Why would Obama
seek to extradite Snowden for his revealing American secrets? Did Snowden seek to sell secrets that would
harm America and its alliances? Not
really. Apparently he was only trying to
enlighten a world without much exposure to truth, justice, and purpose. He sought no gain of any kind discernible. So has Obama drunk the Kool Aid, too? Does he believe he has a higher purpose of
necessary secrecy a la George W Bush?
Has Obama, too, succumbed to the Elmer Gantry inspired King’s X
invocation of the dreaded “National Security” reason for eroding our
freedoms? Is Obama one of them (fagetabout
the truth; my mind is made up) who know what’s best for us? Would he continue to destroy our freedoms
under the Constitution just because Bush set the course for lawlessness in
wiretapping without legal authority or any real purpose in protecting Americans? Looks that way.
So is Obama becoming a clone of George W. Bush? Has he become intoxicated with the power of the presidency (Ahem, Unitary Executive) to just keep on kicking the Big Brother can down the road as our freedoms evaporate one by one? Is his wanting to exact revenge on Snowden just a knee jerk reaction to Snowden’s insulting the United States by revealing secrets that show just how two-faced our government really is? And how deep go the lies? Is the embarrassment the office of the Presidency feels really the main issue here? Did Snowden’s wanton breaking of confidential information that he signed in blood to keep to himself under penalty of law become the main issue here? Finally, did Snowden attempt to extort or sell his data to any unfriendly country for power or gain of any kind? No. So why is Obama angry and obsessed with extraditing Snowden back to the United States? Good question.
Did Snowden reveal or compromise the identity of any of our secret CIA agents like the Bush White House did by leaking the undercover identity of Valerie Plame? Remember her? She was the wife of Joe Wilson who had debunked Bush’s assertion that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy yellow cake Uranium from Niger. You remember the gunslinger president Bush who scared us into the saddest war in all our history? Wilson proved Bush’s wild assertion false and based upon bogus British Intelligence. But Bush, against the advice of CIA Director George Tenet, proceeded use the bogus information. In his State of the Union Address Bush succeeded in scaring America us into a war with Iraq.
So someone in the White House blew Wilson’s wife’s cover to get even. At the time Valerie Plame was working for the US government as an undercover agent to expose terrorists. So whoever blew the whistle risked real damage to the United States’ ability to defeat terrorism by offing our own agents and publishing their names. I was outraged that Americans yawned at the whole thing instead of demanding justice at the time. If that ain’t treason then what is? I think the Plame was shameful. It makes the Snowden affair wane pale yet nobody went to jail over our own government exposing one of our own agents on her attempts to curtail terrorists from harming us. Yes, Virginia, the Valerie Plame affair was many times more serious and potentially damaging to our country than anything Snowden revealed. Funny how right and wrong issues follows partisan politics, eh? In the immortal words of Friedrich Nietzsche “When you look into the abyss it also looks into you.”
I have been laboring under a delusion for some time. I thought Obama liked whistle blowers. Guess not though when the shoe is on the other foot and negative information is waved in the face of the world under Obama’s watch. It is most certainly a Goose and the Gander scenario. If you can praise whistle-blowers who reveal GOP bads, lovely. But when someone airs your own dirty linen watch out. Is this the purpose of our government? To get even with those who reveal our secrets no matter how petty the secret is or how harmless the consequences truly are? Have we become a nation of making it all look good so that nobody’s toes get stepped on? Or do we still value the truth? And hearing the truth at all costs? Where o where is the “transparency” Obama promised us on the campaign trail to the White House?
When the shoe of truth fits who but the dark and evil forces seeks to hide under the rocks? If the NSA needs to break the law with Obama’s blessing by spying on any and all Americans without proper FISA Court approval where do they all get off? And why wasn’t Bush punished for doing so for the entirety of his second 4 years as president? And why isn’t Obama held accountable for his continuing the unlawful practice, including enhancing and strengthening the Patriot Act that he decried and promised to defang? Why is Obama acting so secretive a la Richard Nixon about all these “secrets” hidden purposefully from the public eye? How can the public be informed if you conduct all of your presidential business in secrecy? Even when it is not called for in the interest of National Security or any other trumped up sacred cow of a reason given? Why would Obama not follow through and support an informed citizenry as he promised, not a secret society or dictator state where people are misinformed and kept in the dark? What’s up with that? And Mr. President, can’t you see where these dark roads and alleys are leading us?
Your failure to close Guantanamo is the cause of a lot of “I told you so’s” by Neocons attempting to say something intelligent for a change. And you are enabling them and the Tea Party to gain credibility by your acting in secrecy and by sending captives to lawless states where by decree they are deemed to be “enemy combatants.” Some justice. No trial by jury, no habeas corpus, or right to a phone call. Just “poof” without a pause, without a sound you are history. And you have not champion to help you. Not even the one who said he would close down Guantanamo if elected.
When one thinks about the wanton destruction of Internet freedoms that have occurred under your eye, Mr. President, it is truly incredulous. Your surveillance orders you gave to the NSA are the most draconian yet. What used to be a fun place to surf in all innocence is now being monitored, slotted for content, and categorized together as data that is supposed to mean something, but for the most part it means nothing. Yet we are terrorized by knowing that all the sources such as Google, the phone companies, and now even the banks, are being asked to comply with the giving up of private records that were once part of a proud nation that was free. That once had these sacred rights under the Constitution. Our trust in the system, our government, and the Internet has all but collapsed. And when the late-breaking news that the NSA had now broken the encryption codes of major banks like Chase and Bank of America, that was the final straw. With no probable cause, not even an ounce, our government, formerly of the people, by the people and for the people, can now peek at any private financial or other private document, at will. Want to see anybody’s checking account? No problem. No FISA Court approval necessary.
Granted, George W. Bush could spin a good yarn, but all considered he was a redneck with a 92 IQ who even caught a 10-pound White Perch in one of his Crawford Ranch ponds. But Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer and knows better than to destroy and decimate our freedoms under the LAW! Even in the case of National Security or any other justifiable argument. Just read what Laurence Tribe ’66 a law professor at Harvard said about Obama as a unique individual:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/obama-at-hls.html
It is hard to imagine what caused the deviation we now see after Obama’s first term as president and well into the second. Why would Barack Obama forget many of the promises made to the American people such as doing away with troublesome signing statements that Bush proved to be significantly impacting on the bills he signed, with a cutesy little words affixed? Why the GAO has refused to fund some of the bills Bush and Obama signed with a signing statement affixed. Why? Well the GAO questions the validity of such a law when a conditional statement is attached. Is it a true law? Or only a part score at the bridge table of government when the president’s ego up and muddies the water by his unsolicited opinion that in many instances has altered the law and brought its intent into question. So the GAO refused to turn loose of the money necessary to fund some of the laws with a signing statement attached. Obama promised to do away with that practice if elected. But he hasn’t yet. Why not? Could we really be slipping into the darkness of a one-man-rule government? Is its coming too subtle for us to believe our own senses?
Secrecy is a bad thing. It is the things of Reagan, Nixon, and George W. Bush. It hurts a presidency simply because a secret can be altered at will. See, nobody knew the secret from the git-go so who’s going to know if you change it? Will you and your staff be able to keep up with your talking points and stories? Will the people begin to think there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans at the end of the day? Probably. And if you don’t keep your promises to correct the crimes and destruction of the Constitution of your predecessor why would you expect for the people to see you as a different sort of president?
Both the Bush and Obama administrations secretly rifled through the private lives and accounts of average Americans. Just because they could. Both have broken the trust of Americans as the mad pillage of private data of innocent citizens continues. Just imagine the possibilities. If the NSA hacked into legitimate accounts with no higher authority needed than a few keystrokes on a keyboard, then what is the possibility now that other foreign hackers (the black hats, the Chinese hackers, the Russians, to mention a couple) could break into the NSA codes? And then begin to sell off billions of bank account numbers to world criminals for a dollar apiece?! So that now Internet online banking and transfer of securities becomes too risky? This wanton opening of Pandora’s Box could very well be the gravest and stupidest miscarriage of justice ever visited upon the American people. And Snowden for his efforts to expose such practices remains a man without a country. Scary to imagine where these new road maps might take us.