My favorite line from the Times article: "Mr. Zarqawi looked clean and plump."

I suppose "Mr. Hitler" could have been described as clean, plump, and dapper to boot. Senior military experts might have warned Spike Jones that "Der Fuehrer's Face" had little relationship to Mr. Hitler's skill as a Nazi dictator, and that "People should be careful who they poke fun at."

The parodies write themselves.

The NYT doesn't mention that edited versions of this video were earlier released as propaganda, showing Zarqawi blazing away like Rambo. Imagine if the White House showed footage of Bush shooting a SAW, and the press got ahold of unedited footage showing him fumbling with it.

BTW, I think this "Mr. Zarqawi" business must be borrowed from the BBC, along with the humorlessness, malaise, and moral confusion.

When will the mainstream finally have enough evidence to declare that the NYT, CNN, etc. are part of a fifth-column that is actively siding with terrorists?

They way they defend Zarqawi alone proves that he is their hero, and who they are rooting for.

When will Americans wake up to the fifth column?

Twok--
Its a mind set from the Cold War. The evil capitalist US versus the glorious face of world socialism. Socialism should and must win the conflict. Of course, most of the proponents of socialism in the West wouldn't say that that was what they were after. It was too soon to say that in public. Instead they adopted the method of criticizing whatever the West did, always assuming high moral tones. It was not honest criticism, it was a tactic. It was meant to paralyze. Many people picked up this behavior essentially as a fashion statement without any notion of its genesis and original purpose. And that behavior persists even after the reason behind it has ceased to exist. The Cold War is over.

In a bipolar world it was unusual to have any conflict in which, by proxy or otherwise, the forces of socialism were not arrayed against the reactionary capitalists of the West. In such a world any opposition to the US was, by definition, good and noble. As a guide to politics it is very elegant. It requires almost no thinking or analysis to apply to virtually any situation. Any moron can do it. A lot of morons did. A lot of morons still do.

The trouble is that many people continue to apply this principle to the modern world where the enemies of the West espouse as goals things that even the communists would have thought of as being utterly repulsive.

I forget where I read it but it does seem to fit the times: "What wise men do in the beginning fools will do in the end."

I managed to find some of the unedited Footage of Zarqawi that AQ probably didn't want released Click his picture for the video.

Watching the news increasingly makes me feel like I'm listening to Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, or Hanoi Hannah. And actually, that description is rather unfair to Iva Ikuko Toguri, who went along with the affair rather unwillingly. The journalists by and large do not have a gun pointed at thier heads. I cannot think how the enemy could produce better propaganda than what the MSM does even if they tried. The terrorists own efforts are so clumsy and ham-handed by comparison, that they often drive even thier own supporters away.

Seriously, in previous wars had a US citizen conducted interviews with the enemy under the condition that they only release such proceedings as the enemy desired - which is a staple of CNN coverage and the schtik of Michael Ware - they would have been tried for treason.

In fact, I'd like to know what treason is if it is not in fact providing the enemy with an outlet for anti-American propaganda and then spreading it. America is traditionally tolerant of dissent, but that crime is one of the few crimes for which we've ever convicted Americans for treason.

Look, I know that we live in an Orwellian world were people in power want to define 'patriotism' as 'dissent' and 'patriot' as 'one who criticizes his own government more than others', but for crying out loud the line between dissent and treason has to be drawn somewhere and it seems to me that it crosses over that line when it involves either desiring an American defeat, encouraging an enemy victory, and working with the enemy. I know we are used to letting people say things of the enemy like, "They are freedom fighters...They are minutemen...and they are going to win", and letting them get away with it, but that doesn't mean such a statement isn't Treason.

Morally, perhaps - but technically, no. Treason is defined under the US Constitution rather specifically, as Steven Den Beste explained.

Morally, however, and in terms of our non-legal understanding of the term, celebrim is on firmer ground... though it is always wise not to attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Jk: I'm very aware of how the Constitution defines the term. I do not think that you are going to find much help or defence there.

I would argue that my argument would hinge entirely on the understanding of the word 'adhere'. I believe that it clear that acts of 'aid and comfort' to the enemy (an opponent engaged in hostile acts on US targets in a time of war) have taken place, and the only remaining legal question is whether those acts were taken as a result of 'adhering' to the enemy. 'Adhering' contains the idea of joining to for a prolonged period.

So, IMO, that question can be answered by answering the following:

a) Has the person in question physically joined with the enemy, that is, at the time of the 'aid and comfort' were they voluntarily at the same location as the enemy?
b) Has the person joined themselves to the cause of the enemy or made common cause with the enemy (as an alliance) by saying things that indicate support for or approval of the enemy or the enemies cause?
c) Has this support been prolonged in nature or repeated over a prolonged peroid?

Three out of three is as far as I'm concerned sufficient for a hanging. If you can't agree that all three constitute treason I seriously doubt you capable of providing a coherent test.

In the case of Michael Moore, he escapes on 'a', but not on 'b' (he could hardly have made a clearer statement to an American indicating that he believed the cause of the enemy to be right and just). The question becomes to my mind, was Michael Moore's statement part of a general pattern of similar statements or a one time event in which he merely excercised extremely poor judgement, and necessarily, are 'b' and 'c' sufficient in themselves to constitute Treason.

Reading through the article you linked to, I'd like to point out that Stephen Den Beste is absolutely wrong on this count:

"Aid and comfort" is much more than just rhetoric and moral support. It refers to things like giving significant amounts of money or military equipment to an enemy, or engaging in espionage on an enemy's behalf, or providing safe houses for enemy agents."

If Stephen Den Beste were correct, we wouldn't have charged seven Americans for Treason after WWII for merely providing the enemy with rhetoric and moral support. He then goes on to provide this red herring:

"Expressing opinions strongly critical of government policy, and advocating the idea that said policy is wrong and should be changed, is and must be protected political speech, not treason."

I don't think otherwise. But the fragments of Moore speach I cited don't consist of being strongly critical of government policy, or advocating that said policy is wrong, or advocating that said policy should be changed. They consist of cleaving to the enemy and rooting for his victory. This puts them into an entirely different category than dissent, and they are NOT protected speach. Likewise with CNN's conduct of its affairs under Saddam Hussein by thier own public admission, and likewise with some of Michael Ware's activities by his own public admission. Thier own characterization of what they have done does not describe dissent, but rather adhering to and giving aid in comfort to the enemy for what can only be described as monetary gain.

The rest of Stephen's argument can be dismissed on the grounds that it procedes from there to defend people's right to dissent, which I'm not attacking, and doesn't actually address the topic.

Additionally, here is a far better treatment of the issue than what Stephen Ben Deste gives, and its much more closely aligned with my own thinking.

I should note that the one area in which I would quibble with Mr. Holzer's argument, is that he neglects to mention that about 25% of the 40 or so Treason cases in all of US history have specifically been about people making public rhetoric useful to the enemy. Mr. Holzer must play something of a semantic trick in order to claim that the speech was protected by the action was not. For example, when he talks about the Gillars case, for example, he says 'Axis Sally' was found to "participate in a phonographic recording and cause to be phonographically recorded a radio drama". Virtually everyone here however would agree that recorded speach, or printed speach, or speach in any form is still merely speach and if that speach is protected in one form then its generally protected in all forms. I would argue that the Gillars speach would not have been protected had it been produced on American soil without the overt promptings of a known foreign agent. Someone could not during a time of war take it upon themselves to set up a radio station in the US and be the 'voice of the Axis powers', and engaged in all the sort of speach that 'Axis Sally' made, without it rightly being considered treason.

Granted, the case against any of the people I mention is less clear than say the case against Jane Fonda - who should have been hanged, period - but don't pretend that I'm criticizing people merely for making dissent.

It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity.

In this missive by Eugene Volk he looks at the constitutional ambuigity between the first ammendment protections and treason.

He then proposes a list of possible tests. My test comes closest to his test #2:

'Speech is unprotected whenever the speaker has the purpose of aiding the enemy (and perhaps there's some evidence that the speech is indeed likely to provide some at least modest aid). This
exception would justify punishing any speech that falls within the statutory and constitutional definition of "treason."'

Volokh goes on to criticize this test because of the inherent difficulties involved in crimes of intention (as opposed to crimes of action). I concur. Intention is a horrible standard filled with all sorts of difficulties from the stand point of criminal law. Nonetheless, I think in the case of 'Treason' its an almost unavoidable standard if we want to avoid labeling every trivial act by an otherwise loyal citizen to be capital crimes - and this is precisely the reason that Treason was constitutionally defined in the first place. If the intention of the act was treasonous, then the otherwise trival act takes on a wholly different character, precisely because it reveals we aren't dealing with an otherwise loyal citizen.

It's precisely because Treason deals with an intention and not an action, that America rarely attempts to prosecute Treason and perfers instead to define a narrow range of actions - for example espionage - which are morally treasonous but get around the problems with the legal definition of treason. Once you define the problem as a case of action, rather than a case of intention, then legally it becomes much easier to prove the case.
However, treason itself is intention, and I believe "treason by speech that is intended to help the enemy should be treated the same as treason by action that is intended to help the enemy."

Volokh says in his criticism of test #2, that it is "too broad". By this he means, 'too likely to err [in catch people who are not actually traitors']'. On the fact that prosecuting intention is likely to err, I agree, but its equally likely to err in being too narrow - in that it would tend to let free people who actually are traitors for lack of evidence regarding their internal reasoning. As Volokh states test #2, a defendent can readily agree that all the treasonous actions specified by the prosecution occurred, but so long as he states that it was not his intention to be treasonous he has a defence under the law. A really treacherous person could easily set up this defence by creating documentation of a plausible but entirely false intention. This makes it far too easy for the law to miss real acts of treason. More properly stated, test #2 should be, "Speech is unprotected whenever the speaker has the purpose of aiding the enemy, or a reasonable person should be able to recognize that his speech would be of aid and comfort to the enemy." Of course, this more correct statement only compounds the criticism Volokh makes of test #2 - a fact that I recognize. It's not I think too hard to provide sub-tests specificing when a reasonable person should have known that they were across the line.

For example, where we agree is that test #4 is adequate proof of treason (its a restatment of my first test). I would agrue that this test is a good test, precisely because it passes muster under my restatement of test #2. If speech is made in collaberation with the enemy, then either it was the intention of the person to, in adhering to the enemy, provide aid and comfort to the enemy, or else a reasonable person should know that in so adhering to the enemy, the enemy would recieve aid and comfort. My 'prolonged behavior' test is a similar sort means of providing indirect evidence of motivation where a reasonable person should have recognized the import of thier own actions.

I should note that test #5, if it is not a restatement of test #3 and in fact uses 'employment' to mean 'perform some task for' and not specifically 'for pay', doesn't actually help Michael Ware much either. It would again come down to intention, which would bring us back to test #4 and the logic which proceeds from it.
If it is a restatement of test #3, then I agree with Volokh's argument that it is Constitutionally an odd test and furthermore an impractical one (because treason is treason whether it is motivated by greed or ideology or any other reason).

"It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity."

Stupidity is under the law a mitigating factor - not a defence. There is no such thing as 'Not guilty by reason of stupidity'.

If Stephen Den Beste were correct, we wouldn't have charged seven Americans for Treason after WWII for merely providing the enemy with rhetoric and moral support.

An obvious case was William Joyce, hanged for treason by the British even though he was an American citizen. Joyce assumed British identity as "Lord Haw Haw" and used it to demoralize Britain, to the extent that it was considered material treason against the Crown. His actual citizenship was mere technicality, and in those days they did not dwell on technicalities.

Kurt Vonnegut probably had Joyce in mind when he wrote Mother Night, about an American spy who poses as a Nazi propagandist. The moral of the story is: "In the end, you are what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be." (That's pretty good advice for some people we could name.)

Ezra Pound got away with his life, though Sidney Hook said "Ezra Pound was a great poet, who should have been hanged." We hanged Julius Streicher, but of course we didn't hang Henry Ford, whose anti-semitic propaganda is still taken seriously in every Muslim country in the world. In France, pro-Nazis got lynched by the truckload, not always with a trial first.

I guess the point is that when millions of people are dead and millions more are angry, people take things a little more seriously than they normally would, and they forgive less. As Islamofascism goes nuclear, that's something to remember.

celebrim:There is no such thing as 'Not guilty by reason of stupidity'.

If there were, I think you would have to find Jane Fonda not guilty. I'm convinced that her "treason" - and all previous and subsequent behavior - was motivated by very low intelligence, not malice. If Fonda weren't several rounds short of a full magazine, she would probably realize that Ho Chi Minh wasn't worth spending the last thirty years as one of the most hated people in American history.

Still, under the principle of mens rea, being dumber than hell can be a mitigating factor. And abnormally stupid people can't be judged to have the same moral responsibility as the mentally capable.

But then, in politics you find many varieties of self-inflicted stupidity, which cause otherwise intelligent people to deliberately act like idiots. People ought to be held accountable for that, just like drunk drivers are. Drunk drivers not named Kennedy, I mean.