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Is Edward Snowden a traitor or a patriot?

Patriot, Traitor, or something else?

  • Traitor (Elaborate)

    Votes: 12 25.0%
  • Patriot (Elaborate)

    Votes: 21 43.8%
  • Other (Elaborate)

    Votes: 12 25.0%
  • I don't know

    Votes: 3 6.3%

  • Total voters
    48
  • Poll closed .
Did George Washington defect to Russia, where presumably he's singing his guts out? I missed that part of history.

He was a criminal and traitor.

You are embracing a police state.
 
You can be a patriot even while the state brands you a criminal. You should know that from a depth of American history.

Says the guy from Canada.
The man is a criminal. Theft of information is just as big a deal as if I stole a truck at work.
Its still a crime and due to the fact that US secret info was what he stole, he is a traitor to his nation.
I hope he is found, brought back, given a fair trial and if convicted, sent to the gallows.
 
Absolute unequivocal nonsense. I really expected more from you than that. The man took his secrets and left for Russia! What is there about treason you don't understand.

As for spying, I don't give a crap. If they stop another 9/11 by listening to phone calls, good for them.

If we can stop another columbine by confiscation of guns it is woth it.

We have too much freedom here.
 
You know that's bull****. You honestly think that he had only two alternatives open to him - Russia or Gitmo? How about France, that never extradites anybody? Or any number of other countries who don't give a crap about the U.S.? There was only one reason for him to go to Russia.

Personally, I'd torture his worthless ass if I had the opportunity, but I'm not the U.S. Government.
 
He was a criminal and traitor.

You are embracing a police state.

No, he wasn't. But if that's how you really feel about Washington, then maybe this country isn't for you.
 
If we can stop another columbine by confiscation of guns it is woth it.

We have too much freedom here.

You go much further than I would. I'm happy to be able to go to a restaurant or movie without the danger of getting blown to bits. If that means the NSA listens to phone calls, I can live with that.
 
You know that's bull****. You honestly think that he had only two alternatives open to him - Russia or Gitmo? How about France, that never extradites anybody? Or any number of other countries who don't give a crap about the U.S.? There was only one reason for him to go to Russia.

Personally, I'd torture his worthless ass if I had the opportunity, but I'm not the U.S. Government.

You should work for the secret police. We will be abducting people like Stalin did soon.
 
You go much further than I would. I'm happy to be able to go to a restaurant or movie without the danger of getting blown to bits. If that means the NSA listens to phone calls, I can live with that.

Safery is far better than liberty.

We dont need privacy or guns.
 
Safery is far better than liberty.

We dont need privacy or guns.

That is a very bizzare, and lame, attitude, IMHO.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

This was written by Franklin, within quotation marks but is generally accepted as his original thought, sometime shortly before February 17, 1775 as part of his notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly, as published in Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818).

A variant of this was published as:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
This was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759); the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson, but Franklin did claim responsibility for some small excerpts that were used in it.

Benjamin Franklin - Wikiquote
 
As the question asks, is Snowden a traitor, patriot, or something else in your eyes? Why or why not?


Snowden told us the truth about something the gov't had continuously lied to us about. It is not certain that what the gov't is doing is legal. When you catch the gov't in a lie, they always attack the messenger. I consider him a patriot of the highest degree. I feel great sympathy for his plight and wish him good luck. The gov't has been lying to you and I and Grandma. I don't think that is OK under these circumstances. I think the Terrorism threat is highly overrated to profit the Intelligence Agencies.
 
I agree, but it appears many on the right value following authority over liberty. If Snowden is imprisoned we will be like Stalin Russia in one decade.

We are on the precipice.

So you feel that each person may now freely pick and choose what classified material may be released?
 
So you feel that each person may now freely pick and choose what classified material may be released?

I feel that if you complain about tyranny in government why would you want to imprison somone for whistle blowing tyranny.

We dont really want liberty here. We have two sides arguing over the nature of the tyranny.

Some want government some want religious.
 
If we can stop another columbine by confiscation of guns it is woth it.

We have too much freedom here.

No, and no we dont.
Columbine or anyother criminal shooting does not trump my 2A rights.
And we are losing freedoms every day.
 
No, and no we dont.
Columbine or anyother criminal shooting does not trump my 2A rights.
And we are losing freedoms every day.

Exactly if Snowden is imprisoned we all lose liberty.
 
So you feel that each person may now freely pick and choose what classified material may be released?


It is certain that the USA is using classification to hide law breaking, embarrassment, duplicity, atrocity, and a large number of items that are just being concealed from the taxpayers eyes. Obviously, it is a flawed system that needs independent review, but intelligence agencies will insist on keeping it in-house for the same reasons listed in the first sentence but will constantly parrot National Security and Terrorists. When law breaking, atrocity, etc. are revealed, the Citizenry must respond by supporting the person seeking the common good, the patriotic whistleblower. If you don't, you're just saying, "may I have another."
 
It is certain that the USA is using classification to hide law breaking, embarrassment, duplicity, atrocity, and a large number of items that are just being concealed from the taxpayers eyes. Obviously, it is a flawed system that needs independent review, but intelligence agencies will insist on keeping it in-house for the same reasons listed in the first sentence but will constantly parrot National Security and Terrorists. When law breaking, atrocity, etc. are revealed, the Citizenry must respond by supporting the person seeking the common good, the patriotic whistleblower. If you don't, you're just saying, "may I have another."

I can see some of your point but there are avenues to "blow the whistle" to your congress critter or perhaps those on the House/Senate intellegence committees. There is ample light being shined on this (and similar) programs within congress now. The unilateral decision to leak classified data directly to the public (and world in general) is not a logical "first step".
 
As the question asks, is Snowden a traitor, patriot, or something else in your eyes? Why or why not?
He exposed massive overreaches of our government. He's a hero, and a patriot.

When you choose to break the law, you are a criminal.
And yet something being a law doesn't make it just. If the government were torturing children in dark rooms, and you knew about it, would you keep it to yourself because you don't want to become a criminal by revealing it?

I can see some of your point but there are avenues to "blow the whistle" to your congress critter or perhaps those on the House/Senate intellegence committees. There is ample light being shined on this (and similar) programs within congress now. The unilateral decision to leak classified data directly to the public (and world in general) is not a logical "first step".

If he leaked it to anyone unauthorized in the government, he'd be guilty of the same charge. How can you report wrong-doings that are classified? Only the people in charge of it can even know about it, and they're the ones in charge of it, so they already know about it, and will now be pissed that you're a liability.

In my view, Snowden is neither a traitor nor a patriot - had he disclosed the information while remaining in America, a true act of civil disobedience in order to shine a light on government misdeeds, he may have been a patriot, but by fleeing the country he lost that moral high ground.
Many would agree, but you can also be judged by what you do after breaking the law. Snowden isn't making himself look better.


So he would've had to let himself get burned at the stake for you to consider him a patriot? Really?
 
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Unless there is later indication that Snowden profited from his actions, I see a man who sacrificed his life for his country.

Had he remained in America, under our draconian "Patriot Act" he might have been buried underground in a box for the rest of his life. He certainly wouldn't be allowed in open court since our furtive agencies have too much to lose.

I hope he is given refuge and can live as normal a life as possible wherever he ends up.

Our government has become increasingly powerful and evil. I doubt this will change anything but you have to try.
 
Snowden is a traitor. Three weeks before the USS Abraham Lincoln deployed in August 2000, my office - the Security office - got a phone call from someone with a foreign-sounding voice who said that when we pulled into port overseas, they would blow up a ship next to ours. We pulled in to Dubai in early October - we were nervous and kept an eye on everything, but nothing happened. Four days after we departed Dubai, the USS Cole was bombed by a boat that pulled up next to it. In other words, that person knew something...and if we'd had PRISM then, not only would we have found the individual on short order, but we'd have found all those he had contact with...and one of those who helped plan the bombing of the Cole turned out to be one of the 9/11 hijackers. PRISM could have prevented 9/11, if we'd had it then, and by extension could have prevented the decade of right-wing neo-con insanity (and 5000 American military deaths and 100K+ Iraqi deaths) that followed.

Likewise, Bradley Manning is a traitor. He's not on trail because of the video of us killing a reporter - he's on trail because he released 250,000 diplomatic cables, each and every one of which had the potential of either exposing agents and/or contacts, or exposing how we react to certain situations, and what assets we may or may not have.
 
I can see some of your point but there are avenues to "blow the whistle" to your congress critter or perhaps those on the House/Senate intellegence committees. There is ample light being shined on this (and similar) programs within congress now. The unilateral decision to leak classified data directly to the public (and world in general) is not a logical "first step".

A congressmen on TV admitted he gets these types of "whistleblower reports" weekly. Going to a congressperson does nothing. So what would the next logical step be in your opinion?
 
A congressmen on TV admitted he gets these types of "whistleblower reports" weekly. Going to a congressperson does nothing. So what would the next logical step be in your opinion?

Point taken, but was that even a first step taken in this case?
 
Absolute unequivocal nonsense. I really expected more from you than that. The man took his secrets and left for Russia! What is there about treason you don't understand.

As for spying, I don't give a crap. If they stop another 9/11 by listening to phone calls, good for them.

Then you are an authoritarian person who hates civil and human rights, as simple as that.

This "national security" nonsense to justify the most blatant violations of Western values is right from the Nazis' playbook, and people who swallow it will swallow it in any random other case of violation too. And no, this is not godwinning anything. In this case, it is 100% true and absolutely appropriate.

A government that will break the law to spy on the private communication of its citizens will randomly arrest people too, will deny their people fair trials, will enact labor and death camps too -- unless the people stops them. And no, "fighting a foreign enemy" is no excuse (it wasn't valid either when the Nazis used that in 1933).
 
He exposed massive overreaches of our government. He's a hero, and a patriot.


And yet something being a law doesn't make it just. If the government were torturing children in dark rooms, and you knew about it, would you keep it to yourself because you don't want to become a criminal by revealing it?



If he leaked it to anyone unauthorized in the government, he'd be guilty of the same charge. How can you report wrong-doings that are classified? Only the people in charge of it can even know about it, and they're the ones in charge of it, so they already know about it, and will now be pissed that you're a liability.





So he would've had to let himself get burned at the stake for you to consider him a patriot? Really?

Spot on! Couldn't agree more.

I'm actually deeply disturbed how many Americans buy this "national security" BS rhetoric, even when it's about serious violations of most basic Western values -- and then, the same people have the nerve of calling Europe "socialist" or "tyrannic".
 
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