Why I Love Treason

Someday I will write a long article called "My Plan for World Peace," in which I will lay out easy steps mankind can take to eliminate war forever. Right now I can't disclose these steps, because someone might steal them and bring about world peace prematurely.

However, I can reveal that one part of the peace article will examine what it means, in every country on earth, when someone accuses someone else of "treason." It's this: in almost all cases, accusations of "treason" are actually accusations of "telling the truth."

For instance, in 1995 Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan. There he told the United Nations inspectors about Iraq's efforts in the previous four years to conceal some of their pre-1991 WMD programs. (He also told them Iraq no longer possessed any banned weapons, but that's another story.) He was telling the truth. And according to this fascinating Washington Post article, this of course meant to Saddam's regime that Kamel was "a traitor." Indeed, Kamel actually predicted this at the end of his UN debriefing.

Or there's Mohammad al-Khilewi, a Saudi diplomat who defected to the UK in 1994. He brought with him documents showing Saudi Arabia had funded Iraq's nuclear weapons program during the eighties to the tune of billions of dollars. (This was apparently done with the knowledge and acquiescence of the Reagan and Bush I administrations, but again, that's another story.) So of course the Saudi-owned newspaper al-Hayat explained that Khilewi's activities "smack of outright treason" and that people like him "can only be described as traitors." And obviously there was "an Israeli hand" behind Khilewi's actions, since he was clearly "throwing [him]self into the arms of American-Jewish organizations." ("Saudi diplomat's charges fail to impress Saudi-owned al-Hayat," Mideast Mirror, July 25, 1994. Not online.)

But that's in the benighted dictatorships of the Middle East. In our proud Western democracies, things are different. In the sense that they're exactly the same.

Take Anthony Zinni. Since he was badly wounded in Vietnam and later became a general and the U.S. Chief of Central Command, you might not suspect he was a traitor. But that's how clever the traitors are. Fortunately Bill Luti, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, saw through Zinni's facade. So when Zinni was speaking out before the invasion of Iraq, saying that it might not be 100% easy, Luti was pointed that Zinni was a traitor. Was the hand of the Zionist terrormongers -- sorry, I mean the Saddamist Islamo-fascists -- behind Zinni's actions? Luti was too modest to say, but we can guess.

This brings us to Mordechai Vanunu, free after eighteen years in Israeli prison. Since he told the truth about Israel's nuclear program, we know one thing for sure: he's a traitor.

Anyway, I'm not kidding about "My Plan for World Peace." Watch this space.

(NOTE: Khilewi, Zinni and Vanunu are all admirable people. But Hussein Kamel was a disgusting human being and, unlike the others, was likely motivated to tell the truth by hope for personal gain.)