LOL, if he didn't stay and get locked in a box without trial for years like Manning, he's a coward.
Well, why do people call Mandela a hero? Why do they call MLK a hero?
Because they were willing to face the consequences of their actions, and sacrifice of themselves for the good of others. That's what makes a hero. Snowden demonstrated that he certainly does not have that moxy. As for Manning, he's on trial, and much of the delay has been due to the actions of the defense; so he can't exactly complain about it.
You're just mad because you don't get to see him suffer.
Nope. I'm pissed off because he took massive amounts of TS/SCI information and gave it to the Russians and Chinese, degraded our ability to exercise Soft Power around the globe (hey, there, so-called libertarian, if we can't exercise
soft power in a scenario, which one do
you think we'll reach for?), and aided those who wish to kill our citizens.
Besides, if I only wanted him to suffer, then I would want exactly what is happening to him now. Because what is happening to him now is that he is a pawn, and he is going to be used like a pawn to threaten or force the moves of more valuable pieces, and then sacrificed when convenient to do so.
You're a war hawk that values security over liberty every day of the week
Not really - there are definite places collection shouldn't go. However, I'm also someone who bothered to look into what the programs Snowden has complained about actually do, and realize that this is not one of those. Furthermore, we know now that Snowden isn't motivated by any kind of concern for the liberty of American citizens, because he has released lots of information on programs that were not aimed at and did not involve American citizens. So Snowden no longer gets to wrap himself in that mantle, even rhetorically.
Snowden isn't a hero. He's a fool, an arrogant, self-absorbed, whiny fool. And it says a lot about the intellectual honesty of some movements that they are willing to try to pretend he is a hero merely because they find him convenient to their cause.
He's been extremely discriminatory about releasing documents. If he really wanted to hurt America, he would've done a mass release of the documents and not releasing carefully filtered selections like he has been now.
I would encourage you to study up on how Information Operations are conducted, then. If you wanted to harm America, then you would do
precisely what
Putin is now having Snowden do, which is to have a steady-drip-drip of negative stories, each of which can get their own dedicated news cycles, provoke their own scandals, what-have-you. A single mass dump would have had the vast majority lost in the mix, and America's harm would have been heavily mitigated by the simple inability of humans to pay attention to too many things at once. By spreading it out, you can hurt America in deliberate ways at key points. Do you
really think it was coincidence that a man under Putins' control harmed U.S. relations with its' European Allies
just before Russia made a play for Ukraine?
You also have zero proof whatsoever that he's handed anything to the Chinese or Russians.
:lamo Yeah. Because if there are two nations well known for their respect for personal privacy and unwillingness to engage in espionage against the U.S., it's Russia and China :lamo
Dude, trust me. Whether he wanted to or
not (and I would bet he probably didn't), that stuff is
gone.
Snowden sacrificed his privileged life to inform us about the overreaches of our government. By even your own definition, that's a hero. Apparently to you, however, a hero is only a hero if he gets burned at the stake afterwards.
Hero's sacrifice themselves for the good of others. That's why we call them heroes. Snowden demonstrated quite clearly that he wasn't interested in sacrificing anything - which is why he fled, and why he fled with as much data as he did - to escape the consequences of his actions. :lol: He
really did apparently think that his status as a cause celebre plus his ability to sell information (or threaten to sell information) would be his Ticket. But then he was dumb enough to run to a couple of dictatorships, although one of them (China) was content merely to take the data without using it openly.