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Title: Hey, Let’s Release a Traitor! [Pollard]
Source:
WeaponsMan
URL Source: http://weaponsman.com/?p=24068
Published: Jul 22, 2015
Author: Â
Post Date: 2015-07-22 08:35:28 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 3506
Comments: 66
Jonathan Pollard, caught on surveillance video stealing documents. American traitor Jonathan Pollard is closing in on the backstretch of his stint in Federal Prison. “Wait,” you say. “He was sentenced to life in prison!” Well, just like the way the Administration can release a bunch of terrorists from Gitmo to resume their lives of crime, or swap some of them for a traitor, to reward the turncoat, or release another bunch of drug and gun criminals to play Santa Claus in July — all these things really happened, we are not making them up — they can release a traitor and spy if they like. And the word is, that the US Department of Justice will reward the spy for his 1980s betrayal by kicking him out of his long-term rent-controlled apartment in the Crowbar Condiminiums on the 30th Anniversary of his arrest. Pollard must have been a true puzzlement to the Administration. A spy with the simplest motivation of all, greed, he mostly stole things that were no direct use to his Israeli spymasters, but which they could trade for things they needed from other US enemies, like Russia. That was, in fact, what his Mossad handlers directed him to steal. And Pollard’s mercenary motivation was clear for several reasons. First, he admitted it when caught, so that’s a bit of an indicator. Also, Israel wasn’t his first stop. He’d tried two other foreign powers, only to be turned down (the Russians and Chinese both thought he was a really clumsy FBI dangle), before setting his sights on Israel. Since his arrest, he’s rediscovered his previously more or less lapsed Judaism and conned a lot of Israeli society into believing that the mostly Russian-related secrets he stole were Middle Eastern intel that the US was not sharing with Israel out of a lack of trust (gee, we can’t imagine why that might obtain). He has a huge fan club, and an army of lawyers and helpers that have been trying to spring him for decades, and might finally get their wish. One of their complaints has been that Pollard, who’s only 61, is in ill health and is likely to die within months. (Hmmm, last time we heard that it was about a Libyan terrorist that the British government released due to a “imminently terminal” diagnosis… the guy lived for years). He’s being released, not out of humanitarian concerns, as far as we can tell, but because hey, he was a cancer attacking America, a traitor; and that’s something that the whole Beltway can get behind. The Jonathan Pollard of 2015 probably believes himself he was an Israeli patriot, but the Jonathan Pollard of 1985 would have sold the stuff to Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad just as gladly, if they’d had an embassy (give Washington time, they might) and he’d thought they had any money. His supporters argue that he did not deserve life in prison. We agree. What he deserved was what civilized men always understood as The Spy’s Reward. Still does. Of all the claims about Pollard, the most controversial is the one that he spied for money, and not for Jewish/Israeli patriotism. An excellent overview of the Pollard case by the investigator who took his first confession is Capturing Jonathan Pollard by Ronald Olive, and it recounts Pollard’s extensive drug use, grandiose behavior, and attempts to spy for several nations including Australia (! p. 43-44). He also shared extensive classified and codeword information with a CBS reporter, Kurt Lohbeck, and offered Lohbeck a chance to share with him in the profits of selling one classified document to Pakistan (with whose intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, Lohbeck already had a relationship). Lohbeck declined, but he and his editor, Sam Roberts, who discussed Pollard at length, apparently never considered turning Pollard in. After all, they could use the secrets he provided. Azoulay, Orly, and Eichner, Itamar. Reports: US Justice Dept. will not oppose Pollard’s release. YNet News, 19 July 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4681431,00.html Olive, Ronald. Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013. Shalev, Chemi. Jailed spy Pollard on track for November 21 release – unless something goes wrong. Ha’aretz, Jerusalem. 17 July 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/.premium-1.666604
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 35.
#1. To: TooConservative (#0)
Do OUR spies deserve death when captured?
I dunno. That rapidly turns into an argument about situational ethics. I take it you have a strong opinion about it.
I do. God only authorized men to kill men who kill. Spies do not kill. They steal secrets and say what should not be said. To kill a spy is murder, and people who murder other people are thrown by God into Hell. Men can bellow "Our STATE is more important than the life of a sneaking WORM!" And such men are idolators - for they pretend that their emotional service given to an idol of their own hands - their "state", authorizes them to trample the laws of God and ignore God's prohibition of killing men. It does not. Men have no right before God to kill men for spying. None. When they do it, they are murderers and damned to Hell unless they repent. But because they are idolators who believe their states, who have no arms or legs or minds, which are figments of their imagination, made by their own hands, deserve service that supersedes the laws of God, men who kill spies feel justified. They never repent because it makes sense to sacrifice spies to their idols. Whoever executes a spy is a murderer. He has thrown himself into the lake of fire unless he repents. But he will not repent because he is an idolator who worhships his state over God's law. No death for spies.
To kill a spy is murder, and people who murder other people are thrown by God into Hell. Depends on the secrets. If the said information was classified to protect lives of others, then that spy by stealing and sharing them is complicit in murder if used by an adversary to kill.
That's true, but there are greater nuances. Is the cause itself that the secrets defend defensible?
If what you mean is, do we execute people for selling the secrets themselves or the consequences thereof? IMO it has to be a trial to present evidence that death has occured and the persons involved in the theft of secrets complicit. Also a degree of pre- meditation as well. Meaning, they most likely knew their actions would lead to another person's death. Being fair, Pollard probably knew or did not care what he sold would harm others to even death. Bradley Manning OTOH, Another factor is the difference in combatant lives vs. non-combatant lives. For example. If secrets were sold which expose vulnerabilities in a nation's port of entry procedures and this leads to a nation or terrorist organization to kill non-combatant civilians, then that spy should be considered for capital punishment before a jury of his/her peers. Finally, if we oppose governments from policing/prosecuting murder, violent crimes and theft then we promote lawlessness. Which leads to more murder, violent crime and theft. As you have pointed out in the past, not all nations throughout history have done this well and some have abused this power. The solution IMO is not to cede to disorder and lawlessness but to uphold the law.
Uphold the law, yes, but the law we must uphold is that law of God, and not merely "the law" that men make up as an exercise of power. There is a great deal more human law that we should not uphold than divine law to which we are bound and ought to uphold.
There is a great deal more human law that we should not uphold than divine law to which we are bound and ought to uphold. I understand your position and given the Second Coming of Christ has not happened yet to establish true justice on earth...We have flawed systems. Some overtly evil, some clandestinely such, and some striving to be just based on known absolutes of God. All administered by mankind who is fallen. There will be outright evil intentional actions and there will be people trying to pave the way to hell with good intentions. Through the various spectrums of efforts of man, none will be perfect. That does not give society and mankind license to just dump social order and allow chaos and lawlessness abide. We are instructed as Christians not to bother society in their attempt to deal with evil and lawlessness. I know you are not advocating lawlessness and chaos. However, your utopia of God's Law established and Truth and Justice supreme on earth won't happen worldwide until the Second Coming of Christ. Until then, the Kingdom of Heaven is within the Christian to be followed, preached and for us to be beams of light showing others the path to Christ the King. Again for the record...I do not believe you advocate lawlessness and chaos. IMO some of your earthly 'corporate' widescale ideas for establishing peace and justice would work for a short time and then BOOM---Kobayashi Maru--Animal Farm all over again. The framework you propose with the use of civil government will be immediately corrupted by fallen man in pursuit of power, wealth and death.
I know you are not advocating lawlessness and chaos. However, your utopia of God's Law established and Truth and Justice supreme on earth won't happen worldwide until the Second Coming of Christ. Until then, the Kingdom of Heaven is within the Christian to be followed, preached and for us to be beams of light showing others the path to Christ the King. Again for the record...I do not believe you advocate lawlessness and chaos. That's all very well. The problem is this: individually God will hold you accountable for your sins. God prohibited men from killing other men. He didn't make it optional. If a state COMMANDS Christians, as a matter of law and order, to denounce Christ, and it is a time of war, does the Christian do it? Does he say "Well, it's a fallen world, and the state authorities have said that I must denounce Christ. If I don't, and other Christians don't, the unity of the state will be lost and then the country may well be destroyed, and if THAT happens the chaos will be terrible - Animal Farm stuff. Therefore, in this fallen world, God will understand if I denounce Christ"? Does the Christian say that? Why not? Because God judges, and God demands that people remain obedient EVEN IF it means death and destruction? Denying Christ is a trivial thing compared to killing another human being. Because one can just go through the motions of the denial in order to preserve life, order and the peace, but not really mean it. It's a lie, but a lie is a lesser evil than the collapse of the social order and mass starvation and Animal Farm, is it not? (Or isn't it?) There's good precedent in the Bible that God understands people pretending to worship idols but not really meaning it. Naaman the Syrian was healed of leprosy by the prophet Elisha, and Naaman acknowledged that the one true God was the God of Israel. He said that he would thenceforth worship only the God of Israel, but he said that he would nevertheless have to bow down to the idol of his master, the eastern king, because he was his vizier at court. Elisha did not tell him he must not, and his leprosy did not return. When you kill a man, you've committed an act that cannot be retrieved. One can always change words and acts, but if you've destroyed another living soul, you cannot undo what you have done. The first (and only) physical punishment offense for Gentiles given by God was for shedding blood. "He who sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed." So, I guess we stand at a fork in the road. The one path says that, in order to preserve the social order, respect the authority of commanders, not divide the nation in war, and not bring about all of the calamities that come from men being "utopic", that if the rulers demand a renunciation of Christ, or perhaps (as in Canaanite cities) participation in group pansexual rituals, or killing other people in spite of God's ban, that God understands all of these things, in a fallen world, and forgives all of it as the lesser evil. It's a lesser evil to deny Christ, participate in orgies, and kill other men than to risk the social order. That's one path. The other is that the social order the requires denial of God, sexual license and killing requires defiance of God, and that these snares are specifically placed by Satan to force this very conflict, in which a man must choose between God and the idol of "social order". Faced with such a thing, men not only MUST break the law, but they MAY attack their own state in self defense. The state may call them traitors, but God will reward them with a crown. But those who went along to "avoid the worst" - the breakdown of the social order - in fact chose the path TO the worst by preserving a social order that were better destroyed, even though that means mass human death. For all men die, but it is better to die sinless in a famine from a social collapse, than to die having just shed blood and denied God in the service of an idol. Those are the two paths. It is my belief that the second path is the only one that is certain to result in a positive judgment. In the first case, to lie in order to preserve life but to internally hold to the truth MAY be forgiven by God as a weakness. But once a man starts to overtly participate in orgies and to kill people, the forbidden fruit has actually been eaten, and I do not believe that without full repentence he can be saved.
#46. To: Vicomte13 (#35)
By your reasoning a society should not defend itself from evil. That would actually produce more bloodshed and the blood of the innocent would be on our hands when we had the means to defend the innocent. Allowing lawlessness and chaos leads to mass murder, and the oppression of the weak, the widow and orphan.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestWhat he deserved was what civilized men always understood as The Spy’s Reward.
#3. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Do OUR spies deserve death when captured?
#4. To: TooConservative (#3)
(Edited)
I dunno. That rapidly turns into an argument about situational ethics. I take it you have a strong opinion about it.
#9. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative (#4)
I do. God only authorized men to kill men who kill. Spies do not kill. They steal secrets and say what should not be said.
#12. To: redleghunter (#9)
Depends on the secrets. If the said information was classified to protect lives of others, then that spy by stealing and sharing them is complicit in murder if used by an adversary to kill.
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#12)
That's true, but there are greater nuances. Is the cause itself that the secrets defend defensible?
#19. To: redleghunter (#17)
#26. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative, CZ82, liberator (#19)
Uphold the law, yes, but the law we must uphold is that law of God, and not merely "the law" that men make up as an exercise of power.
#35. To: redleghunter (#26)
We are instructed as Christians not to bother society in their attempt to deal with evil and lawlessness.
Replies to Comment # 35. Those are the two paths.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 35.
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