I disabled the comments feature on this weblog years ago when it became clear that most people were just using it as a message board to write snarky comments that had nothing to do with what I actually wrote.
But this did not stop interested readers from using the CONTACT feature to send relatively informed criticisms of some of my commentaries. This is why I have been obliged on occasion to write follow-ups either admitting that “I was wrong” or, more often than not, putting my critics in their place.
The latter is the case today with respect to criticisms of my take on Vladimir Putin granting Edward Snowden asylum in Russia. A number of readers – who clearly consider themselves far more informed about Russia and its authoritarian politics than I – argued that I got it completely wrong when I wrote that:
Far from regarding Snowden as the hero he fancies himself, I suspect Putin sees him as a traitorous rat. After all, Putin is a former KGB spy who prides loyalty to country above all else…
And as much as he is undoubtedly reveling in the humiliation Snowden has caused, Putin fully appreciates what special punishment he’d want to mete out to any Russian spy who does to him and Russia what Snowden has done to Obama and the United States.
(“Boycott Olympics Over Snowden? Don’t Be Stupid,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 18, 2013)
And later, that:
Putin is using him as a stick to poke in the eye of the United States…
I fully appreciate that millions now consider Snowden a heroic, whistle-blowing defender of freedom and democracy. But the ultimate irony is that he is a self-righteous narcissist who is nothing more than a useful idiot to (de facto and de jure) totalitarian regimes (like those in Russia and China) whose very existence depends upon the doublethink his leaks are now fostering, as well as systematic violations of the very civil liberties he presumes to be championing.
(“I Said Putin Would Hand Over Snowden. I Was Wrong,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 25, 2013)
Frankly, if I did not know better I would’ve thought their criticisms were extracted from a talking points memo Snowden’s spy/media master, Glen Greenwald, drafted. In short, they hailed Snowden as a hero and dismissed me as a zero – who “obviously knows nothing about Russia.”
Except that no less a person than Mikhail Prokhorov validated my take on what Russians think about Snowden during an interview on yesterday’s edition of CBS This Morning:
The majority of Russians they think that he [Snowden] was a traitor. And because we have a very special history, Russian history, we have a very strong belief about loyalty. If you’re working in a position, especially in CIA, then you don’t go out and spill all the secrets.
Enough said?
Well, for the uninitiated, I should add that Prokhorov is a major investor in the United States (most notably as owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets). More important, though, I doubt my critics even have standing to question, let alone criticize, his understanding of Russia and its authoritarian politics.
Nothing demonstrates Prokhorov’s bona fides in this respect quite like the way he has declared and even pursued his political ambitions in Russia without running afoul of Putin – who he concedes is “the most powerful politician on the planet earth … for the time being.” Of course it helps that, despite challenging Putin for the presidency last year, Prokhorov always hastens to clarify that he is more interested in laying the groundwork to become Putin’s political heir (in 14 years when he hopes Putin will be ready to retire) than in being his archrival.
Incidentally, if Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, Prokhorov’s more famous fellow oligarchs, were willing to be as deferential to this neo-Stalinist thug, they would not be rotting away in prison or dead, respectively….
In any event, that Prokhorov has no fear of asserting, on American TV no less, that most Russians think Snowden is a traitor vindicates my view that Putin feels the same way too.
Meanwhile, the latest example of the global spectacle this useful idiot has wrought with his NSA leaks played out in London yesterday. For that is where the heads of the three branches of the UK intelligence services (GCHQ – its eavesdropping equivalent of the NSA, MI5 – its FBI, and MI6 – its CIA) were forced to defend their missions and methods before a public parliamentary hearing for the first time in history.
It would be an understatement to say that they were simmering with resentment over the hysterical reaction to Snowden’s leaks that compelled this parliamentary dog and pony show. This resentment was most evident when they were forced to explain that nothing could be more anathema to their intelligence gathering than snooping through the emails and eavesdropping on the phone calls of ordinary citizens. They clearly find this prevailing assumption insulting to their professional integrity, as well as that of the spies they control.
All of which only reinforces my indignation at the ironic and self-defeating ignorance of people protesting the spying agencies like the NSA and GCHQ do to keep them safe, while blithely facilitating the spying corporations like Google and Facebook do to sell them stuff; notwithstanding that the intrusive nature of the former pales in comparison to that of the latter.
Such Kafkaesque perversion of principles and priorities is enough to spook even a seasoned spook. But if you think there’s no consequence to this, think again:
The leaks from Snowden have been very damaging, they put our operations at risk. Our adversaries are rubbing their hands in glee. Al-Qaida is lapping it up.
(John Sawers, the chief of the British foreign spy agency MI6, Associated Press, November 7, 2013)
I’m on record lamenting the public airing of what, by definition, should be state secrets. But Snowden’s leaks have so corrupted the clear and necessary order of things that grandstanding, opportunistic and shortsighted politicians are treating intelligence agencies like criminal syndicates involved in wholesale blackmail and identity theft. Reconcile that!
Alas, my abiding fear is that it’s going to take a terrorist attack that makes 9/11 look like a drive-by shooting for most people to appreciate the damage Snowden has done. Of course, then, many of the people hailing him as a hero today will be damning him as a traitor and demanding to know why intelligence agencies were not doing at least as much spying as commercial entities do to keep them safe….
Related commentaries:
Boycott Olympics…
I was wrong…