I agree that threats are not how friendly countries carry on friendly business. What I do not agree on is that Ecuador is acting at all as a "friend" to the U.S. in this matter, for the reasons I stated above.
The best friends are those that don't allow you to make mistakes.
The ones that aren't really your friends are the ones that pander to you, for fear of embarrassing you. They are doing you a disservice.
Which is of greater embarrassment, the alleged behaviour of the NSA, or an offer of asylum to a whistle blower destined for death or Guantanamo?
Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006:
"So was I right not just in supporting the war, but in actively prosecuting it? I’ve been asked a million times since the invasion whether, knowing then what I know now, I would have made the same decision.
And no, I wouldn’t. How could we have agreed to invade Iraq if we had known that there were no WMD there?"[1]
Earlier in the same article:
"As I spelt out the seriousness of the situation and my conviction that we now had to confront Saddam Hussein militarily, my wife Alice and children Will and Charlotte were up in the gallery listening.
None of them shared my view. Each of them would have been among the million or so demonstrators on the recent protest march through London against the war if it had not been for their loyalty to me and their wish not to embarrass me."
Jack Straw, Blair and Straw's family would have been better friends had they caused embarrassment.
> Which is of greater embarrassment, the alleged behaviour of the NSA, or an offer of asylum to a whistle blower destined for death or Guantanamo?
Given that Snowden is not destined for either death or Guantanamo I'm not sure how to take your question. The NSA's alleged behavior is at least consistent with what we've known and thought it able to do since the Cold War. The worst I can say about it is that they are pushing right up on the edge of the law and court precedent... but is that worse than flat-out breaking the law or doing things like actually focusing specific IRS attention on specific political-interest groups? Or passing laws to disenfranchise minority voters?
I'm not sure of the answer to that question, but I don't think it's "Yes", given what I know of what our law enforcement and national security teams have already had the fully-legal ability to do.
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As for the friendship question, for me that goes back to who is really the 'friend' here. A 'friend' would certainly not castigate another about 'human rights abuses' (as if Snowden were clearly innocent) while at the same time having an asylum process that itself violates basic human rights as claimed by Human Rights Watch [1].
A "friend" would at least take the stick out of their eye before pointing to others' flaws. And this is why I say that the government of Ecuador has no legitimate friendly intent here. Even if I agreed with Snowden 100%, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, and neither is the friend of my friend.
Well none of us can predict the future, all we can do is guess. So that's your opinion. I doubt you hold your own opinion on the matter in higher regard than William Binney's. [1]
Q: He'll be prosecuted?
Binney: First tortured, then maybe even rendered and tortured and then incarcerated and then tried and incarcerated or even executed. [2]
We certainly haven't known what the NSA capabilities are. We may have thought or suspected. Even now we don't really know, note Nadler's turnaround and the language used:
"Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that." "
then:
"I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, _as I have always believed_, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans' phone calls without a specific warrant."
Did he not believe what he said in the first statement?
You're saying that because this fresh new, now known abuse, is no worse than other existing abuses, it's not an embarrassment. That seems like fallacious reasoning to me.
See Clapper's lying on camera to the senate here, and his subsequent claim that lying was the 'least untruthful' option. An embarrassment. [5]
The allegation that all calls are recorded for playback is startling, that would also be very embarrassing if it were proven.
Asylum has nothing to do with innocence, rather: evading persecution, i.e. the law in one place being an ass.
America is no slouch in the human rights hypocrisy department either.[4] Having a clean slate in that department is not a prerequisite for doing the right thing. Ecuador would be doing the right thing to grant asylum, and it would be an act of mercy and friendship, and truer friendship than simple pandering.
Regarding [2], I suggest you lookup the treatment meted out to actual spies like Hanssen and John Walker. The last spies to be executed were the Rosenbergs, and even that did not go off without a fight by a certain Supreme Court justice.
