When the world first saw so-called "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh's visage splashed across television screens, you could swear you were seeing Jesus. With his thin face, wide almond eyes, quivering lip and shock of brown hair, there was something undeniably Christ-like about the transplanted American who definitely stood out in sea of tan-skinned foreigners with funny names -- if Jesus were a white guy, that is.

Nobody wanted to admit that, of course, because Jesus was all about sunshine, smiles and exposing international Jewry, whereas Walker Lindh (going by the nom de guerre, "Abdul Hamid") was caught with his worry beads fighting on the wrong side of our righteous war against evildoers, er, terrorism. So, not to confuse the Prince of Peace with a mere California hot-tubber, Walker Lindh was immediately compared to that other pseudo-messiah, Charles Manson. The government immediately set out making this minor coward as a cause cèlébre of the war on terrorism, lost on the irony that Walker Lindh embraced Islamic fundamentalism after rejecting fundamentalist capitalism.

Walker Lindh's surprise deal with the government set off howls from patriotic Americans who probably blame the vast cadre of liberals who run the country for inventing such blasphemies as plea arrangements in the first place. The deal spared Walker Lindh a possible life sentence so that with his cooperation, he'll leave prison just your average middle-aged Muslim fundamentalist. He might mellow in 20 years, of course, opting no longer to shave his armpits and pubic hair anymore, but of course, not before his million-dollar book deal gives him a nice nest egg upon which to retire -- and let's not even talk about the forthcoming movie that will be hyped breathlessly during sweeps week. "He's a traitor!" opined the fair and balanced minds at the Fox Network. "Execute his ass!"

His plea arrangement caught the family of CIA agent Johnny "Mike" Spann just as off-guard as the news glitterati, who had done quite a good job of making a connection between Walker Lindh's capture and the uprising at the Qala-i-Jangi prison where Spann was killed. Video surfaced of Walker Lindh's interrogation that Spann participated in, replete with Walker Lindh looking positively Jesus-like: hands tied behind his back, on his knees -- a supplicant posture if there ever was one -- you half-expected Agent Spann to scream "Are you truly the Son of God?"

But in this drama, daring to suggest Spann played Pontius Pilate to Walker Lindh's Jesus is as unpatriotic as requesting "Vice" President Dick Cheney for records of his tenure at Halliburton. And actually, portraying Spann as anything other than a man doing his job and paying with his life for it isn't really the point. It's about the subtle way the media tried to create a link between the two Johnnys: one good, one bad, one a patriot, the other a traitor. And like a drunk driver walking away from the accident, Walker Lindh was alive and Agent Spann was deceased. Still, the closeness of these two images left a quiet damning assumption: that Walker Lindh was directly responsible for the death of Agent Spann.

In some respects, you could hardly blame the media, who undoubtedly had to scurry for maps to figure out where in the world Afghanistan was. Since the Bush Administration had opted to target the Taliban as a much easier group to identify than the nebulous Al-Qaeda network, latching onto the two Johnnys made the far-away bombing campaign more urgent and real. It played much better than somber reports of fellow reporters braving it all to cover the story: Walker Lindh and Spann were the horrors of 11 September brought to crystal-clear clarity. This was about good versus evil. As simple as Bush would view it, and about as complicated as Fox News reporters could handle.

We know that Walker Lindh had nothing to do Spann's death. After all, it was mere coincidence that the two were at the same place at the wrong time. Yet the juxtaposition was clear, and the subtext bubbled to the surface every time the two were mentioned in the same breath. The reaction of Spann's family was almost as if Spann's killer was set free. Their emotions were understandable, but the reasons why they were interviewed first were not. (And it wasn't the first time. During Walker Lindh's initial appearance in court, his father attempted to converse with the Spann family who was present.)

Whatever tempted John Walker Lindh to abandon the warm, tolerant fold of hip-hop culture to supporting the godless fashion victims of the Taliban is known only to him and the future publisher of sure-fire best-selling memoir, but it's actually irrelevant. Because Walker Lindh is no longer just a person or a mere traitor who will definitely have to leave the country after he's released: he and Agent Spann have become ideas, objects, images. Spann's is the more ephemeral, which means he will be quickly forgotten (but still has a place in the hagiography that will pass as history when this conflict is coldly documented), as opposed to Walker Lindh, whose fantastical journey from the suburbs of California to Afghanistan to meet his destiny captures more of the imagination than just someone who died in line of duty -- both among and friends and enemies alike.