Former President George Bush temporarily stepped out of his nursing home to propose that American Taliban John Walker face what he wants to call a “Unique penalty.”
According to NBC, Bush proposed that Walker should “[L]eave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is and let him go wandering around the country and see what kind of sympathy he would get.” Bush then added, “I mean, he’s just despicable.”
There’s a distinct possibility that Walker was not nearly as dirty as he was before being captured by Northern alliance forces, shoved into a basement with 200 other people, and subjected to flooding with the release of live ammunition under the sanctioning of the U.S. government.
Walker was one of 86 people who survived in the basement.
If the United States saw any other country lose over 100 prisoners in two nights, it would be screaming about crimes against humanity and demanding a U.N. tribunal for the imprisonment of those responsible.
If Walker had all his constitutional rights, maybe Mr. Bush’s comments would be amusing in the same manner that Grandpa Simpson is amusing. The problem is that with the way the Bush administration has blatantly disregarded all things American in the name of the Constitution, sending Walker to beg for sympathy on the way to his death sounds disturbingly like the ancient Roman process of crucifixion.
The Walker story is a sad one. It exposes the weakness of American society to take care of one of its own, and the failure of the misnamed concept of Christian values.
