Editor,
I would like to respond to Mr. Hammar's plea in a letter to the editor in Tuesday's Daily Lobo that John Walker be given a "fair" trial by the United Nations.
Mr. Hammar makes several claims that war tribunals are biased and unfair since it is the defendant's enemy who is the prosecutor and judge.
Let me ask you, Mr. Hammar, is it not also biased and unfair to execute thousands of innocent people, to act as their prosecutor and judge and sentence them to die for a political agenda or holy war?
Your argument that tribunals are unfair is ludicrous. It is international policy to return criminals to the state or country where the crime was committed to be prosecuted by those they harmed, it's called extradition.
They are prisoners of war ... not jaywalkers. They are prosecuted by their enemies because their enemies have suffered at their hands.
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They were captured on the battlefield and proven to be associated with an organization that kills Americans. Fairness was allowing them to surrender and not gunning them down in the dirt.
You claim that Walker was only a line soldier, not in a leadership or command role; therefore he could not be a threat to the United States.
Who do you think puts the bullet in someone else's body? The commander in chief? No, a line soldier does. Who flew those jets into our buildings, bin Laden's minister of the interior? No, line soldiers. Pawns.
When an adult, 18 years of age or older, makes a decision to enlist in the military, he or she accepts the burden that they may one day have to kill the enemies of their nation.
When an adult leaves his homeland to join a militia in a foreign country, he knows that he may one day have to kill the enemies of that militia.
Why else is he going ... to make cookies for the freedom fighters?
Osama Bin-Laden openly declared war on the United States three years ago. Walker knew enough about the Taliban to leave home and fight for them, but didn't know that he is a fool.
War is devastating, ugly and brutal and we didn't ask for it. But we got sucker punched. Now is no time for naãve idealism regarding the treatment of prisoners of war.
All Taliban pawns captured in the mountains were potential hijackers, murderers of Americans. Even the attackers of Sept. 11, per bin Laden's admission, were unaware of the mission they were on until it was too late.
They are now safe, where we can gather intelligence from them and hopefully prevent further attacks on our nation.
Your blind idealism keeps you from seeing the burden forced upon us - preserving the safety of our home and the lives of our fellow Americans.
John D. Bess
Sophomore and U.S. Army staff sergeant
