Does this sound like treason to you? *UPDATED*

Treason is a pretty simple concept.  Here are a few choice definitions:

A violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.

Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.

1. a crime that undermines the offender’s government
2. disloyalty by virtue of subversive behavior
3. an act of deliberate betrayal

Have you got all those definitions firmly in mind?  Now read this, from Amir Taheri, reporting in the New York Post:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops – and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

When I was a young adult, one of the absolute worst charges Reagan’s political opponents leveled at him was the claim that, while he was running for President against Jimmy Carter, he reached an agreement with the Iranian revolutionaries that they would not release the American hostages until after the presidential election — something that would reinforce the American voter’s impression that Carter was weak and inept.

In the 1990s, both the House and the Senate investigated these charges and found nothing.  Nevertheless, amongst Democrats and those further to the Left, mention Reagan’s name and this charge comes up as yet another example of the Left’s ability to believe simultaneously that conservatives/Republicans are yokels with two-digit IQs and evil manipulators whose savvy enables them constantly to double-cross naive Democrats.

There is no doubt in my mind that Obama grew up knowing about this charge against Reagan, and saw  it as yet another example of Reagan’s and the Republicans’ myriad calumnies.  Heck, I don’t even doubt that Obama dismisses the official debunking and believes it’s completely true that Reagan engaged in this heinous act.  Or, let’s put it another way — an act that was heinous when a Republican committed it against a Democrat.

I also have absolutely no doubt that Obama used Reagan’s alleged negotiations with the hostages as an inspiration for his undermining the American government, not during a “crisis,” but during an actual war.  Nobody in the Justice Department is going to do anything about it, of course.  Nevertheless, we can at least call ’em like we see ’em — if the Iraqi Foreign Minister spoke the truth (and this is not merely an inchoate conspiracy theory, but something straight from a possibly reliable horse’s mouth), Obama committed treason, plain and simple.

And this is the man that approximately half of the country wants to see as Commander in Chief?  Someone who will betray his own country and keep American troops at risk for an enterprise he believes is unnecessary simply for his own personal aggrandizement?  If we needed any further evidence that Obama is unfit to walk through the door of the White House, this is it.

Others blogging:

Wizbang
Instapundit
Hot Air
Lucianne
Brutally Honest
The Anchoress

UPDATE: Charlie from Colorado made such a good point in the comments that I think his point and my response need to be moved up here, to the post:

Charlie (Colorado):

Bookie, this is the one case where the definition of a crime is established in the Constitution:

Article III Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

I think it would be pretty hard to claim this was an overt act of levying war or of adhering to the enemies of the USA.

Now, if you wanted to suggest it was a violation of the Logan Act I’d be right there with you.

Bookworm:

Interesting point, Charlie. Did Obama give aid and comfort to the enemy? From his own point of view, I think he did.

My take on the War — and this particular time in the War — is that our troops our in Iraq trouncing the bad guys. Obama’s point of view is now, and certainly was back in July, when he made these statements — that the war is a failure, and that our troops are there as target practice for some amorphous “insurgents.” (I say amorphous because the Democrats keep denying that these are Al Qaeda people and they’ve assured us that Islam is a religion of peace.)

Because Obama’s view is/was that our troops our in the equivalent of a turkey shoot, with them being the turkeys, when he specifically requested that those same American troops be left to the depredations of those amorphously identified insurgents, Obama provided aid and comfort to the enemy. More American turkeys for them to shoot could only be a good thing from their point of view. (Mind you, I’m looking at the Iraq theater through the Obama prism.)

Likewise, by bad mouthing our administration abroad and implying that it is ineffectual, Obama is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Certainly, we’ve taken heart from captured communications between Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers in which the writers speak badly of their own command and troops.

And you’re right, of course — Obama’s also violating the Logan Act.