Steve Earle's 'American Taliban Blues' stirs up patriotic storm

Nashville outraged by Earle's song about the 'American Taliban'

Country music singers have a habit of writing songs about anti-heroes – those who don't quite make the grade either in love, luck or life in general.

But the Nashville star Steve Earle may have gone one step too far by penning a song about John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban who for many Americans is a symbol of base treachery.

Critics have been outraged by Earle's soon-to-be-released song, "John Walker's Blues", which is written from Walker's perspective and talks of America as "the land of the infidel".

"I'm just an American boy raised on MTV, And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads and none of 'em looked like me," Earle sings. "So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim, and the first thing that I heard that made sense was the word of Mohammed – peace be upon him."

Earle, 47, who has a reputation as something of a radical, insists he is not trying to offend.

"I'm trying to make it clear that wherever he got to, he didn't arrive there in a vacuum. I don't condone what he did. Still, he's a 20-year-old kid ... The culture here did not impress him so he went out looking for something to believe in," he says in the press release that will accompany the song. "But there are circumstances. Walker was from a very bohemian household, from Marin County [in California]. His father had just come out of the closet. It's hard to say how that played out in Walker's mind," Earle adds.

The song has outraged many who think that Walker, 21, who pleaded guilty last week to charges of assisting the Taliban, will get off lightly if he receives the expected sentence of 20 years' imprisonment.

Steve Gill, a Nashville radio talk-show host, has called for listeners to boycott stations that play the song. "I'm not calling for the burning of CDs but people can vote with their wallets as a counter expression to the free expression Steve's expressed in his song," he said.

Walker, who was arrested with Taliban soldiers in northern Afghanistan last year, pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain to avoid charges that could have seen him sentenced to life imprisonment. His prosecution was pursued aggressively by the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who said: "Walker ... chose to ally himself with terrorists. Walker chose to fight on the front on the line with America's enemies".

Mr Ashcroft, himself a musician who wrote a post-11 September patriotic dirge called "Let the Eagles Soar", declined to comment yesterday. A Justice Department spokesman said: "It's not on our radar."