Contra Cold War Redux: 6. 'Treason, Treason!'
'This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO...'
‘The jingo nationalist is always the first to denounce his fellow countrymen as traitors.’—Alfred Duff Cooper, Talleyrand
‘One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.’—George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
‘Some folks are born, made to wave the flag / Oh, they’re red, white, and blue / And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief” / Oh, they point the cannon at you…Some folks inherit star-spangled eyes / Oh, they send you down to war, Lord / And when you ask them, “How much should we give?” / Oh, they only answer, “More! More! More!”—Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Fortunate Son’
Tulsi Gabbard is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve who served multiple tours of duty in Iraq as a member of the Hawaii Army National Guard. She is a former Congresswoman from Hawaii (the first Hindu and the first Samoan-American member) and former vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (a position which she resigned in 2016 to protest the collusion between the Clinton campaign and the media which WikiLeaks exposed). In 2020, she was a presidential candidate in the Democratic primary and dutifully endorsed Joe Biden when she ended her campaign.
On 24 February, Lt. Col. Gabbard said, ‘This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.’
Now, see how this bona fide American hero (with impeccable idpol credentials at that) for the slightest dissent from the pro-war groupthink of American journos and pols—but an opinion that is, as you have just read in Part 4, shared by actual experts as opposed to mediocre pundits—is not just subject to civil disagreement, but denounced as a ‘traitor,’ insulted as a ‘coward,’ and told to ‘throw your Army uniform out’ and ‘resign your commission and go home to your handlers in Moscow.’ This is the way that I would talk to the aforementioned neo-Nazi Americans who were radicalised by the Azov Battalion and were plotting domestic-terrorist attacks here—like the white-nationalist mass-murderer in Buffalo, New York, who bore Azov symbols.1 That is not the way that I would talk to a combat veteran repeating what our own CIA Director reported when he was stationed in Russia!
More recently, Lt. Col. Gabbard released a video calling for the USA to take the lead in negotiating another ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in order to dispose of dangerous pathogens in American-funded Ukrainian labs.
‘Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda,’ replied Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney, a Red-Party US Senator from the Beehive State. ‘Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.’ Adam Kinzinger, a pro-war Red-Party US Representative from the Land of Lincoln, chimed in, ‘Actual Russian propaganda, Traitorous.’2
How dare Sen. Romney, that vulture-capitalist and chicken-hawk who has never served (he protested in favour of the Vietnam War but deferred the draft multiple times through the con-turned-cult Mormon Church) call this war veteran ‘treasonous’? No, really, how dare he? Does he have any idea what he is saying? ‘Treason’ is, according to the Constitution, a capital crime punishable by death!
For one, the accusation does not even make sense. Russia and Ukraine are at war, but Ukraine is not the USA. Ukraine is not even—thank Eirene!—a member of any formal military alliance with the USA. So, how in the hell does Sen. Romney accuse another American citizen and war veteran of treason for supporting a ceasefire between two foreign countries at war? Is she ‘levying war’ against the USA? Is she giving ‘aid and comfort’ to another country with which the USA is at war? This is the constitutional definition of treason, Sen. Romney and Rep. Kinzinger, which the Founding Fathers wisely circumscribed, having firsthand experience with the British policy of using treason as a catchall crime to persecute personal and political enemies of the Crown. As Benjamin Franklin, the presiding genius of the Constitutional Convention, stated in support of an amendment narrowing the definition of treason, ‘Prosecutions for treason were generally virulent; and perjury too easily made use of against innocence.’
‘As treason may be committed against the United States, the authority of the United States ought to be enabled to punish it,’ James Madison, the Founder known as ‘The Father of Constitution’ wrote in Federalist No. 43. ‘But as new-fangled and artificial treasons, have been the great engines, by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free governments, have usually wrecked their alternate malignity on each other, the Convention have with great judgment opposed a barrier to this particular danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.’ For all their star-spangled rhetoric, Red Staters like Sen. Romney and Rep. Kinzinger are closer to George III than George Washington.
For another, even if somehow the USA and Russia were at war, as Sen. Romney and Rep. Kinzinger so clearly desire, in what way is calling for a ceasefire in order to prevent an outbreak of potential deadly pathogens a capital crime punishable by death? It is the outbreak of those pathogens which would ‘cost lives,’ Sen. Romney and Rep. Kinzinger, not a ceasefire.
Last, but not least, by what right do Sen. Romney and Rep. Kinzinger accuse Lt. Col. Gabbard of ‘parroting false Russian propaganda’? On the contrary, American officials like Victoria Nuland have acknowledged the existence of such labs in Ukraine and have admitted that they are concerned for their safety. The fact that a US Senator can get away with baselessly accusing another public figure of ‘parroting false Russian propaganda’ exemplifies more than just how unaccountable our political class has become and how dysfunctional our political culture has become. It also exemplifies how the bipartisan RussiaGate conspiracy theory has enabled pro-war American journos and pols to label any piece of information that clashes with their pro-war agenda as propaganda. RussiaGate may be dead, but its effects on the public discourse are undead.
‘Senator Romney, please provide evidence that what I said is untrue and treasonous,’ responded Lt. Col. Gabbard. ‘If you cannot, you should do the honorable thing: apologize and resign from the Senate.’ Needless to say, Sen. Romney will neither respond to Lt. Col. Gabbard nor resign, because unlike her, he has no honour. To paraphrase John Randolph of Roanoke, ‘Every patriot, not the pseudo-patriot, not he who wishes to ride on the surface of the billow, inflated by his own breath—every real patriot approved and honored her conduct.’
I shall go further. Sen. Romney’s behaviour is not just dishonourable, but arguably disloyal. If anyone is ‘treasonous,’ it is an elected official putting the national security of a foreign country above that of his own country. How many American boys and girls, Sen. Romney, are you willing to sacrifice so that the borders of Ukraine as continually redrawn by the Communists may be preserved? Why, Sen. Romney, are you so invested in preserving the legacy of Lenin (the founder of the first sovereign Ukrainian state), Stalin (who annexed Ukraine’s westernmost territories), and Khrushchev (who attached Crimea to Ukraine)?
Why, Sen. Romney, is the proposition of a ‘ceasefire’ in a war between two other countries tantamount to treason against your own country? Are you afraid, Sen. Romney, that one of these ceasefires could result in peace between Ukraine and Russia?
Why, Sen. Romney, is peace between Ukraine and Russia so fearful to you? Could it be, Sen. Romney, that the conflict between Ukraine and Russia has been in your ideological interest and in the financial interest of your donors all along, and that the sudden outbreak of war has been a boon for you both? Could it be, Sen. Romney that you know what Lt. Col. Gabbard is saying is, in fact, true, and—in a repeat of the cover-up of the Covid ‘lab leak’—is trying to prevent it from getting out that the USA has been funding Ukrainian laboratories with potential weapons of mass-destruction?
All of the above are more plausible to me than that Lt. Col. Gabbard, who enlisted in the military in 2003 and has served ever since, is a traitor.
Lt. Col. Gabbard and Sen. Romney respectively exemplify George Orwell’s useful contradistinction between the seemingly synonymous (and oftentimes interchangeably-used) words ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism.’ ‘Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism,’ argued Orwell. ‘Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved.’ Indeed, the word ‘nationalism’ (from the Latin natio, meaning ‘birth’) did not exist until the late 19th century, whereas ‘patriotism’ (from the Latin patria, meaning ‘fatherland’) entered English in the early 17th century with the same meaning that it had since Roman times. Orwell defined nationalism as, firstly, ‘the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled “good” or “bad,”’ and, secondly, ‘the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.’ Patriotism Orwell defined as ‘devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.’ As Orwell put it, ‘patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally,’ whilst ‘nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.’3
When Samuel Johnson told his biographer, James Bowell, that ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ what he meant was what we mean by ‘nationalism,’ but he did not yet have that word for it. (As Boswell hastened to explain, ‘he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.’)
When David Frum wrote his now-infamous National Review philippic against conservative critics of the Iraq War, ‘Unpatriotic Conservatives,’ he no doubt believed that he was patriotic, though how he defined patriotism better defined nationalism. Indeed, the quotation from Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming wherewith he opens his essay and which he apparently believes is prima facie unpatriotic—‘I respect and admire the French, who have been a far greater nation than we shall ever be, that is, if greatness means anything loftier than money and bombs’—would only offend a nationalist, not a patriot.4
Someone else who clearly perceived the contradistinction between patriotism and nationalism was Adolf Hitler, who although an Austrian bore no love or loyalty to his native country, believing as he did in the unification of the Germanic nation amongst several states (the Volk) into a single Germanic state (the Reich). ‘I was a nationalist,’ he wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘but I was not a patriot.’5
The defamation of Lt. Col. Gabbard brings to mind the example of George W. Bassett, an abolitionist from Ottawa, Illinois, who conscientiously and with conviction opposed the Civil War. According to Bassett, even if the war ultimately emancipated the slaves (about which he was reasonably sceptical), by replacing the principle of consent of the governed with force of arms, it would also ultimately enslave all freemen whether white or black. ‘Bassett was an old-line Jeffersonian radical,’ according to historian George M. Frederickson in The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. ‘Through his eyes the cause of the North looked like the cause of centralized power against all the traditional ideals of American democracy.’
In one of his pamphlets, ‘A Discourse on the Wickedness and Folly of the Present War,’ Bassett responded to the accusations of ‘treason’ which the Romneys of his day leveled against the Gabbards of his day:
It has been seriously questioned whether the merits of this war could be fully and freely discussed even in this community. But I have not failed uniformly to repel such a slanderous insinuation against my long cherished home. And God forbid that I insult my present audience by suppressing one iota of relevant truth and thus impeach the moral honesty and courage of my hearers. I will not imply that it is possible for this community to strike down, or to ‘hiss’ down the great American right of ‘Freedom of Speech,’ though publicly exhorted to it, from a desk once sacred to truth, morality, and pure religion.
I propose now candidly and faithfully to scrutinise the real object of the present war, with the motives which sustain it, and thus determine its moral character and the duty of every man in regard to it.
If, in the progress of my argument, I shall be led to speak plainly and reproachfully of the acting ministers of our government, you will remember that ‘faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.’ You will consider well the difference between loyalty and patriotism—between hostility to the true principles of the government, and opposition to the acts of the administration. You will not forget that nearly all of the enshrined patriots of the world’s great temples of freedom have been branded as rebels or executed for disloyalty. You know that the most servile and mercenary of characters have ever won the highest degree of contemporaneous applause and prosperity by their ready and supple loyalty to the predominant power.
Washington and Hampden, with their illustrious compeers, were branded as rebels; Emmet, Russell, and Sidney were executed for disloyalty, while Jeffries and Claverhouse ‘et id omne genus’ of servile tools of despotic power, have enjoyed the luxury of the royal smiles, and secured the emoluments of governmental patronage.
I have failed duly to sympathize with the muse of history, or the charge of treason has been the most honorable of historic eulogies. No wise and beneficent administration of government ever found treason a formidable antagonist. The very charge of treason has always implied something rotten in Denmark. If a government can not stand without the gallows or the block for its own citizens, it can not stand long at all. They are the emblems of aspiring tyranny.
I love my country. I love her free institutions. I will go to the full extent of my capacities to sustain the honor of her flag. But when her false or incompetent ministers dishonor that flag by making it the emblem of despotism, either of personal slavery, or political and national subjugation, I always have, and I always will protest against the desecration in the name of a free and glorious constitution, in the name of a revolutionary ancestry, and in the name of unborn generations.
I am certain that Sen. Romney would, if he knew who Bassett was—which I am equally certain that he does not—call him a traitor, too, but therein lies the point. There will always be those authoritarians who, like Jezebel, cry, ‘Treason! Treason!’ whenever their authority is challenged. Like Jezebel, too, they condemn themselves with their own mouths. Ahab had his Elijah; Jezebel had her Elisha…and Sen. Romney may profit from their example.
Next: ‘7. Ukraine’s Unworthy Victims’
Previous: ‘5. Crimea & Russia’
The white-nationalist mass-murderer from Christchurch, New Zealand, who also bore Azov symbols, had actually visited Ukraine and had made plans to immigrate there. ‘In the context of the white-supremacist movement globally, Azov has no rivals on two important fronts: its access to weapons and its recruiting power,’ Time Magazine wrote in an article about the online radicalisation of the killer.
On ‘The View’ (the famous ABC talk-show and window into the mind of the Affluent White Female Liberal, or ‘AWFL’), the hosts, doing their best impressions of FOX News circa 2003, endorsed Sen. Romney and Rep. Kinzinger’s accusations against Lt. Col. Gabbard as ‘treasonous’ and ‘traitorous.’ ‘Tulsi Gabbard is being accused of spreading Russian false-flag propaganda,’ according to Whoopi Goldberg. ‘They used to arrest people for doing stuff like this…and I guess now, you know, there seems to be no bars.’ Ana Navarro pronounced Lt. Col. Gabbard a ‘Russian propagandist shilling for Putin’ and a ‘foreign asset for a dictator,’ and suggested that the Department of Justice ‘investigate’ her. ‘I think Mitt Romney’s absolutely right,’ commented Alyssa Farah Griffin, who claimed that ‘what Tulsi Gabbard is spreading is actually helping Putin get away with criminal acts against innocent Ukrainian civilians.’
If ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ from the American Civil War is a perfect unironic statement of nationalism, then Mark Twain’s parody of it from the Philippine-American War is a perfect ironic statement of nationalism:
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the Launching of the Sword; He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored; He hath loosed his fateful lightnings and with woe and death has scored; His lust is marching on!
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps; I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps; His night is marching on!
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel; As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal; Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel; Lo, Greed is marching on!”
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat; Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat; O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! Be jubilant my feet! Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch, With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch; As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich; Our god is marching on!
Twain appended the following footnote to the line about ‘legalizing the strumpet’: ‘In Manila the Government has placed a certain industry under the protection of our flag.’
David Frum started out on the Red Party as a speechwriter for Pres. George W. Bush and author of the book The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. He has ended up on the Blue Party as a critic of Donald Trump from the right, regularly appearing in the press to argue that The Donald, unlike Dubya, is insufficiently moralistic and nationalistic. Mr. Frum is the same man that he was in 2002 when he wrote the infamous ‘axis of evil’ speech, but the Blue Party has strangely changed into the Red Party of Mr. Frum’s ‘axis of evil’ speech, except this time around the war on terror will be domestic rather than foreign.
I would never dare compare Mitt Romney to Adolf Hitler, who are as different from each other as Dolores Umbridge is from Lord Voldemort. Hitler was a veteran of the First World War who was badly wounded and decorated for bravery, whilst Sen. Romney is a draft-dodger and saber-rattler. Hitler was a masterful speechwriter and speechmaker who led a totalitarian revolution not with force of arms but with the force of words, whilst Mr. Romney reads speeches written by others in a rhetorical style that is best described as oleaginous and platitudinous, and is best compared to ‘running an AA meeting.’ Mein Kampf has been cast into the dustbin of history, whilst No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, has been cast into the literal dustbin. Hitler was a genius, however evil, and a ‘great man of history,’ whilst Sen. Romney is an empty suit and party man—with occasional indulgences of his petty vanity—who journos and pols will verbosely eulogise but whose legacy will not outlive the shelf life of the fish wrapped in the papers printing his obituaries. Sen. Romney, unlike Hitler, has not yet caused any world wars or committed any race exterminations, although he is doing his best to change the former.