OldWorldOrder
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Furthermore your position confuses me. You seem to advocate “martyrdom” as the only avenue of a “righteous” whistleblower, or that only a group united in righteousness should be allowed to blow whistles about government misconduct.
I'm not truly advocating, I'm playing the devil's advocate role. I think most people would righteousness is important when it comes to being a hero. Do you agree?
Anyway, let's walk through it. If Snowden was ideologically driven, he probably wouldn't want to give positive publicity to the nations that he's going to. If he's for transparency, those aren't the places to go. So either he:
#1- Only believes in transparency for Americans/Westerners, rest of the world be damned. Is that someone you would consider a hero?
#2- Believes that the whole world should have transparency, but is being pragmatic and knows he can't do anything to change those places. In which case...why not just be pragmatic and affect change from within, if that's what he wanted. Why do you think he chose not to? I would imagine it's because he knew the lawfully elected government of the United States would- lawfully- veto him and say that it's necessary to keep this quiet to maximize its effectiveness. And he just couldn't bear the people who have the burden of the responsibility of protecting citizens of the US overruling one high school drop out. He thought he was bigger and smarter than virtually everyone else. Very heroic. Are you in support of people taking policy decisions like that into their own hands? Like I said, I'm not big on laws anyway, but are you the same way? You don't care if someone takes situations into their own hands as long as you agree with it?
Personally I am all for transparency in government, however it is presented. In this case a man making public inside information that was not actually “harmful” (unless you buy into the “War on Terror needs every tool in the armory to win” line of B/S) to the workings of our government.
I'm not for transparency at all. I've dealt with the military and intelligence circles for virtually the entirety of my adult life. I understand what can happen when people get a hold of a little but of information. I've seen people trying to kill Americans get a little bit of info and capitalize on it and be much more effective than if they hadn't had it. I've also seen Americans trying to capture or kill people and the smallest of threads can lead them there. Every piece of information can be exploited. This might be some far off thing that happens to other people to you; it's very real and serious to me. You might say "Well, we shouldn't be anywhere where people would get mad at us to want to attack us anyway". If so, we can ignore how naive I think that is and just cut straight to the point: we're already there and nothing is going to stop it suddenly anyway: giving up LARGE details, when even small ones can hurt, just because some fat Walmart employee's wife in Topeka "wants to know" is not something I'm interested in.
So no, I'm not for 'transparency in government' when it comes to classified operations.
And your point on Ellsburg is complete nonsense. The Court was NOT being “lenient in the extreme,” it was acting on the basis of information regarding government misconduct and illegal wire tapping. Had it not been for Watergate and the evidence from that investigation provided to the judge during Ellsburg’s trial he’d probably be just getting released from prison about now with time off for good behavior.
The break in at the psychologist's office wasn't central to the case in general. In was central to the trial in particular. He could've been retried. But they decided not to. Because of popular opinion. You continue to ignore my point about Jim Crow. Is it because we both know that public opinion can sometimes color a trial? OJ Simpson?
People believe a lot of erroneous things about our criminal justice system, but the reality is quite different. The only thing I will give you is the long-shot possibility of jury nullification, but if I were his friend (it would be unethical to offer this suggestion as an attorney) I’d be saying “Have a nice life in Iceland, later dude.”
I'd say have a nice life in North Korea. I'm sure they wouldn't extradite him. Super safe. Weather kinda blows, though.