America’s Open Wound

Snowden is absolutely a hero for what he did to expose US surveillance. It is also right for people to be suspicious of anything he says at the moment given his current situation. There’s no contradiction between the two.

As I wrote elsewhere in the comments on this story, the atrocities of the CIA are sadly well known. There’s nothing new here.

The beginning of Snowden’s post is a surprisingly poor take on Biden’s recent speech, reposting the same zoomed-in image with the red background, ignoring the additional context[0][1] and comparing the presentation to the Nazis. Although he does call it “unintentional”, he still chooses to amplify the same take as the American right-wing even though it’s been a while since the speech and people have mostly moved on. Snowden also does little to actually address the content of what Biden said regarding new and immediate threats to the US, choosing instead to focus on existing problems with the CIA which, while terrible, are not new and not unknown. He claims this is “consideration of [Biden’s] premises” but I think that’s a stretch to say the least.

In short, I think people are right to be critical of this essay and suspicious of Snowden’s motives in this specific case, without taking anything away from his previous actions.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/m7h2PtO

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/02/trump-biden-pennsyl...

You know the previous president said this was a thing he would intentionally do out loud multiple times and got cheered for it:

> "When you get these terrorists," Trump said, "you have to take out their families."

> O’Reilly asked Trump if he meant it when he said that he would "take out" the family members of terrorists. He didn’t believe that Trump would "put out hits on women and children" if he were elected. Trump replied, "I would do pretty severe stuff." The Mesa crowd erupted in applause. "Yeah, baby!" a man near me yelled. I had never previously been to a political event at which people cheered for the murder of women and children.

And then when asked about it being illegal:

> Taking part in the Fox News GOP debate last night, the billionaire was asked about General Michael Hayden saying that the military would refuse to follow illegal orders such as the intentional killing of terrorists’ families.

> Mr Trump said: “They won’t refuse, they’re not going to refuse me — believe me.”

> The entrepreneur elaborated with claims that the wives of the 9/11 terrorists knew what was going to happen and fled to Saudi Arabia just before the attacks.

There can be no long lived instution, let alone an intelligence agency, without sin.

Presenting only the bad things is not how you evaluate one, or its country. Half truths are the best lies. This IS propaganda. And this is Snowden's current position and role.

Just because something is "well known" doesn't mean we shouldn't bring it up. In fact, I'd argue we should bring it up more often when there is low progress being made. People associate importance with frequency of a topic. There's also new people being born every day, so plenty of people that are hearing about these things for the first time. Why shame them? Do you just not care?

> What's the grain of salt, if all of the information he presented is already well-known?

In this case, it's bit of suspicion about his motivations. And if he presents claims of new factual information in other communications, I would require more rigorous verification of their truth than I would if he was, say, in France taking advantage of some extradition loophole.

> In fact he is not. Although he has applied.

That appears to be correct. So I don't know if he has yet taken an oath of allegiance to the Russian Federation, though he has certainly announced his intention to.

> It's unknown. Do you have access to any special information on this subject?

Of course not; it's a rhetorical question that follows from his previous statements about his belief that the oath he took to the United States required him to do what he did, despite the personal cost.

> Can you truly not think of any reasons Russia might tolerate his presence even if he were not to seriously and honestly swear to do whatever they say?

Of course I can; there is a continuum of possibilities between "He is free to say whatever he wants but he only says bad things about Russia's adversaries for obvious practical reasons, in return for which his presence is tolerated" to "He is and has been for many years a paid FSB agent or asset and a true believer in the geopolitical agenda of the Russian Federation and everything he writes is crafted specifically by him and a FSB propaganda team to serve their goals of the moment". My personal opinion is that he lies somewhere much closer to the first than the second, but in the end we don't know. Thus, grain of salt.