More on Spann and Lindh

As I wrote up the previous entry on Mike Spann, I remembered something else I had written about him last summer and thought I had lost when the See-Dubyatron crashed. Fortunately I found it under a different file name. Unfortunately it's not extremely topical now, since it was about an execrable Esquire magazine piece that ran in June 2006, a giant printed tongue-bath on the deeply spiritual Johnny Walker Lindh. (MM took Esquire to task for the same rebarbative article here.) I'll stick it below the jump in case you're interested; I think it's still worth a glance.

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And so it is that Esquire magazine delivered a vile, fawning panegyric to Johnny Walker Lindh entitled “Innocent”. Most of the paragraphs on the first page begin with a portentous "AND SO IT IS THAT blah blah blah", the point being how much better and holier Johnny Walker Lindh is than thou or I.

I’m not teasing out some hidden comparison here: author Tom Junod actually writes that about the convicted Taliban terrorist: “He is a better person than you or I.” Mr. Junod, whom I do not believe to be a Muslim, has a habit of tacking “peace be upon him” to every mention he makes of Mohammed, which I suppose demonstrates his exquisite sensitivity to Islamic sensibilities. He does not, I notice, append “our Lord and Savior” to his references to a certain Nazarene preacher.

And so it is that I plowed through the entire thing, five long pages of unsubstantiated fables about the soft-spoken saint of Victorville prison and how private investigators were able to retrace his travels through the Middle East because flowers had sprung up in his footsteps. All right, I may be exaggerating that, but I am not exaggerating the nauseating Christ-symbolism Junod slathers on with a trowel:

The reviled one is the righteous one. And if you don't think so, take a look at him in the courtyard of Qala-i-Jangi, as he is questioned by Johnny Micheal Spann. Spann does not identify himself as a CIA agent, and Hamza does not answer his questions. Indeed, Hamza, with his beard and his long hair and his air of humble dereliction, looks iconic in a Christian sense, for the Christian god was well-known for not answering questions when his life was on the line. And yet he is spared. Who then is the righteous one? And who is favored by God?

And so it is that this is a difficult question for those pleasantly-scented, soul-patched young fellows seeking their spiritual enlightenment in the pages of Esquire, between the T&A and the articles about video games. (If Mr. Junod would care to take his Christ analogy a little further, he might have realized that the righteous one was not spared, but rather gave his life to save others.)

Despite Esquire’s attempts to draw one, there is no moral equivalence between Johnny Lindh and Michael Spann, the heroic Marine and CIA agent who died fighting a Taliban insurgency that Lindh supported. An uncompromising eyewitness account of Lindh’s rescue by CNN journalist Robert Young Pelton, available at Michael Spann’s memorial website, makes clear who and what Lindh really was:

Lindh was exactly the person we were trying to kill in Afghanistan and now around the world. An educated, idealistic young Muslim who chose murder of innocent
people as his path in life. He is no different that [sic] Mohamed Atta, Zarqawi or thousands of other terrorists that come from nice middle class families.

Pelton points out a detail that Junod conveniently missed: that Lindh likely was privy to the plans for the uprising in the Qala-i-Jangi prison that took Spann’s life, but chose not to warn him even though he had an opportunity to do so.

But since we are speaking of the villains and heroes of Qala-i-Jangi, there is another one of them returning to the news. A decorated British SBS warrior, Sergeant Scruff McGough, also fought that battle and laid down enough fire against the Taliban that Spann’s CIA partner was able to escape. There is, once again, no equivalence to be drawn between Lindh and McGough, whose rescue of the trapped agent

…marked a turning point, and for two days he and the other seven SBS men displayed extraordinary heroism in the face of hundreds of fanatical Taliban. A man of few words, he chain-smoked while repelling charges by the tribesmen for several days until the US Special Forces called in air strikes.

Sergeant McGough died in a hang-gliding accident on June 1. Peace be upon him.

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Johnny Walker Lindh pushed his ideology out toward its evil extremes. In this respect, it is true, he has distinguished himself from the majority of bland, squishy modern men. But distinguishing yourself in the pursuit of evil doesn’t make you a hero, and it doesn’t make you “Innocent”. It makes you a villain, a criminal and, if you are an American joining a bloody revolt against America, it makes you a traitor.

And so it is that Esquire subtitled Junod’s story “The State of the American Man”, as if Lindh were not the archetypal anti-American man. Fifty years ago, C.S. Lewis wrote that “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid geldings be fruitful.” Fifty years ago, we still knew the difference between all those things. Now “traitor” is just another word for the “differently honored”.