A National Dilemma

"Our nation takes stopping terrorism as one of the most important things. And with that, when you think about it, how do you do that because we stand for freedom. ... And what tools should we have to stop those (terrorists)?
"Our job is defending this country, saving lives, supporting our troops in combat. It's our responsibility to provide the information that they need to survive (and) to go after the enemy."
General Keith Alexander, director, U.S. National Security Agency

General Alexander was speaking to skeptics at a convention in Las Vegas. The National Security Agency is on a recruiting and legitimization drive. And he has discovered that one hinges on the other. He cannot recruit without impressing on the skilled computer hackers who just love what they do, to hitch themselves to this national security instrument. The Agency has suffered greatly, thanks to the decision by a man trusted not to disclose national security secrets.

That man is no longer answerable to his country's accusations of treason; Edward Snowden has found himself asylum within the bosom of the security apparatus of a country most likely to benefit hugely from that insider knowledge. The deep satisfaction felt at the Kremlin, and particularly within the patriotic bosom of Vladimir Putin who has been busy re-writing and bleaching Soviet history to a glorious period in the heritage of eastern Europe, must be enormous.

And rather ironic; a former KGB agent welcoming the appearance and the trade secrets of a nation with whom competition on the world stage has surrendered to detente in the wake of a long Cold War, and then stuttered back to a condition of guarded but fairly transparent political combativeness. A weakened world power needs the back-up assistance of its one-time nemesis to put out some raging fires consuming civilization in the Middle East and North Africa and Asia, and Russia isn't buying.

America the proud has become America the humble, stretching out an imploring hand of cooperation, reining in the belligerence of power, stumbling over its newly-emasculated self as its detractors become legion, and see weakness and surrender where conciliation is proffered. Suddenly, America's foreign phone and Internet surveillance program, PRISM, has been laid bare for its critics to peer within and find amusement and outrage in equal measure.

Internally it is little better with Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning conflicting the public with praise on the one hand as courageous, self-sacrificing whistle-blowers, and on the other condemnation as patriotism's sell-outs, their inside track on surveillance exposed to anyone who can read or hear or use a mouse, confirming them as outright traitors. Surveillance warrants linked to terrorist investigation is being inextricably wound up with spying on innocent civilians.

"It is very, very difficult to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law", commented Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico at a senate hearing into the NSA's domestic surveillance.

"So when you look at this, this is not us doing something under the covers. This is what we are doing on behalf of all of us for the good of this country", explained National Security Agency director General Keith Alexander.

Wasn't an intercept between two al-Qaeda figures just recently responsible for alerting the United States to an imminent attack, attacks, series of attacks, somewhere, anywhere, the alarming news being sufficient to alert all of the Western world to new jihadist attacks capable of coming out of anywhere, and nowhere at all?