There is one thing for which we can thank Edward Snowden, International Man Of Luggage. His revelations clearly have delineated, once and for all, the parameters of liberalism's inner authoritarian. We all have one, that little voice that whispers, "Not all slopes are slippery," and we take its advice and then, 60 years or so later, we wonder how we all wound up in the ditch. Those parameters now appear to be sharply defined as Don't Be Unpleasant To Me On The Teevee, and Don't Inconvenience A President I Like. We've seen that over the weekend as various liberals half-defended the bullshit use of an anti-terrorism statute to detain David Miranda because of documents Miranda was carrying, which requires you to ignore the loud bell that ought to ring every time the British government starts using anti-terrorism statutes to conduct its intelligence business. (Ask the Irish what I'm talking about.) If the Brits thought that Miranda would be carrying documents he shouldn't have had -- and if, as appears likely, they were tipped by the American government to that effect -- then they should have let the American governnment swear out a warrant on those charges and conduct a proper arrest. Any argument aimed at mitigating the deployment of an anti-terrorism statute in this case is drowned out by the howls of political -- and, I fear, personal -- oxen being gored.

Comes now Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, to kick things off with a slapstick comedy episode of Bad Historical Analogy Theater, after which he moves along to explaining how much damage Snowden may have done because, as we know, they are all honorable men, First, our drama critic steps in.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy led directly to the passage of a historic law, the Gun Control Act of 1968. Does that change your view of the assassinations? Should we be grateful for the deaths of these two men? Of course not. That's lunatic logic. But the same reasoning is now being applied to the actions of Edward Snowden.

I am sorry, but I'd forgotten how, at trial, James Earl Ray mounted a defense saying that he'd iced Dr. King in order that the country might have more effective gun control. I know how much damage the assassinations of King and Kennedy did. I watched their funerals on TV. We have no idea what damage Snowden may or may not have caused. The NSA would like to tell us but, goshdarnit, they just can't. And, of course, they are all honorable men. This is so far off the plane of the ecliptic that Toobin's already halfway to Mars.

In this debate, Snowden himself says, those who followed the law were nothing better than Nazis: "I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg, in 1945: 'Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.' "

This is both mendacious and completely ahistorical. Snowden here is not remotely comparing anyone at the NSA to the Nazis, unless you believe that the Nuremberg principles, which were adopted after the defeat of Nazi Germany, were adopted merely to prevent the rise of the Fourth Reich somewhere in the world. Rather, they were statements in law acknowledging that what Hitler's Germany did changed the paradigm of both nationalism and patriotism forever by perverting both of those concepts to monstrous ends. They apply universally. Is Toobin seriously arguing that the United States is, simply through its own inherent goodness, a place where the principles it primarily expounded do not apply? To say a country violated them is not to say that country is run by Nazis. It is to say that a country should check itself before it wrecks itself, and that its citizens have obligations to the common humanity that may supersede adherence to national laws. This is something with which, among other folks, Dr. King would have agreed.

To be sure, Snowden has prompted an international discussion about surveillance, but it's worthwhile to note that this debate is no academic exercise. It has real costs.

Tough. Welcome to the United States Of America, where we ought not to be afraid to debate openly any activity of our government, a principle we have abandoned to the shamans of the national-security state far too often in the past 70 years.

What if Snowden's wrong? What if there is no pervasive illegality in the National Security Agency's surveillance programs?

Not bloody likely, considering that we already have learned that they concocted cover stories. But, if so, then the law is an ass.

It is true that, as the Washington Post's Barton Gellman recently reported, the N.S.A. sometimes went beyond its authority. According to Gellman, the agency privately admits to two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six incidents of unauthorized collection of data within a twelve-month period. This is bad-but it's not clear how bad. If it's that many incidents out of a total of, say, three thousand initiatives, then it's very bad. But if-as is far more likely-it's two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six incidents out of many millions, then the errors are less serious. There should be no mistakes, of course. But government surveillance, like any human activity, is going to have errors, and it's far from clear, at this point, that the N.S.A.'s errors amounted to a major violation of law or an invasion of privacy.

Why is that conclusion "far more likely"? Why should I believe that? A year ago, we didn't know about this program at all. A week ago, we didn't know about all these all-too-human "errors" that our all-too-human spooks may have committed. And to step briefly onto the stage of BHAT myself, why not watch Dr. Strangeloveand conclude that, "There should be no mistakes, of course. But nuclear deterrence, like any human activity, is going to have errors." Pretty soon, you're riding the bomb down.

The United States, like any great power, is always going to have an intelligence operation, and some electronic surveillance is obligatory in the modern world. But, because of Snowden's disclosures, the government will almost certainly have to spend billions of dollars, and thousands of people will have to spend thousands of hours, reworking our procedures. This is all because a thirty-year-old self-appointed arbiter of propriety decided to break the law and disclose what he had sworn to protect. That judgment-in my view-was not Snowden's to make. And it is simply grotesque that Snowden compares these thousands of government workers-all doing their jobs to protect the United States-to the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

I was thinking just the other day that it's long past time that someone did a cost-benefit analysis on the Fourth Amendment. Here's the thing about what this country may or may not spend on its intelligence "operations" -- we pay the bills and we don't know what we're paying for, or how much we're paying for it. They'd tell us, of course, but, goshdarnit, again, they just can't. And they are all honorable men.

There is obviously some legitimate debate to be had about the extent and the legality of American surveillance operations. But there is no doubt about the nature of China and Russia. Snowden's pious invocation of the Nuremberg trials will probably be small comfort to the dissidents and the political prisoners whose cell doors may be locked a little tighter today because of what these authoritarian governments may have learned from his hard drive.

Ah, the old "liberal anti-Communist" position gets rebooted for the 21st Century. If Toobin wants to accuse Snowden of espionage, he should man-up and do it. Otherwise, this is just incoherent. We can't have "some legitimate debate about the extent and legality of American surveillance operations" because one side of the debate is swathed in secrecy and duplicity. (There is simply no logical reason to take anything the NSA says on this topic in good faith.) As to the plight of Chinese and Russian dissidents, if Toobin can demonstrate plausibly how, in revealing to Americans what their government has been about, Edward Snowden has somehow made their plight worse, then he should show his work. Otherwise, he's just waving the bloody shirt.

I would like to believe that this is not simply another salvo in the ever-escalating Toobin-Greenwald pissing contest. The issues are simply too important to get buried under a mudslide of personal pique, even though they're half-interred in that already. But, Green Room hooleys aside, Toobin here fundamentally is telling us, again, that they are all honorable men. I don't care what you think of Glenn Greenwald or Edward Snowden. In this democracy, "trust us" is not half good enough any more.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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