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I personally am waiting for MIGF to tell us that Israel is a unique example of Western liberal democracy in the Middle East, they are a brave underdog who appeals to the US voter and also that it's America's way of attoning for the terrible anti-semitism the Western world has always shown and thus opposing Israel is taking an anti-semitic stand against liberal democracy. Which is always fascinating coming from a guy who spends all his other posts talking about the importance of political realities and realpolitik and how politicians can't and shouldn't take some blanket moral stand on an issue. I still can't quite tell if it's some particular political persona he's adopted, a hilarious satire on the essential hypocrisy of insider thinking in Washington regarding foreign policy or just taking strongly contrarian positions for the sake of eliciting responses from other posters. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 29, 2015 08:15
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I'd say 30 years in prison for selling secrets to a relatively neutral nation is a reasonable deterrent by itself. I think Pollard's motives were self-serving but in terms of harm caused I don't think there's anything to be gained by differentiating betwen motives for disclosing state secrets. How many people here would be arguing just as strongly that Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden should get the chair or spend the rest of their lives in Federal prison without parole? I think what they did was far better motivated and possibly less damaging overall but if the long prison sentence is a deterrent then you'd have to apply the same standard. If the goal is to prevent people comitting the crime at all you can't differentiate punishments by motive and after losing most of your best years in prison and being essentially unemployable there's no reason not to keep you in prison. If you really want to go for permanent punishment I'd be more in favour of passport confiscation combined with a basic living allowance provided by the state. It would be cheaper than keeping someone like that in prison but it's basically condemning them to a subsistence level of existence. It also give them the freedom to meet their family and actually live a real life though.
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Jul 30, 2015 06:44
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In the context of the Cold War Israel was pretty close to neutral, I used the phrase to differentiate from selling secrets to a nation that is actively antagonistic or at war with your own nation where I can see greater desire for the strongest possible deterrence. Ultimately I can't see a workable justification for treating this crime as different from what Manning or Snoweden did and I couldn't in all conscience endorse the death penalty or life imprisonment for either of them. I don't think legal cases should be decided on an ideological basis.
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Jul 30, 2015 16:04
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