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Lindhs' Mandela comparison is foolish and scandalous

Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com, The Black Business Journal
NigeriaCentral.com  

The July 16, 2002, press conference statement by the father of Johnnie

'Taliban' Lindh where he compares the jailing of his son to the apartheid regime's  
25-odd years of incarceration of the world's preeminent nationalist and
former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, is as foolish as it is a scandalous
misrepresentation of history, nationalism and civilizational struggles.

First and foremost, may I state without any qualifications and ambiguities the following: at no point of reasoned logic and   intersection of history,
can anyone find a common thread or even a slender reed connecting a quisling, a fifth columnist, a renegade, a turn-coat, an unpatriotic theo-political zealot such as like John Walker Lindh to Mandela, the principled nationalist, patriot, statesman and warrior for the rights of all
person - regardless of color, race, religion and gender.

Second, the Lindh plea which has brought with it a 20-year jail term in an air-conditioned, well-furnished and stocked U.S. luxury penitentiary cannot compare to Mandela's lonesome and rock cracking routine on a small island
encircled by crocodiles and other man-eating sea-animals. In the final days of March 1998, I walked inside and peeped through the main jail on Robben Island where Mandela spent most of his jailed, adult life.

Third the young Lindh's unique hallucinations of piety masked in his flirtation with the Islamic religion fail the critical test of the meaning of Mandela's life: that ideological and basic differences of life can be
resolved through negotiations and reasonable pressure without resort to such monstrous violence and anti-civilizational commands as decreed by the
Talibans,  and given military teeth and cover by the types of Johnnie Lindh.

Fourth, Mandela was a prisoner of conscience; jailed for his progressive,
panhuman beliefs.  Johnnie Taliban was a dog of war (unless the U.S.
security  agencies know something we don't). Before the rag-tag fringe
sympathizers of the Taliban and their associated anti-civilizational goons misrepresent
the young Lindh as a 'freedom fighter' I've two words for them: September 11.

Fifth, while most of the world celebrates Mandela's
heroic, dignified life and iron-clad commitment to justice and fairness to all, Johnnie Taliban needs redemption and forgiveness for being part of a violent network of individuals who hijacked a country to engage in some sort of joyful wickedness and hateful slaughter of innocent children, women and people from almost 35 nations happened to be on the path of the al-Qaeda terror machine, especially at the twin towers in New York, on September 11,
2001.

Finally, the senior Lindh should commit the rest of his adult to serving as
a healer, a conciliator, a vessel for atonement for raising such a son who
became a dog of war for some anti-civilizational goons and merchants of
mayhem. He should not continue, with his family and misguided sympathizers,
their orchestra of foolishness and historical ignorance, and brazenly
assault our moral and communal senses.

If they had any better judgment and
informed sense of history, the Lindhs would, never again, stab and stoke our
shared pains by comparing the sacrifices and quality of life and struggles
against racism and all forms of oppression and bigotry as represented by the
statesman man of peace and unyielding force for justice Nelson Mandela to
the lethal foolishness of their wayward son, a foot-soldier for the al-Qaeda
terrorism who was accessory to the deaths of thousands of his fellow
Americans, my fellow Africans, Europeans, Asians. And others.

Even as a young father of a 17-month old son, Chido Nwangwu II, I can appreciate the
bond and love of a father and a son .
Yet, I cannot make sense of the so-called 'pride' and rationalization the senior Lindh's finds in his son's active roles in what I consider the anti-cultural philistinism and sub-theocratic, raw wickedness of the Talibans and their fellow travelers  (as personified by his son) in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Seriously, the man's stupefying and mind-bending comparison of his son's
actions as a combatant against his own country to Mandela's  makes me wonder
what's in the water the man drinks!

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