St. Paul on Edward Snowden

St. Paul said that now we see as in a glass, darkly. I find this an excellent prescription for reading the news. For instance, the news about Snowden’s revelations. According to the papers and the Bush – I’m sorry, the Obama, my mistake, sometimes it is so hard to tell one from the other – administration, Snowden’s revelations have harmed the security of the American people, which is protected by the intelligence services. Now, by the simple method of inversing this often repeated phrase, we get to the truth. Did Snowden arm the taliban and the Islamic mercenaries that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s? No, the CIA did. Did Snowden create the international network of paths through which Islamicists were able to spread globally? No, the CIA did. Did Snowden give a visa to Omar Abdel Rahmen, the organizer of the first attack on the WTC in 1994? No, that was an employee of the American embassy in Sudan who, all things considered, was probably bowing to a CIA suggestion, as the so called Blind Mullah had been a collaborter in the great freedom fight in Afghanistan waged by the CIA.Did Snowden distribute pamphlets and give training sessions on how to slip into a superpower to blow up things and cause havoc?  No, that was the CIA, the superpower was the Soviet Union, and the CIA training was about how easy it was to make weapons of mass destruction from scratch to make the superpower suffer.  The CIA was a necessary condition to the attack on 9.11.

But there is so much more! Did Snowden help to overthrow Qasim in Iraq in the Ramadan Revolution of 1963 – an excellent year for the assassination of foreign leaders - and install the Ba’athist party there? No, that was the CIA. Did Snowden help overthrow Mossadegh in Iran, thus paving the way for the return of the Nazi loving Pahlavi family and turning the Iranian population into one that mistrusted and despised Americans? No, that was the CIA.  

This is an easy game to play. Snowden has played no part in putting American lives at risk. He has played no part in creating a permanent war state in the US. One can neither blame, to speak in purely American terms, one of the deaths on 9.11 or one of the casualties of American forces in Afghanistan or Iraq on Snowden. A good case can be made that they are all, absolutely all, traceable to intelligence activity that was secret and vetted by our supposed leaders.

Obviously, the sensible thing to do is to pardon Snowden and imprison our intelligence services. That is, if the real purpose is the security of the American people. But I strongly suspect that the leadership considers the American people to be a “low use” population, as the AEC used to put it about people who were in the path of high amounts of radiation that followed  above ground tests of atomic bombs in Nevada.

That isn’t the purpose, though. Their games are made for their organizations.  Our leaders are in it for themselves, with the same moral credo that any neighborhood Mafia capo would recognize. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Admiral this, General that – all are essentially bound up in the ethics of that capo.

Don’t follow leaders, watch parking meters.