Are Germans giving in to
self-defeating emotion by considering
asylum for former NSA analyst
Edward Snowden?
Teutonic 'Snowden-Mania' Puts All Europe at Risk (ABC, Spain)
"What's happening in Germany today is the best proof that the United States is doing the right thing by spying on everything that moves. Because it demonstrates that America's allies are not to be trusted. ... The Teutonic sentimentality feeding this defense of Snowden as an intrepid and romantic spy who defied the
empire doesn't bode well. ... And it isn't only Europe that is losing faith.
The United States is also about to reconsider its cooperation. In that way,
Snowden-mania may turn into a case of Teutonic hara-kiri performed for all of
European security."
Chancellor Angela Merkel: The NSA may well have spied on her - but would she have refused vital information obained the same way from her own intelligence services?
A
traitorous American spy and a hefty dose of German idealism has been injected
into the veins of a society stirred up by media which is as populist as it is
irresponsible. With these ingredients, a campaign of hysteria and
compassionate demagogy in Europe's strongest and most developed country has
been organized, which makes politicians, media and organizations forget their
responsibilities and contractual duties, their political pacts and even their
interests. This is mobilizing an anti-Americanism of a kind worse than anything we
encountered in the eighties of the last century during the campaigns against the NATO
rearmament. The anti-American tones being heard are right out of the past, but
they do not proceed from the classic anti-Yankee left. They are marked by a
resentment, a vigilante zeal, and a moral superiority that are an odd echo of a
distant and worse past.
What's
happening in Germany today is the best proof that the United States is doing
the right thing by spying on everything that moves. Because it demonstrates
that America's allies are not to be trusted. It is also alarming that this show
is being put on by Germany, governed by Christian Democratic Angela Merkel. One
is even denied the comfort of a neutral outburst of a French Socialist
president. After a staunch six decade-long alliance between Germany and the
United States, the German government must publicly denounce the notion that it
might offer asylum to a person denounced by Washington for high treason.
Merkel's government must do so, because of a massive campaign asking to protect
and house this fugitive, and accord him the highest honors as a champion of
truth and decency - he now being enemy number one of Germany's main ally!
Something
is seriously amiss when a large segment of German society is mobilized on the
side of a thief and traitor who stole millions of classified documents from
America's National Security Agency and has already caused incalculable damage
to the defense and security of all the allies - Germany included. Edward Snowden
will go down in history as having caused a catastrophe for the security of the
West, while not solving a single one of the evils he claims to be fighting -
not even the abuses of espionage, which exist now and will always exist.
Because every day, technology opens new spaces and possibilities that the
intelligence services will use unless they confront someone with sufficient
technical might to prove they are violating signed agreements.
Let
us welcome the agreements between allies to create joint security spaces.
However, no one should believe that anyone who in practice learns something
relative to his security will forego learning it. Let everyone do their best,
with effective counterintelligence, and leave it be. Anything beyond that is to
whine and wear a mask of false morality, particularly on the part of countries
that spy with everything they have and without renouncing a thing. They are
annoyed because someone else has more. One can agree that it rude for Barack
Obama to be spying on his ally Angela Merkel. But let us see if Merkel,
Hollande, or any other can swear they have rejected secret information
impacting the security of their country because it came directly from the desk
of a head of a foreign country or government.
Germany's
reaction is alarming. The Teutonic sentimentality feeding this defense of
Snowden as an intrepid and romantic spy who defied the empire doesn't bode
well. Yesterday, for the first time, there were voices reminding Germany of
what it owes to its Atlantic ally. It comes somewhat late, after some have
already spoken of the U.S. as a “force of digital occupation.” And it isn't
only Europe that is losing faith. The United States is also about to reconsider
its cooperation. In that way, Snowden-mania may turn into a case of Teutonic hara-kiri performed for all
of European security.
