Review paper 2

Nile Finney
Review paper #2

American Taliban Soldier

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor, he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague” (Marcus Tullius Cicero- Ancient Roman, Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator, and Statesman, 106 BC- 43 BC).
The article that I read is full of cultural diffusion and symbolic interactionism. This man that you are about to read about was from the U.S. but I believe since this man was full of some of the key concepts we learned about it could be a interesting topic. John Walker Lindh grew up and spent most of his younger years in an open minded town in Takoma Park, Maryland, so you can imagine how dumbfounded a lot of Americans were when they found out what he had been doing in Afghanistan.
John as a kid was known to be a very smart artistic young man. He had been interested in Islam since he was twelve and was dedicated to learning the Koran in and out. In October of 2000, John joined a radical Islamic group. Lindh lawyer said soon after joining he was mis-lead or disillusioned about the cause and asked to join the Taliban. He trained with al Qaeda in a military camp and even met with Osama Bin Laden. Reports say Lindh had been asked to swear his allegiance to al Qaeda but declined, but said he swore allegiance to Jihad.
To me in a way I feel kind of insulted because I have a lot of family in the military. My parents unparticular both have been deployed overseas and both have dedicated their lives to the military service. So when I hear or read about something like this it gets me upset a little bit because millions of soldiers have died trying to keep America free from terrorist.
In conclusion it seemed like John Walker Lindh (aka Johnny Bin Walker) was really obsessed with Islam which in my opinion led to his current predicament (Socialization problems). “ Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever widening thought and action…into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.” (Rabindranath Tagore)http://www.dailypaul.com
http://www.guruju.com