With so much going on in your life over the Memorial Day weekend — picnics, parades, soccer and sitting out late with your family and friends, telling stories and laughing — the last thing you need is another thing to do.
And I’m not telling you to do this, but if you have a quiet moment, alone, you might want to think of someone:
Johnny Micheal Spann.
He was called Mike. He was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. And later, he joined CIA. He was a father, a husband. He’s buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
There are so many other stories trying to grab your attention and your eyeballs. There’s that spat between President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over which one of them is crazier; and the confessions of Lance Armstrong; the lurid Jussie Smollett files; and those shark attacks off Cape Cod.
And that’s just from Friday. There will be more over the weekend. But you have a moment to consider Spann. You know you do.
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He was an American soldier. He was serving our country in a dangerous place. And there are Americans like him buried all over the world. And Monday is their day.
It’s not Barbecue Day or Baseball Day or Soccer Tournament Day. It’s not Gardening Day. Or Beer and Cigar Day.
It’s Memorial Day.
Spann is said to have been the first American killed in the war in Afghanistan. On Nov. 25, 2001, at the ancient fortress turned into a military prison Qala-I-Jangi during an uprising.
He’d just interrogated a piece of human garbage, the so-called “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. Spann’s family had always thought that Lindh should have warned his fellow American that the uprising was coming, and that Lindh bore responsibility.
Lindh wasn’t charged with murder. He spent 17 years in prison and was released a few days ago. It was a big deal when he was captured — his face was dirty, his eyes were wild, his long hair was matted and filthy. He’d grown up wealthy, from Marin County, Calif., and converted to Islam in his teens.
“We want to give him a big hug and then a little kick in the butt for not telling us what he was up to,” Lindh’s father told ABC’s “Good Morning America” when he was caught.
A little kick in the butt?
He was a traitor, joining the enemies of our country, and I don’t think anyone but his parents would have mourned him had he been put up against a wall and shot for treason. But that didn’t happen.
Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002. He wasn’t charged or convicted of murder. He pleaded guilty to charges that he materially supported the Taliban.
Sentenced to 20 years, he did 17. He’s not repentant.
In federal prison, he’d write letters to reporters, expressing his admiration for Islamic State and al-Qaida and other terrorist groups that were quick to murder, including decapitations of Americans on video and sending that video out so the world could see.
Lindh wrote the letters to NBC and in them called himself a political prisoner. He told NBC that he calls himself Yahya Lindh.
In one letter he wrote in March 2014, he said: “We are in prison due to our beliefs and the practice of our religion, not for committing any crime.”
Asked if the terrorist group Islamic State represented Islam, he responded in February 2015: “Yes, and they are doing a spectacular job. The Islamic State is clearly very sincere and serious about fulfilling the long neglected religious obligation of establishing a caliphate through armed struggle, which is the only correct method.”
Lindh, who as a boy who grew up comfortable and soft in Marin County has been unrepentant as a man, insisting that the spilling of blood was the only way forward.
His glowing review of Islamic State came after the Islamist terror group engaged in a series of beheadings, including that of journalist James Foley in 2014. NBC said Lindh did not respond to follow-up requests to discuss the violence.
But does that matter? He’s out now. Walking around northern Virginia at the heart of the American empire.
The Spann family asked President Trump to stop the release. Trump said the law didn’t allow him to stop it. And other politicians kept quiet.
Mike Spann’s daughter, Alison Spann, told the Wall Street Journal that Lindh’s release is an injustice.
“He took part in a prison uprising that led to the death of my father,” she was quoted as saying. “I don’t believe terrorists like this should get credit for time served for good behavior.”
Spann’s father, Johnny Spann, 70, talked about his son and Lindh to Martha MacCallum of Fox News.
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“I’d like Americans to ask themselves, if every male American followed in the footsteps of John Walker Lindh and did the things he did, would you be free? I don’t think so.
“But if you follow in the footsteps of Mike Spann, you would be a free nation and you would continue to be free, and you wouldn’t have to sit down and tell your grandkids and great-grandkids years down the road, ‘This is what it used to be like to be free in America.’ ”
The American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, is free now, free to sit on the grass, with the sun on his face, free because of Americans like Mike Spann.
Listen to "The Chicago Way" podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.
jskass@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @John_Kass
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