Abdul Hamid, a.k.a. Sulayman al
Faris, a.k.a. John Walker
Just Another “Good Kid”
December 18, 2001
What is more frightening…a twenty year old Irish Catholic Taliban soldier from California or his parents who think their son acts just like a “Catholic seminarian”?
If filmmaker John Hughes (known for movies such as “Home Alone”, “The Breakfast Club”, "Sixteen Candles”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Uncle Buck” and “National Lampoon’s Vacation”) tried for a lifetime, he could never rival the farce of John Walker’s life. What a satire about the blind leading the blind!
Walker, for those who have been vacationing on the planet Zod, is the 20-year-old “poor fellow” of an American who was recently discovered as a captured Taliban soldier in the fortress outside Mazir-e Sharif, Afghanistan. Apparently, Walker was interrogated by CIA agent John (Mike) Spann shortly before Walker’s Taliban comrades beat Spann to death. Walker did not cooperate during his interrogation with Spann and Walker participated in the revolt that led to Spann’s murder, “…the Taliban fighters he was with were finally flushed out when the tunnels were flooded”.
There is no doubt that this fundamentalist Afghan caricature of a Sean Penn bad-boy is an adult. There can be little doubt therefore that he is responsible for his actions…whatever those actions may have been. If there is any mitigating circumstance influencing the guilt of young Mr. Sulayman-Walker, it most certainly is the fitness of his parents to have procreated.
Walker was born of Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker who are euphemistically referred to as his father and mother. The “amicably” separated Lindh-Walker team has reconfirmed the fact that procreation requires no common sense or responsibility. In doing so, the Lindh-Walker’s portrayed a more persuasive argument for “Parent Control” than Columbine ever did for gun control.
The little tyke, John Walker, started life in 1981 as the privileged child of a former Justice Department attorney father and a pseudo Buddhist mother…the perfect Boomer couple. Not to be bothered with any sense of originality or worthwhile identity, the Lindh-Walker’s named their son after departed Beatle, John Lennon. At 16, Walker converted to Islam, quit school and started “studying” the Koran at a California mosque. His very perceptive father “had the impression that his scholarly son would someday become a cleric”.
By the age of 17, Walker “told his parents that he wanted to go to Yemen to study Arabic, and asked for their financial support. Yemen, he told them, was the best country to learn the pure dialect of Arabic used in the Koran”. The parents underwrote their juvenile son’s sojourn to that terrorist nation. Sulayman al Faris, formerly known as John Walker, left for Yemen.
Described by a friend of his father, Sulayman al Faris (Walker) is, “mature, smart and directed he was for an 18-year-old…He wore the long robes and pillbox hat and had a beard”. The same could be said for Osama bin Laden.
“In February 2000, a few days before his 19th birthday, Walker returned to Yemen. It was the last time either of his parents saw him. Waiting with John at the boarding gate at San Francisco International airport, Frank Lindh noticed that his son seemed to be well known and liked among some of the other travelers, who John apparently knew from the mosque. Several approached Lindh and congratulated him for having such a scholarly and devoted son. It was during John’s second trip to Yemen, says his father, that he became aware that John had friends who had been to Chechnya to fight with Muslim rebels against the Russian army.” (Newsweek)
Six months later, when the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in the Yemeni port of Aden in October of 2000, Sulayman al Faris (Walker) informed his father by e-mail that he supported the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors because the United States had committed an “act of war” by docking in an Islamic country. Sulayman al Faris (Walker) saw the terrorism as a justified response.
Lindh, his father, now a corporate attorney for the infamously incompetent Pacific Gas and Electric, was ‘concerned” by his son’s radical views. But, as Lindh notes, “It was clear he had developed a different point of view…my days of molding him were over”. Apparently, attorney Lindh believed that the “molding” process was either state sponsored or automatic because, after depositing the biological prerequisite for conception, Mr. Lindh and Ms. Walker (mother) adopted the “LaLa Land” method of parenting.
Why can that be said?
Start with the anti-social 16 year-old John Walker:
THE AMERICAN HAD NO INTEREST in girls or parties or world events. His only real interest was studying. He seemed fixated, determined to memorize every word of the Quran, all 6,666 sentences of the ancient holy book that dictates every aspect of a devout Muslim’s life, behavior and being. His only respite from studying… was books on Islam. (Newsweek)
His “LaLa Land” parents encouraged Walker to choose his own spiritual path. “He was a spiritual kid…exceptionally devoted to his studies,” said his father. Timothy McVee, of Oklahoma City fame, was also a spiritual kid, in his own way, and devoted to his studies.
When, at 17, Walker desired to quit school and study Islam in the terrorist nation of Yemen, his enlightened parents’ response was…acquiescence and financial support.
When, at 19 the by now reinvented Sulayman al Faris (formerly known as John Walker) wished to increase his devotion to Islam by studying in the Pakistani terrorist hotbed of Bannu, his “rocket scientist” father was certain that his son would never become involved with the terrorists because, “He knows we wouldn’t have approved”. Is this beginning to sound like a tragic version of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”?
When at 20, the soon to be Abdul Hamid (formerly known as Sulayman al Faris, formerly known as John Walker) contacted his parents from Pakistan requesting money to move to “somewhere cooler”, his galactically intelligent father wired little Abdul $1200. “Hey Daddy, what about the Lexus.” Don’t psychiatrists refer to this as enabling behavior? And if little Abdul was so disenchanted by the United States, why was our future “cleric” always bumming “Greenbacks” from daddy?
After years of either ignoring and/or enabling abhorrent and antisocial behavior and financially supporting terrorism, now the Boomer team of Lindh-Walker (parents) cry a concerned and naïve “Foul”. “If he got involved with the Taliban he must have been brainwashed,” said his pseudo Buddhist Commercial photographer mother. “He was isolated. He didn’t know a soul in Pakistan. When you’re young and impressionable, it’s easy to be led by charismatic people.” Yes, Ms. Walker that is especially true if his parents never led or cared to begin with.
After years of passive parenting, the Lindh-Walkers now are concerned about their child, “We want to see John right away,” Lindh said. “He’s been through a horrible ordeal.” “Friends said the parents were devastated at his condition and his affiliation, which they likened to the kidnapped Patty Hearst’s joining her captors and becoming a bank robber.” Oh give it a rest! Don’t expect the U.S. taxpayer to arrange a very past-due tête-à-tête between the parents and L’Enfant Terrible. Walker is a soldier in an army attacking the United States.
The “Nobody is Accountable Crowd” is starting their spin. Facts are facts. Walker is a self-confessed terrorist, “Shortly after his capture last weekend, Walker identified himself as an American citizen and told a NEWSWEEK reporter that he had come to Afghanistan to help the Taliban build a ‘pure Islamic state.’ In a subsequent interview with CNN from his hospital bed, Walker described himself as a ‘jihadi’, a fighter of holy wars, and said that he had received combat training at a camp in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden appeared several times. Before joining the war in Afghanistan, Walker said he had fought alongside Pakistani forces in Kashmir…”
Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear on this matter, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.” And…as a former Department of Justice attorney, Daddy Lindh knows this is the law of Our Land.
The only question remaining is that when Abdul Hamid, a.k.a. Sulayman al Faris, a.k.a. John Walker is answering to a court of justice, should he be joined by his neglectful and enabling parental team of the Lindh-Walkers?
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