Jihad turns Bulldog

cosar
Tue, 07 Mar 2006 22:26:28 +0000

edmYale09:

it’s not like he had a choice to not join the Taliban. the party took over and there were no options. i’ve said this before- it was like the Pope and the Hitler Youth. they just had to go with the flow.

Ah yes, the Nuremberg defense. It didn’t work particularly well for the Nazis in Nuremberg. And my guess is that you might have less sympathy for it when it’s advanced (as it has been) by the soldiers who abused the Abu Ghraib prisoners. By the way, contrary to your post in another thread, it didn’t work for William Calley in the My Lai massacre trial either.

I read the NYT article - before I saw this thread. The writer obviously is sympathetic to Rahmatullah, but that doesn’t make it the gospel truth. I’m old enough to remember the pre-9/11 Taliban regime in all its evil glory, and even to remember Rahmatullah as its spokesman in the U.S. I’m not looking to execute him (as some of the Nazis convicted in Nuremberg were), or even to jail him (as Calley and John Walker Lindh were), but that doesn’t mean Yale has to open up a spot for him.

I also find Richard Shaw’s comment that Yale didn’t want to lose him to Harvard to be laughable. As if Larry Summers was about to roll out the red carpet for the Taliban’s former spokesman. And why does everything at Yale have to be about beating Harvard anyway?