There are numerous individuals who hold positions of power in the U. S. government who hold dual citizenship with another country. I, personally, am not even comfortable with the notion that an American citizen could also hold citizenship in another country and I am absolutely opposed to those individuals holding positions of power or influence in our government. Yet there are numerous individuals who hold powerful positions and also have been granted high level security clearances. Why, our own Justice Department is headed by an individual holding citizenship with another country, as is Homeland Security, and the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. The Pentagon comptroller that lost $1 trillion dollars holds dual citizenship, btw, he also lost another $2.3 Trillion.
Before 2002 I was saying our governemnt had been overthrown in a coup in November 2000. If that proves to be the case, does our Constitution provide a remedy?
http://www.viewzone.com/dualcitizen.html
Dual Citizenship -- Should we be worried?

Nice site.

"Your finger length can predict how you do on tests at school, if you're homosexual, and many other personality traits!"

and... Evidence for Alien Life... etc.... etc...

So: went through that article. Funny thing is most of the people named in the article don't hold dual citizenship.

Secondly, wonder why it worries only about dual citizenship with Israel.

BTW, there are U.S. dual citizens who also hold citizenship in Canada, Mexico, Britain, and many other countries.

http://www.richw.org/dualcit/faq.html

I've heard that the US has a special agreement with Israel permitting people to be dual US/Israeli citizens. Is this true?

No. It just happens that Israeli citizenship law does not require renunciation of one's old citizenship in order to become a citizen of Israel.

In this regard, Israel is really treated no differently than Canada, the UK, France, or other countries which permit people to become citizens without giving up their old status.

[snip]

There's other aspects to that FAQ. You could ban U.S. dual citizenship, but you'd be affecting thousands of people, most of whom are not Israeli-American.

BTW, 59 other countries worldwide allow dual citizenship, with little or no exceptions.

In a globalizing world, there are going to be more and more people with multiple citizenships.

I am a dual citizen Canadian-American. Which citizenship do you think I should drop? Obviously since I hold dual citizenship in your world view I'm not to be trusted.

My mother was born in the former Soviet Union, now Ukraine. I guess I could claim Ukrainian citizenship.

My father was Jewish. I guess I could claim the right of return and claim Israeli citizenship.

How untrustworthy am I? I guess I should have not gotten the security clearance I had in the army, dual citizenship being such a bad thing.

Funny how the only thing that article only worries about Israeli-American dual citizens. Is the author worried that somehow Jews are less trustworthy than others?

Give me a break. Spare us obvious antisemitic crap.

I don't have a problem with Americans who hold dual citizenship, I have a problem with people who hold dual citizenship who are in positions of influence regarding government activities of both countries. Especially warmongering countries.
No, I am not antisemitic. Not in the least. But I think you probably would not have a great deal of difficulty finding many Jews who are opposed to what the Israeli government has become. I find it curious that some people accuse those who are critical of the Israeli government, of being antisemitic. I started to, and probably should have, added to my post that this thread is not about Jews, but about the Israeli government. Isn't there a difference?

Ok, maybe I should have been a bit more clear.

I wasn't accusing you or post of being antisemitic.

However, the article you linked to was clearly antisemitic. That was what I was referring to when I said " Spare us obvious antisemitic crap."

Oh, as for Dov S. Zakheim, he wasn't the guy who lost $2.3 trillion. He's the guy who was tasked to track down the $2.3 trillion. As for his being a dual citizen, the only sites I've seen that refer to that seem to be hate sites. These are the same sites who twist the finding what happened to $2.3 trillion into losing $2.3 trillion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_S._Zakheim

I don't. But that article wasn't about the Israeli government. It was about Americans who may have lived in Israel up to 20 or 30 years ago.

On the other hand, I wonder why an article that complains about dual citizenship mentions a number of Jewish people who are not, in fact, dual citizens of both Israel and the U.S. In several cases, it just seems to assume that about the person. I find that strange.

Secondly, if it is concerned with dual citizens that hold government positions, why it isn't concerned with those who hold dual citizenship with other countries, like Mexico, or Canada?

In my opinion, person's in power, duel Citizenship or NOT, are more likely to be influenced by their ideals rather than that of their Citizen status!

Perhaps in America more governmental influence is caused by DUAL citizenship in say the UNITED STATES and the country of Halliburton or Stockmarketonia or WallMartville.... than any of those smaller countries....

I've posted on this subject before. I don't believe that Americans with conflicted allegiance should serve in US policy making positions, as a matter of principle.

As an ideal, people who serve in policy making positions are public servants of the citizens of the US (considered in aggregate) and policy should be made for the greater good of citizens of the US.

Factors which distort policy from the greater good of citizens of the US should be avoided. The most commonly encountered factor is personal wealth of policy makers. Beyond personal wealth, loyalties held by policy makers, or belief systems (religious or otherwise), or corporate/industry affiliations all distort public policy.

We are familiar with how religious beliefs can distort public policy, and how corporate or industry factors (combined with globalization) can distort public policy. But loyalty to foreign states can do so also. Loyalty to foreign states doesn't require citizenship. One can be loyal to a foreign state because one has family or friends there. Or one can be loyal to a foreign state because of some ideology one finds appealing, like communism, or whatever.

My personal view is that US policy relating to the middle east is too biased towards Israel, and that bias does not serve the greater good of US citizens well. Just my 2 cents. Are there inappropriate factors contributing to that bias? IMO, yes. There are oil industry factors, and there are religious factors, and there are factors relating to Zionism and/or political factions (like Likud). I wish there were a test we could devise to determine whether elected officials and public servants actually believed that their job was to serve the greater good of US citizens. I'd like to see those with conflicted loyalties recuse themselves. But of course, probably few serve for that reason, and few would recuse themselves. So I guess we're stuck in the mud.

So now you're going to go beyond citizenship to loyalty oaths.

You know about those, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_oath

I believe that people can serve the citizens of this country, and have concern for other people in the world. The planet is not a zero sum game.

If you have evidence that they are putting the interests of another country above America's - fine. I do believe the Constitution names treason, sabotage, and espionage as punishable offenses and I agree they are. Certainly one should not be working with or for enemies of the United States. Or even espionage for a friendly state. I absolutely would oppose Jonathan Pollard holding office, if he were to ever get out of prison.

Short of that, having concern for an allied state should not be a disqualifier for public office.

Otherwise, the Kennedies, who have long been friends of the Irish republican movement in Northern Ireland, should also be disqualified.

Oh god, this crud again.

Is there no end to it?

KKKarl has dual citizenship here and in Germany, that's why he loves Hitler

It was in the movie Bush's Brain...

Personally, I'm more annoyed that Australians can come her and work here indefinitely. They're taking jobs away from American actors. And nobody can convince me the Aussies are taking jobs American actors won't want to do.

that makes me want to spit fire!

Loyalty oaths are given every time someone says the Pledge of allegiance. IMO, they're meaningless. "Public servants" misrepresent themselves all the time, often while enriching themselves. Part of the point of my post is that there IS NO effective way to determine whether an official actually considers him/herself to be serving the public good.

What does it mean to serve the public good? I guess one needs to know what the public good is, first. That's the first thing that is missing. Ideally, there would be a compilation of the relative priorities of each individual. Based on that "survey" or "database", relative weights would be given to different priorities, and policy set to advance those priorities. That's not impossible; rather we just don't do it. or anything believably like it. But if we did, you could imagine that it might represent "the greater good" target better than any other measure we use.

That's not the way policy is set. Instead, the policy setter is usually a black box. Any advocacies getting into the black box are balanced according to whatever, with no visibility, nor accountabiliy. Sometimes, "ear time" is sold to the highest bidder. It's a power and money game. Then the theory is supposed to be that, like free market capitalism, that leads to the best of all possible worlds, to service of the public good. I think that's ridiculous.

I'm not saying that US policy makers shouldn't have concern for all the citizens of the world. I'm actually saying that the way we make policy does not demonstrably serve the greater good of US citizens because we do not develop a target "greater good" grounded in any kind of reality. In our system today, it is relatively easy for small but powerful constitutencies to obtain disproportionate influence on policy.

Agreed.

Can we afford Israel? I'm not enamored of the industrial military complex and what it represents. It is a corrupt, shameless beast that feeds and waters the bushes and like minded folk.
http://www.google.com/search?q=U.S.+subsid...lient=firefox-a
U.S. subsidy Israel - Google Search
And where did Georgia get their recently used weapons? From Israel, and Georgia denies Israel's claim to have frozen those sales
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080805/115771963.html
RIA Novosti - World - Georgia denies Israeli arms trade freeze reports

It's just all one big get rich scheme funded by U.S. tax dollars.

Back around 2002, or so, Bob Fertik at Democrats.com had some research results on his website (at that time forums only, no blog) about top administration officials who held dual citizenship with Israel and their political conflicts. With the new website and blog in 2004, I think all those archives were left behind. I personally don't have any conflict of a religious nature with this issue, as I feel this is about strategic geography. A place for us to camp in the ME so we can meddle in ME affairs for the benefit of corporate interests. What are the odd that Israel and Palestine would have come to a peaceful agreement long ago if the U.S. didn't keep funding and agitating that conflict...and making our strategic military ally dependent on us?

Funny. All the equipment I saw on the news looked like old Soviet era equipment. I don't think a Russian site would be trustworthy when it comes to Georgia.

Neither would the American media be trustworthy on the subject of Georgia.

Madeline Albright is not a born US citizen, I believe she was born in the Czech Republic. I saw her interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-Span and she said when Clinton had big top meeting she was not allowed to attend.

Personally I don't have a problem with dual citizenship but I do when it comes to the higher up more government jobs, like working directly with someone in the Cabinet. But hey vetting works just fine the FBI does great work look at Sarah Palin.