Sounds all a bit "USA, USA, USA", rather than any sort of intelligent logic. I think the article this thread is based on pretty much explains that.
Any US folk considered how hard it is for the rest of the planet to reconcile US political and international posturing with normal international relations and the idea of the rule of law?
The idea that you think Russia's actions have to do only with the rule of law, but that the U.S.'s actions have nothing to do with the rule of law, is kind of surprising in my view.
Russia could have legally opted to decline the asylum request without extraditing Snowden. I.e. "We won't arrest him but he has no permission to leave the transit zone. Good luck convincing him to fly home".
In the same vein, even if you agree that all of Snowden's disclosures are in the public interest he still broke the law, and knew he broke it.
If I were to take it upon myself to have shot Ariel Castro, for instance, I would likely still be charged with murder or manslaughter, even if I had known he was kidnapping women.
But let's say that Snowden should be completely pardoned for leaking PRISM. The U.S. government would still have grounds to charge him for leaking details about hacking in China, which certainly did not benefit the American public.
And that, at this point, is all we're talking about. Charges to be sorted out, and if some of those stick, sentences to be determined by factoring in mitigating circumstances. That is hardly evidence of a government rampaging through the international scene, as that is all quite standard material for extradition negotiations. Things like grounding Bolivia's jet are examples of roughshodding! But not this here.
But that's the thing. This isn't strictly about rule of law. This is about Putin using the club of anti-Americanism to improve his stature at home. If Putin really cared about "human rights" then why is Pussy Riot still in prison? Why is it illegal to mention the idea of homosexuality to those poor impressionable Russian youths?
It's not about human rights. It's about politics, just as much as Republicans used to beat the drum of the "welfare queen" to advance their own position.
Accordingly, American papers are not very happy to see America used as a convenient punching bag to advance Russian interests, even where they support Snowden's overall point about surveillance, because they realize that the world is not binary.
I live outside the USA and there's two messages to be heard out of the USA:
- "We'll catch this guy and kill him"
and
- "Give him up, or else..."
The US administration sounds like a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath to the rest of the world, a psychopath who's still holding the Obama agenda to "protect whistleblowers" in their hands even while they make threats and act crazy.
Meanwhile inside the USA the highly predictable campaign to discredit the source is underway, with all the media happily participating, and nobody asking any questions.
We expect these things from a country like Russia or China. We don't expect them from the beacon of democracy, the USA. It means the USA pretty much _is_ Russia right now. Maybe a little less bad - fewer dissidents get killed (Hastings, anyone?). But overall, same thing.
Putin knows this and they play exactly that angle. Idiotic behavior on the side of the US administration makes that just soooo easy.
> The US administration sounds like a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath to the rest of the world
No offense but if this is really what you hear then there is absolutely nothing the U.S. could do or proclaim that would change your mind, or that of the world.
So in that regard why worry about what the world thinks anyways? The world will hear what they want to hear, nothing more or less.
You need only look at the people comparing American human rights to Russian ones, or saying that the NSA is evil when they spy but the German BND "are not actually spying domestically and besides, they're incompetent".
The world has already decided, but let's not act like it's a completely evidence-based decision that was made.
Any US folk considered how hard it is for the rest of the planet to reconcile US political and international posturing with normal international relations and the idea of the rule of law?