The Iran letter by the R-47s technically isn’t treason, but only because they’re just encouraging war, as opposed to undermining ongoing war efforts. But since lives are in the balance either way, what they’ve done is, unmistakably, treasonous.

Even during what we regarded as Bush 43’s war excesses, we Democrats still wanted him (and his designees) to represent us in international negotiations. This is in accord with both letter and spirit of our Constitution.

Apparently, the most powerful faction in USA consists of people who just want to start the next war. As a nice old Jewish American, I’m particularly disgusted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alliance with America’s neo-cons. Iran is clearly their prime target. It is a country three times the size of Iraq, and it’s reasonable to predict that results of a war against Iran would be at least three times as bad.

What if Iran’s nuclear capability was just ambiguity for the sake of deterrence? Israel officially continues “neither to confirm nor deny” that it has nukes, and was widely admired for that for decades. (Everyone knows now that only USA and Russia have bigger arsenals.) Ambiguity would be in accord with Iran’s insistence that religious scruples prohibit its actually building a nuke.

I don’t necessarily believe that, or trust the current Iranian regime, but the agreement in process would be about inspections as opposed to trust.

The P-47 was an American fighter aircraft in WWII. The R-47s are also a war machine. Have they violated the now newly famous 1799 Logan Act? Probably not, since it applies clearly to private citizens, more dubiously to currently serving elected officials. Thus, while not explicitly a crime, the letter they’ve sent is, ethically, criminal.

I hope their constituents remember in the next “See ya at the polls” moment.

James Silin

Whitefield


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