"Unprecedented synthesis:" Hybrid War IS War

"Hybrid warfare is a pernicious form of aggression that combines political, economic, informational, and cyber assaults against sovereign nations. It employs sophisticated strategies deliberately designed to achieve objectives while falling below the target state’s threshold for a military response. These tactics include infiltrating social media, spreading propaganda, weaponizing information, and using other forms of subversion and espionage.”
General H.R. McMaster

The Constitutional definition of treason, lawyers and legal scholars say, is "aiding and abetting an enemy during war."  Since America is not at war, they argue, we should stop calling Trump and his syncophant Republicans "traitors." Their words and actions may be reprehensible, such as acting outside normal channels of communication and chain of command in the Ukraine affair, even unconstitutional, but they are not treasonous. Having been corrected several times, I've taken to calling them "traitors to Rule of Law." 

In reality, however, if we have to stick to a strict constructionist view of the definition of treason, we are indeed in a war.  And Trump, Barr, Pompeo, Pence et al, and McConnell and elected Republicans now running around defending the illegitimate president against impeachment, are indeed traitors.  

Russia is at war with the United States. No, it's not an armed conflict, boots on the ground, hand-to-hand combat, guns blazing, bombing American targets, destroying and taking land. It's a new form of war, the 21st century version. It's called HYBRID WAR. It's the war that Russia is waging against the US with the goal of dividing Americans against each other and against our government;  undermining democracy; weakening the EU, NATO, and post-World War II alliances;  smashing our standing in the world.

blazingcatfur.com

Gen. H.R. McMaster, a PhD historian, brilliant, forceful, fired by Trump because they disagreed, gave the best definition, worth reading word for word: 

"Hybrid warfare is a pernicious form of aggression that combines political, economic, informational, and cyber assaults against sovereign nations. It employs sophisticated strategies deliberately designed to achieve objectives while falling below the target state’s threshold for a military response. These tactics include infiltrating social media, spreading propaganda, weaponizing information, and using other forms of subversion and espionage.”

Gen. Mattis, another General who served Trump and then went out the door, is also an expert on Hybrid War, in fact one of the pioneers. As early as 2005, he and Lt. Col. Frank G. Hoffman, who was one of the first to use the term, called it "an unprecedented synthesis."  In future wars, they wrote, in an astonishing prediction of what we see happening now:  "An enemy of the state may employ conventional weapons in very novel or non-traditional ways. Hybrid war may might feature attacks against US critical infrastructure or transportation networks. It could involve an electronic take down of military and financial computer networks."

Russia is using all of these strategies against our country. These include augmenting and amplifying  the Republicans' anti-democratic tactics of gerrymandering, voter suppression and interfering in our elections and the electoral process itself, even at the state level.They include unceasing social media assaults, massive disinformation campaigns. The Russian bots and trolls, we have been warned, are out in force spreading lies and vicious propaganda, weaponizing information to create chaos, to divide Americans, to polarize our politics beyond measure, to undermine our government. These strategies fall just "below the target state's threshold for a military response," but they are weapons of war nonetheless; they are "forms of subversion and espionage," as Mattis and Hoffman noted, and they are being used effectively against our country.  

This is the war in which the Trump regime is engaged. This is the war Mitch McConnell and disgraced Republicans, who are putting politics before country, are aiding and abetting. This is the war they are defending by their rank abuse of power, their obstruction of justice, the war they are doing nothing about, not even allowing a vote in the Senate on House-passed election security bills.  They are hiding Trump's crimes, covering them up, another form of aiding and abetting. 

It is a massive cover up. A cover up of the facts and truth they know, many of them through direct intelligence briefings. It's a massive cover up, extensive and deep, beyond anything America has ever witnessed in our history. 

The Republicans in Congress, every one defending Trump and doing Putin's bidding, hiding and covering up Trump's crimes, are Enemies of the State.  They are committing treason by enabling Russia's hybrid war against the US, and by allowing it to continue with impunity. Many scholars, experts and commentators, looking at the carnage, believe that Putin is winning this war.

Some Sources:

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/did-trump-commit-treason-in-front-of-putin-watch-for-yourself-1.6288334

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-trump-treason-letter-20180723-story.html

https://www.gq.com/story/treasonsplainer

https://francurrocarlog.blogspot.com/2018/04/what-is-hybrid-warfare-foreign.html, for further definitions and sources.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-treason-clause-seldom-invoked-despite-threats

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-troll-russia-disinformation-campaign-trump-2017-10?fbclid=IwAR38U9I6CAf-hgt7BEFhebwyP_Gac2GGJsNGKrkLNxxs3BrnNOpbUomFznE