Some Might Call It
Treason
By Philip Giraldi
By Philip Giraldi
December 19, 2013
"Information
Clearing House - There is a major flaw in the United States Constitution.
The Founders understood that partisan politics would inevitably result in
bickering along party lines that would lead to charges that political opponents
were betraying the country so they deliberately made it very difficult to charge
others with "treason." Which is not to say that they did not regard treason as
the most heinous of crimes. The fact that it is defined in the Constitution, one
of only two crimes to be specified in the document, is telling, but they just
wanted to make sure that when the charge was made it was made in all seriously,
not to obtain frivolous political advantage. In Article III the
Constitution states"Treason
against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in
adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be
convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt
Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Because of the high bar set by
the Constitution, treason convictions in the United States have been relatively
few, normally occurring during declared wars. The last such conviction was
in 1952. Elsewhere in the world, treason trials, if not common, occur when
someone is believed to have collaborated with an actual declared enemy or to
have subverted a country’s laws or constitution, to include attempting to
overthrow an established government. Avoiding legal complexities, the Merriam
Webster unabridged dictionary provides a broad primary definition for the word
treason, describing it as "the betrayal of a trust."
The problem with the treason
definition applicable in the United States is that it does not cover what we are
seeing right now, something that the Founders could never have anticipated. I am
referring to a concerted "betrayal of trust" by a group of American government
elected officials in openly advancing policies that serve the interests of a
foreign country, specifically the senators and congressmen who are lining up
behind Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to oppose the White House’s
attempt to negotiate an equitable solution to the thirty-five year confrontation
with Iran. The discussion in Washington is now focused on possibly baseless
allegations that Iran is seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon, but it is really
all about Iranian military and economic power as it relates to the state of
Israel. The dissident legislators include nearly all Republicans as well as many
leading Democrats who have
long been advocates for Israel. Their intention is to throw a spanner into the
works by seeking to pass new sanctions legislation which, the Iranians have
already warned, will end any possibility for a deal.
Neocon Noam Neusner recently
provided an insight into what
is going on in Congress, boasting that "Normally a party’s leadership will stand
behind a president in his moment of diplomatic achievement. Not this time." He
further explains that the "conspicuous silence" among Democrats is because they
are "the men and the women, after all, who are on a first name basis with most
of the board of AIPAC" and "they want to be in Washington long after Obama
leaves the White House." And lest there be any confusion about what AIPAC and
the rest of the Lobby want, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has offered his own critique, saying that he is
"embarrassed by our government’s acceptance of Iran’s blackmail," calling secret
talks with Iran "a violation of the special relationship with
Israel."
The pressure has been so intense
that President Barack Obama had to personally go to a gathering of a major
component of the Israel Lobby – the Brookings Saban Center – to explain to Israeli-American billionaire Haim
Saban and a hostile audience what he intends to do about Iran. His explanation
eventually expanded to include a complete sellout of the Palestinians, avoiding
the subject of settlements, calling Israel a "Jewish state," and conceding that
Tel Aviv has a right to call all the shots on its security demands. Secretary of
State John Kerry has
called Israeli Arabs a
"demographic time bomb" so security presumably includes possible ethnic
cleansing. Obama should have been embarrassed to subsequently attend the Mandela
funeral, where he was observed laughing and grinning with other heads of state.
Apparently everyone appreciates a good joke.
Congress meanwhile has been doing
its part, disputing each and every White House justification for the
negotiations, possibly inducing the Administration to respond by adding a number of Iranian trading partners to
the list of organizations already subject to sanctions, leading to a temporary
suspension of the talks in Geneva. The White House is now schizophrenically arguing that new sanctions are okay as long as
they are not directed at the nuclear program, a ridiculous claim that Tehran is
not buying into.
And the consequences of all the
bickering are deadly serious, with many observers nervously noting that the only alternative to talks is
war because the United States and Israel have excluded all other options. And a
war would have major consequences not only for Iran but also for the United
States. Energy prices would skyrocket, there would undoubtedly be a new wave of
international terrorism directed against the United States and American
citizens, and Iran has significant capabilities to strike back directly against
US forces.
Closing the door on talks also
eliminates the possibility of anypositive
engagement with Iran. The
White House claims to be inexorably opposed to Salafist terrorist organizations,
to include al-Qaeda and its various franchises. Iran also opposes those groups
as many of them believe in killing Shi’ite Muslims, the majority religious group
in Iran. Tehran most likely has better intelligence on al-Qaeda than does
Washington and might be willing to share it, but the congressmen, benefiting
their own ambitions and little more, are clearly not heedful of the grave damage
they are doing to the United States and its interests overseas. Preaching war
with Iran is serious business, not the usual Capitol Hill game of one-upmanship
akin to a victimless crime where what does and does not take place has little or
no meaning.
Some might argue that the
congressmen are within their rights, that they are expressing their legitimate
concerns that Iran is being deceptive, enabling talks to go on while they creep
closer and closer to their objective of weaponizing their uranium stockpile.
There just might be a congressman or two who actually believes that or who
genuinely thinks that Iran poses some kind of threat to the United States, but
it does not require any particular insight to realize that the opposition to
talks with Iran overwhelmingly comes directly from Israel and its friends and
from nobody else. The principal Israeli lobby AIPAC has basically declared
war on the White House over
the issue and the Senators who are leading the charge are firmly in Israel’s
pocket. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois is even beingbriefed by Israeli intelligence and Israeli
cabinet ministers have beenobserved pleading their case on Capitol Hill to
a very receptive audience. Several congressmen have angrily confronted Secretary
of State Kerry when he was trying to explain the tentative agreement with Iran,
citing information they received from the Israeli Embassy and even quoting the
Israeli media.
Our first president George
Washington was aware of the danger of too "passionate attachments" to any
foreign country, warning in hisFarewell
Address that "The Nation,
which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is
in some degree a slave.” Though the Quislings in Congress cannot, unfortunately,
be found guilty of treason, there is, of course, the Foreign Agents Registration
Act (FARA) of 1938, which requires individuals acting on behalf of a
foreign country to register with the Justice Department and to reveal their
sources of funds. While it would be quite a spectacle to see lines of
congressmen registering, no one should actually expect the Obama Administration
to make such a demand or attempt to enforce it. The last president who sought
registration of an Israel
lobbyist as a foreign agent was John F. Kennedy, who attempted to force the
predecessor to AIPAC, then called the American Zionist Council, to comply with
the law.
All of the above means that
between a charge of treason and the requirement to register as a foreign agent,
ignored anyway in the case of Israel, there is no middle ground to punish
congressmen who act on behalf of a foreign government apart from impeachment.Impeachment of a congressmen for any "high crime
and misdemeanor" requires charges being initiated in the House of
Representatives followed by the trial in the Senate. The somewhat tedious and no
doubt heavily politicized procedure is unfortunate as impeachment therefore
actually needs someone willing to stand up on his or her hind feet and demand
that our legislators do something to benefit the folks who elect them rather
than respond to those who pay for their extracurricular services on behalf of a
foreign power. That someone would be very difficult to find.
Philip Giraldi, a former
CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The
American Conservative and executive director of the Council
for the National Interest.
This article was
originally published at Antiwar
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