But I dont think of you. Howard Roark, The Fountainhead
Without minimizing the countless human rights abuses that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro visited on his own people, Cato Institute senior fellow Bandow has long argued that neither Castro nor Cuba ever represented a military threat to the United States. Yet in constantly demonizing the Cuban dictator, top American foreign policy officials needlessly elevated an individual who would have quickly slipped into irrelevancy had the American political and foreign policy establishment simply ignored him.
Castros highly valuable global currency, currency that made him the darling of the portion of the global ruling elite known to look askance at the U.S., was the United States dislike of him. Absent the attention bestowed on Castro by the worlds richest and most powerful country, its not a reach to assume that even the old Soviet Unions leaders would have dismissed Cubas dictator. But the United States doesnt think of you perhaps could have saved us from the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, and lots of time wasted since.
Watching the lengthy interview of Edward Snowden in Citizenfour, Laura Poitrass highly regarded documentary, thoughts of Castro regularly entered my mind. In Snowdens case, the question I kept asking was why the U.S. political class needlessly demonized such a mediocrity. Why didnt Republicans, Democrats and President Obama simply say But Mr. Snowden, we dont think of you.
To watch Cizenfour is to witness an overly paranoid crank. Snowden went through all sorts of hurdles to contact the documentarian in Poitras without being detected by U.S. intelligence, clearly traveled to Hong Kong (where Poitras and Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald interviewed him) under deep cover, but not explained enough was why? Its entirely possible that Snowdens every action was being tracked ahead of him becoming a national news story, but the idea seems far-fetched.
Viewers of Citizenfour are treated to Snowden logging onto one of his computers, but doing so with a red pillowcase over his head so fearful was he of exposure. When he did this the camera turned to a bemused GreenwaldThis viewer muttered, We took this nut seriously?
Up front, it should be said that any NSA-sponsored spying on the citizenry of the U.S. is an affront to a free society, and that the NSAs actions unearthed by Snowden are shameful. No doubt its the federal governments constitutional obligation to maintain a common defense meant to protect us from foreign intruders, but sometimes governments cross the line.
Its often pointed out that war is the health of the state, and the NSAs actions whereby the U.S. intelligence agency tracked the communications of U.S. citizens without regard to their role in terrorist activities gave life to the famous saying. Government is ultimately paralysis, errors by those in government have killed far more people than terrorists ever have, so its reasonable to say that Snowden did all Americans a favor when he exposed the doings of the NSA through Poitras and Greenwald.
Debates will continue about how much the NSAs actions amount to overreach on the part of the feds, but at the very least it should be asked how much liberty were willing to give up for the false security offered by our federal government? Indeed, leaving aside the constitutionality of the NSAs doings, do readers truly feel safer from a terrorist attack thanks to the NSAs spying activities?
To answer in the affirmative would be a reach if looked at through an economic lens. As Snowden makes plain in the Citizenfour interviews, the NSA was tracking voluminous amounts of U.S. communications in its efforts to unearth existing or looming terrorist activities. Defenders of the NSA would say its analysts were merely looking for patterns without listening in on specific conversations, but assuming the latter is true, does anyone really think the NSAs analysts are in possession of otherworldly skills that would enable them to find the proverbial needle in the haystack based on Google searches, calls on Verizon, e-mails, etc.?