty, and the applicability of the US Constitution and of American statutory criminal law, end at the limit of the US’ borders, even insofar as it applies to American citizens? Such arguments weren’t brought up in court and I’m guessing that the statutes JWL was charged under and confessed to have no such explicit limitation, but it sure seems curious to me.
For those of y’all calling him traiter: please avail yourself of the Constitution and look up the definition of Treason therein.
I am in no way sympathetic to Lindh. OTOH, I am very sympathetic to our basic law, the Constitution so many folks seem to not care about. I include those who wish Lindh to get "ass-beatings and/or rapings " in that unillustrious crowd.
To be honest, I am somewhat sympathetic to Lindh. I’ve seen no evidence he actually fought against U.S. forces; he was a dumb kid who just happened to be on the wrong side when all hell broke loose and was caught hiding in a basement. 20 years seems excessive.
Ah, the beauty of message boards where casual slurs fall like rain. I had the pleasure of taking a class taught by Randy Bellows who is the AUSA who was heavily involved in the prosecution of Lindh. He is absolutely brilliant and a credit to his profession. He is exactly the type of person I want as a federal prosecutor.
Aside from his legal brilliance he is also a good man. He graduated from Harvard Law School and, rather than make the big bucks that surely awaited him, took a job as a public defender in Washington, D.C. He then left the public defender’s office to become an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. He is a thoughtful, soft-spoken gentleman who took the time to teach law at night after his work day was done. He shared a lot of his real-life experiences with us. And while I do not practice criminal law I am still grateful for the lessons I learned in his class.
I understand this is a message board and, more specifically, the Pit. But there are real humans behind the names and titles that are routinely attacked on these boards because somebody doesn’t agree with them.
Jesus christ people.
I take it many of you haven’t reread this thread…
Anyway, my two cents.
JWL got 20 years which isn’t going to get any shorter… which is almost as long as he’s been alive. And if ANY of you think he’s got more than a 50/50 chance of making it out of a federal prision alive in 20 years I don’t know how much crack you’re smoking. I seriously doubt that the guards will be too willing to throw themselves between other inmates and JWL, and I also doubt his fellow prisioners will be particularly nice to him.
As for the whole guilty plea… I doubt he actually has to be guilty of the crimes he plead to, but he is now. And personally I think it was for the best, it saved time and money on both sides, and if he survives prision he may have a chance for a life. But I kinda figure a few of you will be waiting for him when he gets out of prision.
I really like those of you who blame him for the deaths in the world trade center attacks. Yup, like Bin Laden would allow a recent recruit of the Taliban, who was an america knowledge about a terrorist attack on America. If he was that stupid he would have drown trying to figure out how to brush his teeth.
Anyhoo, keep in mind that they found him half starved in basically a hole. Sure he had a gun and a few grenades, but there isn’t any evidence he shot at/killed americans.
In shot my opinion about the whole thing: Who cares any more? He’s in jail.
Another vote here for him getting in over his head without realizing. He was young, idealistic, and new to devout Muslim beliefs–I’m not shocked that he sought out an environment in which he could explore the extreme edge of those beliefs. But then >BAM<, thousands of Americans are dead, bombs are falling, soliders are invading, already prevalent anti-americanism explodes all around him… Do you really think he could have just stood up at that point, laughed, and said “hey guys it’s been fun, but I think I’ll be heading back home now.” ?
I think it’s too bad that there won’t be a trial, if only because I’d really like to know the actual facts about what happened, instead of being forced to wade through the contradictary and self-serving releases from the opposing side’s lawyers.
My gut feeling though is that I feel sorry for him, and sorry that his choices snowballed into such a mess. Twenty years is a LONG, LONG time, and more than adequate, IMO. Maybe some of you advocating that he be put “up against the wall” could explain why, in the name of protecting our nation’s freedoms, we aren’t required to uphold that which we seek to protect?
FDISK: You may lose your US citizenship by serving in a foreign armed force. But it’s not an automatic, ipso facto result, and US law in recent decades has tended towards citizenship being hard to lose w/o a formal process. Anyway I’m sure there are those in the Justice Dept. who would bring up the “unlawful combatant” argument, in that he was not in a proper army but a band of irregulars.
DesertGeezer: Jeez, man… shoot the traitor if you want, but don’t shoot the messengers, OK?
I’m not particularly sympathetic toward him, but I’m strongly opposed to punishments that are disproportionate to the crime.
I don’t think people are saying it was so much ‘on a lark’ as ‘however serious he was, he was young and immature’.
Mind you, being young and immature isn’t exculpatory, just explanatory. But it’s also not a crime in and of itself.
At any rate, prior to 9/11, running off and joining the Taliban was stupid but not criminal. And when 9/11 happened, he was already there and his options were probably rather limited.
Maybe you’re confusing the Taliban (the guys running Afghanistan) with al-Queda (the international terrorists). Sure, the Taliban pretty much hated America’s guts, and were willing to aid and abet al-Queda which committed terrorist acts against Americans, but if you’re going to say the Taliban itself planned to attack Americans (or other Westerners), and that that Lindh should have been aware of that, you’ll need to provide a cite.
As others have asked, for what specific crimes?
If we have strong evidence that he shot, or tried to shoot, American soldiers, then you’ve got a point. If not, then his main crimes seem to have been (a) being young and stupid, and as a result (b) winding up in the wrong place at the wrong time. 17-20 years is pretty steep for that.
Criminal justice isn’t a private matter; we all have a stake in its being done right. The prosecution should, IMHO, make public the evidence they were planning to bring against him at trial.