One of NSA Director Keith Alexander’s cruelest feats? Forcing some of his fiercest critics (us) again to defend American self-interest and the role and purpose of intelligence. Neocons remain America’s malignant Id at her moment of apogee. As Nemesis follows Hubris, they ushered in her over soon decline. NSA and the Community, engorged on self-entitlement, scuttled behind as ever-present shadow.
We get no pleasure writing that. Nor seeing so much perhaps irretrievable ruin in Snowden’s aftermath. It takes a big man to bring down an epoch in American and global history, they say. So why are Alexander and Snowden perfectly, coevally so small?
The seemingly ancient preceding post here about Obama’s first NSA-focused press conference reads quaintly now. We see in stark relief the cost of this Administration’s (typical) passivity. That’s not to excuse or diminish NSA’s stunning, profoundly stupid (and so totally unnecessary) transgressive acts. But we all should be clear about one distinction – our intolerance for NSA’s transgressions is not to embrace attempts to exploit the political fallout to diminish America.