Opinion: John Walker Lindh shows why the rule of law is our strongest weapon against terrorism
John Walker Lindh leaves the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia on the way to his first appearance in a nearby federal court on Jan. 24, 2002. By Jason Rezaian Jason Rezaian Global Opinions writer Email Bio Follow Global Opinions writer May 23 at 3:53 PM John Walker Lindh, a U.S. citizen who moved to Afghanistan and joined the Taliban, was released from prison Thursday after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence.Some reports indicate that he has not changed his radically anti-U.S. views.
At a time when the nation is divided on so many fronts, upholding the rule of law must be something that we should all be able to agree upon. Yet since the beginning of our apparently endless war on terrorism, justice has been anything but blind, as we have struggled to find legal norms to deal with people accused of plotting and committing violent crimes against the United States.
About the same time, an international poll showed that people in most other countries preferred a legal rather than military solution: extradition and trials of those suspected of implementing, planning and aiding in the attacks. We still haven’t come up with an entirely adequate response, although U.S. citizens can reliably count on a trial on U.S. soil, with some representation and some measure of transparency.
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