In a world where your "foes" have shown a willingness to torture, kill, and use every sneaky, subversive tactic in the book (c.f. pvt. Manning) across all borders to annihilate those it's decided, wrongfully or not, are enemies, what good do you think would come of Snowden returning to the USA?
Does it take someone being tortured to sate your moral compass?!
Further, him "standing up" as you and so many others seem to want him to do would undermine the whole reason he leaked the NSA stuff and took off in the first place. He'll disappear into some military (or worse) prison somewhere and never be heard from again.
It is pretty offensive to the memory of MLK to suggest that the treatment that awaited Snowden at the hands of the DOJ was in any way comparable to what faced the Montgomery Improvement Association. MIA activists were beaten, raped, lynched, and tortured in public with clubs, dogs, and firehoses.
Who said they weren't?! If you put the unaccountable "enhanced interrogation" users at the NSA above threatening children if they think that will get them what they want, you've got a much higher view of these people than most. The point that you seem to be dancing around recognizing is that all torture is bad, regardless of degree.
NSA has no interrogation capability at all. I no longer understand what you're talking about. Regardless, I feel pretty confident that what MLK and his associates faced is far worse than anything Snowden faces, at least from the US. Who knows where things will go in Russia.
Dumbest thing I've heard yet today. It reminds me of the scene in Demolition Man where Simon Phoenix cannot kill Dr. Raymond Cocteau so Phoenix enlists one of his ne'er-do-well friends to dispatch him.
If you believe in the concept of "degrees" of torture, at least. It's all wrong on every conceivable level. You don't need to ever lay a finger on someone to break their mind and leave them permanently damaged.
What he has gone through is nothing compared to those who fought for Civil Rights. It is beyond lame to make the comparison on any equal terms.
MLK and those like him stood in the face of sanctioned brutality. They marched straight into the face of known violence. They lived everyday wondering when their time would come or their families would face harm.
Claiming Snowden would be tortured or disappeared is beyond stupid. Nutters, 9/11 conspirators, and UFO kidnappers, fall into this hyper paranoid mindset.
He is a public figure, it would be a black mark on the US government that anything violent would happen to him while in custody. There are most likely an uncountable number of rights groups who will sponsor his legal representation
>What he has gone through is nothing compared to those who fought for Civil Rights.
You're right. Thanks to the connected world we live in, Snowden was able to take his fight on the road and place himself out of reach before anything that extreme could happen. That's not to insinuate that being forced to leave your home, your family, your friends, and everything you've ever known, possibly permanently, isn't pretty terrible..
>Claiming Snowden would be tortured or disappeared is beyond stupid.
You mean like Manning wasn't? Sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement is torture for a reason.
>He is a public figure, it would be a black mark on the US government that anything violent would happen to him while in custody.
He's only a "public figure" because he ran and was able to keep somewhat in the spotlight (partly by continually releasing information). When's the last time you heard anything about Chelsea Manning? She's effectively "disappeared". The leaks are out of the media, efforts all for naught because nobody remembers them anymore.
And as I've spent the last 5 or so posts trying to convey, you don't need to inflict "violence" on someone in order to ruin them. Locking someone in a box with no human contact for 23 hours a day does that nicely.
Does it take someone being tortured to sate your moral compass?!
Further, him "standing up" as you and so many others seem to want him to do would undermine the whole reason he leaked the NSA stuff and took off in the first place. He'll disappear into some military (or worse) prison somewhere and never be heard from again.