If we are to believe the White House, the NSA had been
spying on 35 world leaders since 2002 but the spying stopped after the White
House found out about it earlier this year.
So Angela Merkel is not alone in being the subject of great interest by
American spies, which should surprise no one.
But the President knew absolutely nothing about the program for over
five years but put an immediate end to it as soon as he got wind of it, which
should surprise everyone…if it were true.
Why do I doubt the White House on this one, and you should
as well?
First, Mr. Obama and his henchmen are politicians and, as
such, are rarely, if ever to be believed because a politician lies at least as
easily as s/he tells the truth. It
seems as if this tendency to lie reflexively springs from an inability to make
a moral distinction between deceit and honesty when the only legitimate moral
standard is the advancement of one’s political career and the obvious benefits
such continuation and furtherance will bring to the benighted masses. But who knows what goes on in the febrile
minds of these narcissistic fops?
Second, the reason given for the President’s not knowing
about the program is that it wasn’t, as the Wall
Street Journal put it (Monday, 10/28/13, page A1), “practical to brief him on all of (the
eavesdropping operations).”
Hmm…
While it might not be practical to brief the President on all the NSA’s eavesdropping operations,
wouldn’t it make sense to take the time to brief him on an operation so
important as that conducted against Angela Merkel, given that Germany is one of
our closest allies, one of the world’s preeminent economic powers, and the de facto ruler of Europe? One would think the NSA would have time to
brief the President on such a trifling matter, right?
Third, let’s assume for a moment that the NSA really didn’t
brief President Obama on its eavesdropping on Germany
and 34 other countries. Wasn’t the
President sufficiently curious to wonder where all the juicy intelligence the
operation garnered was coming from?
Though the President is not half as smart as his cheering section would
have you believe (Nobody is.), he’s a pretty smart guy. One would think that access to the
information one hopes such an operation would be able to gather would pique his
curiosity.
Interestingly, unless I have missed something, no one at the
NSA or the White House has commented on whether President Bush was briefed on
the eavesdropping on, inter alia,
Angela Merkel and her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. (Note that the operation had been going on
since 2002.) Given Mr. Bush’s having
been nearly entirely free from the burden of intellectual curiosity, or even
rational thought, no one would be at all surprised if, had he not been briefed,
Mr. Bush displayed no curiosity whatsoever regarding the source of the
intelligence he was getting on Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Merkel. But I digress.
Two further points…
First, it is entirely possible, one supposes, that the NSA
felt no need to brief the President of the United States on one of its most
important, or at least one of its most high level, spying operations. If this were true, the good news would be
that the White House is not lying…but only about not being briefed on, not
about its complete ignorance of, the operation.
The bad news is that the implications of a spy agency that does not feel
that it ultimately reports to the President are genuinely horrifying.
Second, on a slightly less frightening note, maybe the whole
story about the NSA’s not briefing the President on a successful plot to bug
the personal phone of the leader of a loyal ally and the second most
consequential nation in the Western hemisphere is a load of horse excrement, as
is the tale of the President’s being completely unaware of the caper. Maybe the reason that the NSA and the White
House are trying to force us to dine on such equine detritus is that, as many have
suggested, the real story is that everyone spies on everyone but no one can
admit it. Maybe this is just the way
“diplomacy” is conducted…trust but verify, as the Gipper put it in a related
context.
“Everyone does it” is never justification for a course of
action desired by one’s teenage children.
And “everyone does it” does not seem like sufficient justification for
spying on a good and faithful friend; it still offends our, or at least yours
truly’s, sensibilities. But the rules of
international diplomacy do not necessarily comport closely with the ethical
rules by which individuals conduct their lives.
But, as hypocrisy is the tribute immorality pays to morality, the
politicians’ not being able to speak freely about what really goes on in international
relations is an admission that ethics, as commonly understood, are at best an
afterthought in such matters.
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