THE MERKEL SPYING STORY: “I WISH YOU COULD HAVE INVENTED A MORE CONVINCING STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”

10/28/13

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.

BISMARCK’S DREAM, MERKEL’S VICTORY

5/1/13

Emblazoned across the front page of today’s (i.e., Wednesday, 5/1/13’s) Wall Street Journal is the headline “Latest Leader Pays Court to Mother Europe” over four pictures of European leaders (new Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaris, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and French President Francois Hollande) exchanging pleasantries with, paying homage to, or being lectured by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.   The article behind the picture, which appears on page A10, explains that, over the last few years, and especially as European financial problems have taken hold, the first stop of any new leader of a Eurozone country is in Berlin to get the seal of approval from, er, sorry, visit Ms. Merkel.

My first thought as I saw the picture and read the nearly extraneous article was the same thought that has occupied at least some of my thinking since the European “crisis” started and spread…the Germans have accomplished what has been their goal since the unification of the German state under Bismarck in 1871:  economic and political domination of what was once called Mitteleuropa, or the heart of Europe, and beyond.

Germany tried twice in the first half of the last century to achieve this goal of European domination and failed both times.   In the latter part of the last century and into the early part of this one, the Germans have finally succeeded.   They have done so not by militarism or by pursuing ghastly political and racial theories to their horrific ends.  Instead, the Germans have come to dominate Europe by being, well, German…working hard, being smart, saving money, and being fiscally responsible.   The tremendous success Germany has achieved by applying what once were simple, common sense principles is nearly enough to make yours truly consider a Volkswagen, but I digress.

There are many lessons of here, including

·        Military conquest, at least in the modern era, ultimately always fails.

·        No one, and no country, ever gets rich or powerful by spending money she doesn’t have.  A person or a country gets rich by making more money, by producing more, than one spends.

·        Blowing money, perhaps especially on the military, is no recipe for achieving domination, power, or even success.

Here is the United States, however, we are heeding none of the above lessons.   This is no surprise; we have long been of the opinion that we have nothing to learn from anybody else, especially when the lesson involves delaying gratification.