Here is my column exclusively for ANew Domain.net. Europe is pissed off at the NSA, but being American means never having to say you’re sorry.
What appears to actually be true, and exactly true to the extent that Clapper hasn’t said boo about it, is that the NSA tapped into the personal communications of the world’s heads of state, including close U.S. allies like German Chancellor Angela “Austerity R Us” Merkel, former President Felipe Calderón of Mexico and at least 35 other world leaders. NSA spies listened to Merkel’s private cell phone calls and read Calderón’s email. The 35-plus randoms, collected from eager-to-please U.S. government employees including State Department diplomats, appear to be personal phone taps. Yep, it’s another Snowden document.
With frenemies like the U.S., who needs terrorists?
2 Comments.
One of the games the Western leaders played from ’46 until ’89 was the Commie threat. Every US president, on taking office, spoke of the terrifying gap between US nuclear capabilities and those of the Commies, a gap that was entirely the fault of his predecessor. There WAS a gap: the US had a far larger nuclear arsenal. But Western leaders believed their own lies, or acted like they believed their own lies.
In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the US was the world’s sole nuclear power, and promised to use its nukes to promote freedom (meaning the freedom for US companies to pursue profits in foreign countries). The US demobilised, and General Marshall (of Marshall Plan fame) said the US had 1 1/3 divisions to the Commies 260 divisions. Only the nuke gave the US the ability to …
The US gave all of East Europe over to Soviet domination.
NATO required that the US president be in charge of all nukes. So the US could not resist a Soviet invasion of France by conventional means, and the Soviets might respond to a nuclear defence by nuking the US, so France figured they could not trust the US with control of French nukes (probably a wise decision on the part of France).
So France reduced its membership in NATO to the point where it kept control of all the French nukes.
But now, France mostly says merci to Obama for his efforts to monitor all French communication and thereby keep the French safe from terrorists.
«The US gave all of East Europe over to Soviet domination.» Interesting comment, which reveals a great deal about the commentator’s understanding of recent European history. Eastern Europe was never the US’s to give ; it had been liberated from the Nazi yoke by the Soviet Red Army before the US launched its D-Day offensive to prevent the same thing from happening in Western Europe….
As to Ted’s query in the headline above, the short answer is «No»….
Henri