WEBVTT

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<v ->In America after 9/11,</v>

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people, the media and the government

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and the ordinary people who take their information

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from the media and the government,

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began to confuse the Taliban without Al-Qaeda.

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And everybody associated with all of that

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was considered to be a terrorist.

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It was an irrational,

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fear-based, emotional response to the 9/11 attacks.

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The 9/11 attacks were carried out

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by authentic, hardened terrorists,

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who really had a depraved sense of values.

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And they killed all those innocent people; a horrible thing.

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But soldiers fighting in this civil war,

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inside of Afghanistan, were just that,

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they were just soldiers in a civil war in Afghanistan.

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And many of them, like John,

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were there for altruistic, idealistic reasons.

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They were there because they thought

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they were going to defend innocent people.

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They were in fact, defending innocent people from attack.

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So it's, again, I would certainly not want my son to go

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to Afghanistan and volunteer for the army there

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in a civil war like that.

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I wish he hadn't done that, but that is not terrorism.

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That's just joining an army.

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That's what Ernest Hemingway did

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for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.

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He fought in an army.

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So I was pretty confident.

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I understand the question, you know.

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Well, how do you know?

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Because you go on Larry King, you know,

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in these early days in December

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and you haven't had contact with your son for seven months,

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how do you know that he hasn't become a terrorist

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and hasn't aligned himself with terrorism?

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And the answer is on some level,

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I don't really know completely,

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and I have a little anxiety about that,

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but for the most part,

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I feel pretty confident about my son

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and how, you know, what the kind of person he is.

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And I've been vindicated in that.

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I mean, it's certainly clear now.

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Now that all the facts are known,

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that no, John never had any involvement

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of any kind with terrorism or sympathy for terrorism.