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Edward Snowden is asking the US president to pardon him based on the morality of his action.
Well, here is a completely opposite view from the other side, so to speak:
http://observer.com/2016/09/were-losing-the-war-against-terrorism/
"Since 9/11, NSA has been the backbone of the Western intelligence alliance against terrorism. Its signals intelligence is responsible for the strong majority of successful counterterrorism operations in the West. More than three-quarters of the time, NSA or one of its close partner Anglosphere spy partners like Britain's GCHQ, develops a lead on a terror cell which is passed to the FBI and others for action which crushes that cell before it kills. If NSA loses the ability to do this, innocent people in many countries will die.
Unfortunately, there's mounting evidence that NSA's edge over the terrorists is waning. It's impossible not to notice that jihadist emphasis on communications security and encryption, which is now gaining ground, began in 2013. That, of course, is when Edward Snowden, an NSA IT contractor, stole something like 1.7 million classified documents from his employer, shared them with outsiders, then defected to Moscow."
"However, our precious edge in the SpyWar is waning fast. We are no longer winning. We're about to hear a great deal of unwarranted praise of Ed Snowden thanks to the hagiographic movie about him by Oliver Stone that's to be released this week. Don't be fooled. Snowden is no hero. In truth, he and his journalist helpers have aided terrorists in important ways. Snowden and his co-conspirators have blood on their hands—and perhaps much more blood soon thanks to their aid to the genocidal maniacs of ISIS."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:47PM
"Terrorists, no matter how famous, really don't manage to kill almost anyone. They are terrible at their only job,"
Do you really believe this? I know you are trying to be reasonable with the rest of your post, but I seriously wish people would just stop with this egotistical naval gazing.
The reasons they do what they do are many and varied as are the groups themselves. "Terrorist" has become a catch-all used by ignorant bigots to label any group of people they don't like.
For example: Currently ISIS's main aim is to form an Islamic caliphate. (as per their holy book) They were far more successful at this than they should have ever been considering the audacity of the move. Had you allowed them to roam free, they would have won. Of course one could argue the only reason this move worked was because of previous atrocities.
Osama bin laden's main goal was not to "kill Americans" (despite the propaganda). It was to cause a jihad, thereby engaging foreign powers on his turf, which he believed would cause economic collapse in Russia and the US.
Yes, killing Americans was what he considered revenge for crimes (including those by US-backed Israel) against Muslims and why he said were "justified" targets. But this was not his main aim. He also wanted more Islamic countries with sharia law. (Just like when the US helped Iran throw out its democracy in favor of sharia law....) He was of course bat shit crazy also.
Disclaimer for the mouth breathers: I think they are all pieces of shit but I don't limit that just to brown people: I include ALL violent groups.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @09:38PM
Do you really believe this?
Yes. The threat of terrorism in first-world countries is almost nonexistent.