The first step towards permanently shutting down dissent in America

Is Tony Blankley talking out of his ass here, or is this a trial balloon being floated out of the White House?

Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times, is a walking museum. His syndicated column regularly retails Soviet-style hymns to the majesty of the state and its Dear Leader, thoughtfully published in pedestrian English prose so as to avoid the necessity of translation.



In his most recent offering, Commissar Blankley opines that investigative reporter Seymour Hersh committed "espionage" by publishing a detailed expose of the Bush administration's plans and preparations for war with Iran. According to Hersh, the administration has been conducting pre-war covert operations inside Iran. Those operations allegedly are being carried out through the Pentagon, rather than by the CIA, in order to avoid congressional oversight. Citing anonymous defense and intelligence sources, Hersh predicts that as many as ten nations might be on the list of possible U.S. military targets.



Many neo-conservative (or, more accurately put, neo-Trotskyite) commentators have dismissed Hersh's account as ideologically inspired speculation. The Pentagon has done likewise. But Blankley suggests, in all seriousness, that the veteran reporter – who compiled an impressive track record with a recent string of scoops regarding Abu Ghraib and related outrages – should be arraigned, and face possible execution, as an enemy spy.



Pontificates Blankley: "Title 18 of the United States Code (Section 794, subsection [b]) prohibits anyone 'in time of war, with the intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy [from publishing] any information with respect to the movement, numbers, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces … of the United States … or supposed plans or conduct of any … military operations … or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy." If found guilty, the accused faces "death or imprisonment for any term of years or for life."



"I am not an expert on these federal code sections," he continues. "But a common sense reading of their language would suggest, at the least, that federal prosecutors should review the information disclosed by Mr. Hersh to determine whether or not his conduct falls within the proscribed conduct of the state." Contending that Hersh's article has a "potentially lethal effect" on the Bush administration's effort to prosecute the "War on Terror," Blankley excoriates the "Washington political class" for its lack of zeal in dealing with the reporter. This reflects "a bad case of creeping normalcy," grouses Commissar Blankley, and because of our indifference we are "sleepwalking toward the abyss."



Before assuming his august post at the Washington Times, Blankley was an attorney and a top aide to disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Thus it's a touch disingenuous for him to affect mystification over the language of the U.S. Code. But even granting that he finds the statute in question ambiguous, there four key words that should clarify the matter: "In time of war."



Here's another critically important legal passage whose meaning is so clear that not even Commissar Blankley can miss it: "The Congress shall have the power … to declare war." Thus states Article One, Section 8, paragraph 11 of the U.S. Constitution. It is Congress, not the president or any of his subordinates, who places our nation in a state of war. As Alexander Hamilton – hardly an advocate of minimalist executive power – put it in a 1793 essay: "It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War."



Simply put, our nation is not legally at war. Congress did not declare war on Iraq, and hasn't taken action of any kind regarding military action against Iran. The Bush administration, like Blankley, affects to find some ambiguity in the constitutional assignment of war powers, but the meaning of the language is utterly plain to honest people of even modest intelligence.



As the Rosenberg case illustrates, those who spy on behalf of foreign power in peacetime can be prosecuted, convicted, and executed as spies. But Blankely isn't accusing Hersh of doing this. He's not accusing the journalist of "communicating with the enemy," but of informing the public about military activities undertaken against a government with which we are not at war. Some who support the Bush administration's "war on terrorism" might contend that the moral difference between these cases is a matter of degree, not kind. But in any case, the legal distinction here is clear-cut: If Congress hasn't declared war, the espionage statute cannot be applied regarding Hersh's writings.



But Blankley, like many Republican-aligned pundits, insists that such constitutional questions have been rendered moot by the extraordinary times in which we live – and that George W. Bush, as the epitome of political goodness, is a man to whom we can entrust exceptional powers. Even if the latter were true, Mr. Bush will not occupy the Oval Office indefinitely, unless he plans to become President-for-Life, which would suit many of his most fervent supporters just fine. But even among such company, Blankley has distinguished himself as an unabashed exponent of a Soviet-style view of state power.

What Blankley is talking about is essentially trying everyone who blows the whistle on presidential misconduct in its foreign policy as spies -- turning investigative journalists into Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.



This is downright chilling, and it's the first step towards stifling all dissent in this country. I'm sorry, folks, but if this is the kind of country you want, where government is not accountable to its citizens, and where dissenters are rounded up as spies for opposing Administration policy, we are no longer living in the United States; we are living in the very Stalinist state that those who defend the Bush Administration still use to describe anti-Americanism. If this is the kind of country you want, then YOU are the real traitors.