According to the affidavit, he told agents that after attending Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004, he was given his pick of where to carry out his terrorist mission.
"Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come to the United States to carry out his jihadi mission," the affidavit says. "Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores."
Hamid is a United States citizen.
As Captain Ed points out, if this isn't treason, it's hard to imagine what would be. But can anyone be charged with treason anymore? It seems so politically incorrect as to be politically impossible. However, as counterintuitive as it may seem, we must maintain the concept of treason if we want to keep the open and free society we enjoy.
As much as certain leftists like to claim otherwise, the United States isn't a police state. Police states assume the disloyalty of their citizens. Heinrich Himmler, for example, thought the German people were naive, easily seduced by the decadence of the West and easily deceived by the treachery of the Jews. In short, they could not be trusted. And so he constructed the massive police state needed to, among other things, keep these simple folk in line.
Historically, the American government has taken a much different view of its citizens. Maybe not so much anymore, but that is a topic for another post. Even given the heroic efforts of the left (and sometimes the right) to infantilize the citizenry, the US government trusts its citizens more than most (any?) other governments.
Citizens are assumed to be loyal. And why not? We make no effort to keep people here against their will. There are no exit visas, no restrictions on taking assets abroad, no threat to family left behind. There is nothing to keep a person here, but their desire to be here.
Furthermore, we may toss out our leaders every 2, 4, or 6 years if we don't care for them. Besides freedom of religion, speech and the press, the First Amendment also guarantees the "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". We assume that citizens will change the system through peaceful means or they will go find a system that suits them better. That' s why we don't need a police state to keep order. Ours is an honor system.
In keeping with that honor system, if a citizen feels so strongly that America is such a force for evil in the world that they must act against it, it is incumbent upon him to renounce his citizenship and depart. If he uses his privileged position as an American citizen to act against America, we must treat him as a traitor. Not in order to eliminate traitors. We never will. But to sustain our system. Our system cannot survive if it includes a category of citizens that may or may not be trusted. If it does, why should our government view us any differently than Himmler viewed Germans? And why should the result be any different? If we aren't responsible and we can't be trusted, why shouldn't we be watched, checked up upon, threatened, intimidated and punished.
Citizenship is about rights and responsibilities. The rights are very important. They are what make American citizenship worth having. But the responsibilities are what hold it all together.
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