Senator Feinstein and the problem of adhering to America’s enemies

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence … the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the baneful foes of republican government.”

George Washington, 17 September 1796

Perhaps the most salient point in the whole debate over Senator Feinstein’s report is the one that has not been mentioned. Feinstein and many of her congressional colleagues are out to wreck the CIA and thereby further propel Obama’s attack on America’s ability to defend itself. But they are always silent on an issue that, if you, like Feinstein, think foreign policy has to do with morality, is directly analogous to the one they are using to try to destroy CIA. That issue is, of course, Israel.

Feinstein’s staged and slobbering moral outrage over enhanced interrogation techniques belies her and her colleagues’ reliably bloodthirsty and always enthusiastic support for whatever Israel’s government wants to do against a Palestinian or any other Muslim. Israel uses harsher interrogation techniques against Islamist prisoners than any used by CIA; Israel intelligence services have murdered Palestinians in Europe; smothered them in the Emirates; stole their land and demolished their homes in a never-ending search for Jewish lebensraum in Palestine; periodically destroyed their social, economic, and educational infrastructures; and generally roughed-up Muslims in a manner that the gods of the pathetically outdated Geneva Conventions would frown upon. Israeli governments also have long supported, planned, and encouraged operations inside the United States to conduct espionage; suborn U.S. citizens to commit treason; control or block media reporting; and smear and arrange unemployment for Israel’s American critics. Added up, these Israel-approved actions must surely amount to something that Feinstein would define as a “stain” on a nation’s character.

But that is not the case. The critical comments about Israel’s behavior made by Feinstein and her ilk in the Congress — in both houses and both sides of the aisle — are virtually nonexistent. Indeed, when Israel engages in these practices, the stern Feinstein gang sends the billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to Israel to cheer on the death the Israeli military is raining down on the Palestinians, and to promise Israel more money, more ordnance, and the passing of more U.S. secrets from their agents in the U.S. Congress so they can kill more Muslims. Perhaps there is a double standard here?

Well, yes, there is, and one that makes it clear that Feinstein and the huge number of her fellow congressional fifth columnists are manifestly more interested in the survival of Israel than in that of the United States. Indeed, the monetary, military, rhetorical, and private aid they provide to Israel to kill Muslims is directly responsible for dead, wounded, and maimed U.S. military personnel and civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the U.S. cities raided on 9/11.  But for Feinstein and her Israel-First colleagues these dead American Marines, soldiers, and civilians are simply the well-worth-it price they are willing to pay protect their country of first allegiance, which is not the United States.

For these Israel-First folks, dead Americans are not even a passing concern when compared to what they see as the “crime” of the United States interrogating terrorists to defend itself against Islamist enemies who are, in a large part, motivated by the absurd, war-causing, and self-defeating relationship the United States has with Israel, one that is based on the rank disloyalty of the huge Israel-First fifth column in the U.S. Congress and, from all appearances, the most wealthy and influential leaders of the U.S. Jewish community.

At base, of course, this is not an Israel problem. Because foreign policy has nothing to do with morality, but with material interests and national security, no one should dare to tell the Israeli people how, when, and with what to defend their country. Clearly no sovereign state — except perhaps for the United States under Obama and Bush — can allow itself to be attacked without responding with overwhelmingly devastating military force. Indeed, it is only constant U.S. intervention in the affairs of both Israel and Palestine that has prevented either from applying this rule of thumb and seeking an end to a war that has been draining both Israeli and Palestinian blood for more than sixty years.

While no nation has a right to exist — not Israel, not the United States, not the UK, not any other nation-state — all have the right to defend themselves to whatever extent and in whatever manner they deem necessary in order to eradicate a threat to their survival. Governments owe this responsibility to their citizens, and those — like Obama’s America and Cameron’s Britain — that do not successfully fulfill this responsibility must be removed by their citizens to ensure the nation’s survival.

If America’s real problem is not the state of Israel, what is it? The answer is disloyal Americans like Feinstein and most of the rest of the members of both Houses of Congress. (NB: I wonder how many are dual U.S.-Israeli citizens?)  By prizing Israel’s security over that of the United States, by attacking and undermining U.S. defenses — like the CIA and border control; and by endorsing Israeli behaviors that motivate the mujahideen to attack America as much as any other single factor, they are knowingly murdering U.S. military personnel and committing Americans to an endless U.S.-Islam war.

The present Feinstein Phenomena is not the first time the United States has experienced a situation in which U.S. citizens are more loyal to a foreign nation’s interests than to those of America. In George Washington’s presidency his administration was plagued by disloyal members of the Republican Party — the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party — who sided with revolutionary France against the interests of the United States. Jefferson and Madison were among the disloyal, and the former schemed with French diplomats and emissaries to undercut U.S. neutrality, to promote attacks by U.S. citizens on the territory of Spain in Louisiana, and to involve a virtually unarmed United States in France’s war with Britain and much of the rest of Europe.

President Washington, with the able assistance of Alexander Hamilton and a mostly loyal and nationalist citizenry, faced down and broke the pro-French fifth column of American citizens by enforcing U.S. neutrality and letting Republican disloyalty become so publicly obvious that Jefferson and the party’s other leaders had to back away from France so their organization would survive. Hamilton, at the time, accurately and succinctly described U.S. citizens who behaved as Feinstein, her congressional colleagues, and influential Jewish-Americans are now behaving as follows (readers should simply insert “Israel” in the place of “France.”) “The man who … shall be the apologist of France and the calumniator of his own Government is not an American. The choice for him lies between being deemed a fool, a madman, or traitor.”

Having listened to Feinstein and her supporters during the past week, it may well be deemed that she and they are all three of the vile miscreants Mr. Hamilton described.

Author: Michael F. Scheuer

Michael F. Scheuer worked at the CIA as an intelligence officer for 22 years. He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden unit, and helped create its rendition program, which he ran for 40 months. He is an American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst.