So the USA in a Stalinist show-trial convicts John Walker Lindh, and he will spend the next 17-20 years of his life in prison.

Why is he going to prison? He plediced guilty of being a soldier for the Taliban and for carrying weapons such as a rifle. Does this mean he deserve to spend 20 years in jail.

I hate the Taliban and i am pleased to see them collapse. However Lindh was a proud Muslim and saw the Taliban and Islam as the ideology which would give the world emancipation. Hence he is being sentenced for his beliefs.

From the USA point of view, he was an enemy soldier, a traitor and therefore deserves to suffer. But since when do we put people in jail for being on the other side in a war. Americans POW were treated like shit by the Japanese and Vietnamese and now the USA is doing the same to this POW.

What about the Geneva convention? Should we jail all the Argentines who fought against Britain in the Falklands? Should we jail all those Algerians who fought against France in the 1960s?

To me this sentence proves that the USA is a undemocratic, bureaucratic, nationalistic semi-tyranical regime and more simliar to China or to Fascist Italy or Spain than to a civlized country.