A mother proclaims her unconditional and absolute love for her son. A father maintains his boy loves America and has done nothing to warrant terrorism charges against him.

John Walker Lindh’s parents are doing what’s expected of them. What parents would do otherwise?

To admit that one’s flesh and blood turned to evil and against his country in the name of his God would indict those responsible for rearing him. Too painful, that.

Whatever circumstances led the 20-year-old Californian to join the al-Qaida terrorist network as he admitted to reporters upon his capture in Afghanistan must weigh heavily on his parents. Could they have tried to find him the past two years when their 18-year-old darling took off to Pakistan to learn about the Muslim way of life and ended up in Afghanistan breaking bread with terrorists? Should they have done something different when he was growing up? Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.

Lindh’s parents should be thankful.

The Justice Department has given America’s first homegrown terrorist of the 21st century a huge break. It didn’t charge him with treason even though the man was caught fighting alongside Afghanistan’s now-defunct terrorist-coddling Taliban government. It didn’t seek the death penalty even though the U.S. government states Lindh admitted he joined one of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida camps last May and knew by June that the group had sent terrorists on suicide missions to the United States. Not only that, but Lindh has said he knew about the Sept. 11 attacks on America by the very next day and went on to join the Taliban anyway.

“John loves America,” Frank Lindh said about his son’s activities abroad. “John did not do anything against America.”

Yes, every young American who loves this country should do what John Walker Lindh did. Not!

This case sickens my gut. And judging from most readers’ responses to my previous column, I am not alone. Any American who takes up arms against his country, as Lindh clearly did, should face the death penalty. If he did what he admitted to reporters that he did, he’s a traitor. He is worse than any foreigner who would do us harm because he lived here and benefited from this great nation’s freedoms. He knew firsthand the truth about this country and chose at every turn during his journey of “personal discovery” to follow bin Laden’s trail of lies.

Lindh’s lawyers will try to argue that the government got his confession illegally, that he didn’t get a lawyer he requested, that his rights were violated. Blah, blah, blah.

But it’s hard to understand how a guy who says he joined two terrorist groups the al-Qaida and the Harkat ul-Mujahedeen who trains in bomb-making and munitions and goes on to fight against American military forces wouldn’t qualify for anything more than a life sentence, if that. Explain that to the young men in this country facing the death penalty for being accomplices to murder without ever pulling a trigger or setting off a bomb. Is it coincidence that disproportionately the men facing death in those cases are black or brown and poor?

I’m not convicting Lindh. He’ll get his day in court, and, thanks to his family’s money, he has a cadre of big-wig lawyers to defend him.

Our government, though, had the moral obligation to seek the most severe punishment. Prosecutors will pursue the death penalty as a way to negotiate a life-without-parole sentence. Why not in this case?

Because John Walker Lindh loved America?

Imagine what he would have done if he had hated us.