You keep seeming to believe that he has - in your words - a duty to turn himself in. I disagree.
I believe he had the moral duty to blow a whistle. He did that. But he’s not required to do more or to take a metaphorical bullet for that. I keep seeing people put the onus on Snowden when the proper response - IMHO - is to review the information that he felt was important enough to abandon the life he had built. To continue expecting that he should do MORE and not expect that the federal government should change its ways is - again, IMHO - wrongheaded.
If he believes that the surveillance programs he “blew the whistle” on were unlawful and he had no choice but to expose them publicly, then his obligation is to present that argument in a court of law. If he’s right, the final judgment will bear that out. By placing himself outside the jurisdiction of the lawful authorities, he makes a mockery of the rule of law and suggests that the law doesn’t matter as long as YOU decide the ends justify the means (which, ironically enough, is the same thing he accuses the NSA of doing).
IMO, until he shows a willingness to face justice, he’s no better than Roman Polanski, Ira Einhorn, or any other common criminal who hid behind a foreign flag to avoid the consequences of their actions.
It is illegal for the US Government to torture. Anywhere and everywhere. Period.
And yet they have done it wide and often.
But you are saying they would never do it to Snowden.
HA!
Snowden like anyone would be a fool to rely on any legality or promise by the American government. They have no respect for their own laws and even less than that for common morality or decency. Anyone who trusts them is a fool. Which is what Snowden is exposing.
And if by chance Snowden was in American hands we’d have the same people here defending anything that was done to him up to and including torture and death.
Yes, if he was tortured and killed, I’d start dancing and shouting U-S-A! U-S-A!
We get that you don’t like the US. And that’s fine. But you need to do more than just throw around baseless accusations in order to make an argument. I see no indication that he’d be “tortured” in prison.
On what grounds do you allege that Snowden will be “tortured”? Are civilians in civilian prisons for civil charges routinely tortured? What benefit would the federal government acquire by torturing him? What kinds of torture do you allege they’re planning to use on him? What good would it do to kill him without a trial? In what way has Snowden exposed the government having “no respect for its own laws”? How is it not hypocritical for someone who has no respect for our laws, such as Snowden, to complain that the government supposedly doesn’t? When in the past have Americans cheered for someone to be murdered in prison without a trial? Is there any logic behind your complaints, or do you simply prefer to assume the worst of this country without any proof?
Why do you lie? You know full well that I have defended other policies of the American government.
I certainly do not like governments who spy, torture and generally do not respect Human Rights. And I wish the American government was not in that list.
Baseless accusations? The US government has tortured. A lot. What more do you need? They just get around it by saying it is not torture, or by subcontracting to other countries, or by saying US law does not apply in that case or any other way it suits them. Look what they have done to Manning. Snowden would be a fool to trust the US government. Anyone would be a fool to trust the American government in that respect.
And I despise those who defend what the government is doing.
I’d argue more towards “hero,” but “coward” seems entirely unsupportable to me. He’s made severe personal sacrifices to address what he perceives as an injustice. The cowardly route would be to not say anything, and continue drawing down a six figure income in Hawaii. He chose exile in a foreign country over that. If that still falls short of your personal definition of heroism, fine, but I don’t see how you can possibly view what he did as cowardice.
The idea that he could have best handled this by taking it to court doesn’t even make any sense. Unlike Smapti’s favorite bad analogy, the law Snowden broke is not the law he wanted changed. He’s not arguing that laws against espionage are immoral - I’m pretty sure he supports them in general. The law he wants changed is the one that lets the government spy on its own citizens, pretty much at will. That law is not going to change one way or the other on the outcome of any trial where Snowden is a defendant. And if he hadn’t released the information about the government’s activities to the public, I’m guessing the chances of the contents of what he stole being mentioned in court are about zero.
I’d also like to point out, while I’m at it, that every time Smapti makes his extraordinarily inapt Rosa Parks analogy, he is, effectively, shitting all over the hundreds of black artists and writers and poets who left the US to escape persecution, and continued to speak out about the evils of segregation and racism from the safety of Europe.
Indeed. This is why I don’t get all the love for Harriet Tubman. Once she’d helped slaves find their way to freedom, she should have turned herself in to the slaveholding government. THEN I’d consider her a hero. But fleeing from the law? Coward, I tell you!
To be less flip, there’s a great value to civil disobedience. It sets up a moral contrast between the activist and the government, and it’s a strategy that’s been used to tremendous effect all over the world.
But you’ll find very few of the great advocates of civil disobedience who consider it the only tactic. Thoreau supported John Brown, and I’m unable to find any quotes in which MLK or Gandhi or Mandela condemn nonviolent acts of the sort in which Snowden engaged. Sure, they thought mass civil disobedience was preferable to armed insurrection, and they advocated taking responsibility for one’s actions as a way of showing up the oppressor government–but the latter was a strategic decision, not a moral one.
Actually, it wouldn’t. Any trial Snowden faced would be about whether he committed espionage. The activities of the government wouldn’t enter into it at all. It would be, entirely, about whether he stole information. It would not be about the nature of the information itself.
James Baldwin was a gay man and an African American, who was born in the US in 1924. When he was 24, he moved to Paris, to escape the pervasive anti-black and anti-gay prejudice in the country. While in Paris, he wrote frequently and movingly about the injustice inherent in American social and legal attitudes towards gays and blacks.
Do you think he was under an obligation to have stayed in America while making those statements? Do you think his arguments against anti-sodomy laws (which he had violated repeatedly before he left the country) only hold weight if he was willing to be prosecuted for breaking them?
Except he is, in fact, facing consequences for his actions. He has given up a lucrative career (as well as any hope of ever being employed at any level above janitor for the rest of his life). He’s left behind all of his friends and family. He’s effectively a stateless person, and he’s currently surviving on the mercy of a government whom he knows will throw him into the street once his current value as a political pawn is used up. He’s made enormous sacrifices by any measure already, which automatically places him in a different category than someone like Polanski. He hasn’t made the particular sacrifice you want him to have made. Which is fortunate for you, because if he did, you’d need to invent another justification for not looking at the actual issue he raised.
Sailor, I’m giving you a warning for this post. It is specifically forbidden to accuse another post of lying in Great Debates. Please don’t do so again.
Not to hijack the thread, but I am always amazed that people throw MLK, Gandhi and Mandela together as some kind of “non-violent” group. Mandela advocated violence, was the co-founder of the armed wing of the ANC, and, in spite of some very early flirting with Gandhi’s ideas, was very much a pro-violence-as-a-tool leader.
No, he’s pretty obviously not. He’s pointing out that the idea that the only way to resist an unjust law is by letting yourself be prosecuted by it is a spectacularly stupid concept, and is demonstrating that by comparing it to an extreme example where adherence to your “principle” would clearly be counter-productive.
There have been a lot of posts ON THIS VERY BOARD calling for people to be raped in prison. I would be VERY surprised if there have not been calls on, say, the Free Republic board to have Snowden murdered.
Exactly. John, do you think that if slavery had been less bad than it was, and if Harriet Tubman had been assured of a fair trial and no torture, she should have turned herself in? That’s ridiculous.
You’re sort of right. Mandela did start off nonviolent, but I should not have included him; indeed, I’m curious whether John Mace would consider Mandela to be cowardly for not advocating that the ANC all turn themselves in for breaking the law.
My biggest problem with Snowdon is not that he fled, but that he made absolutely no attempt to fix the system by going thru legal channels. He took the law into his own hands. If you really think we live is such a repressive society, you should be advocating armed resistance. If I believed half of what some people in this thread are posting, I’d have pitchfork in hand as we type.
