Now that everyone and his brother have sounded off on John Walker Lindh, I want to have my say.

Earlier this week, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the "American Taliban" would not face the death penalty for turning his back on his country and joining the Islamicist radicals of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. Instead, if the Justice Department has its way, Walker will spend the rest of his life in prison.

How do I feel about that? I'm not losing any sleep over it.

The story of John Walker Lindh is a very sad one. And, without removing any of the personal accountability due the young man, his life story is a sad commentary on the way Americans raise their children today.

Walker is 20 years old. Many around him, including his family, expressed shock when they learned of his joining the extremists in Afghanistan. My reaction, after learning about his upbringing was: "What did everyone around this guy expect?

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, his parents placed him in one of those "alternative schools." There, Walker was known to his peers to be steeped in the sick culture of rap music. So deep into the world of hip-hop did Walker plunge that he actually sometimes pretended to be black himself.

In other words, this kid wanted to be anyone other than who he was.

But it gets worse.

About the same time, his father upped and left his family and moved in with his homosexual lover.

If this kid wasn't having an identity crisis up until then, this may have pushed him over the edge.

Next, young Walker, who stopped using his father's name, by the way, suddenly got an interest in Islam – probably related to his immersion into the black American experience.

None of this caused his parents any concern at all. In fact, when young Walker asked them for money to go to Yemen to study Arabic so he could read the Koran, they supported him and gave him the loot.

From there, the rest is history, as they say. Walker ran into the kind of extremists who want to convert, by force if necessary, the entire world to Islam. And he threw in his lot with the Taliban – even getting to rub shoulders with bin Laden at one point. Given enough time in this environment, I have no doubts Walker could have been – and would have been – programmed into being a suicide bomber.

After learning all this, I was truly amazed that anyone was surprised by Walker's actions. It seems like 2+2 to me. It's always going to equal 4. There's nothing surprising about Walker's transition. If you follow the recipe to make a cake, you're going to get a cake. Walker's parents followed a different recipe in raising their kid. They followed the recipe for making a Taliban.

So, yes, in a sense I truly feel sorry for Walker – just like I feel sorry for the young Arab men and boys who are trained for years to give their lives for Jihad. It's brainwashing, programming – it's not raising children.

Yet, we're all accountable, as I said, for our own actions. God gives us all a conscience. He gives us all a sense of right and wrong – even if the fundamental training we receive as children teaches black is white and wrong is right.

So, Walker needs to pay for his choices. He needs to be punished for his actions. An example needs to be made. But I have no desire to see his blood shed – thus I applaud the decision of the Justice Department not to seek the harshest penalty for his alleged crimes of trying to kill a U.S. national in Afghanistan, of providing support to terrorist organizations, and of engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban.

I also agree with the decision not to try Walker in a military tribunal – especially a secret one. The whole country needs a lesson from Walker's experiences. His civilian trial could serve a useful purpose in enlightening American parents on the consequences of neglecting their children – of what I call "permissive abuse."

I do disagree with Ashcroft on one thing related to this case, however. He was quoted as saying: "We may never know why he turned his back on our country and our values, but we cannot ignore that he did. Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against your country."

It's easy for me to see why he became what he became and why he did what he did. True, he doesn't deserve absolution for his evil deeds. But maybe we can all learn something from his sad example – and the sad example of his hapless parents.