Edward Snowden -- Heroes "Backwards R" Us

Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? His revelations of the extent of US surveillance efforts under the Patriot Act have put him at the center of the world's attention in the latest round of political embarrassments for the Obama administration, but I don't believe they have disclosed the existence of anything new. We've known about the US government's surveillance of domestic telephone and internet traffic overseas since the Bush administration. At least I remember being aware of reading those reports and thinking my emails to my father living in London at the time were probably being picked up on the government's radar every time I mentioned Osama Bin Laden or something I'd read in the news. See, there I go again. Hello NSA computer scanning this. Are you having fun yet?

What's new for me is the way opinion on the issue of government surveillance is completely divided along partisan lines. According to the polls, Democrats who previously railed against government intrusions under Bush are now totally fine with giving up certain undefined privacy rights in exchange for the added security of the government's snooping, whereas Republicans now are seething with libertarian fury in the place of their previous trust in the government's good intentions with their innermost secrets. Yes, Virginia, there is a functioning democracy.

The point is we have gotten used to the feeling of being invaded in the sanctity of our home spaces via Facebook and Google and have seen that instead of trench-coated watchdogs knocking at our doors, you get strange ads for tree pest removers and yoga classes when you're online. Sharing our information has become part of the trade-off of living in the age of the Internet, and we somehow sense that the government is no more powerful than the nerds that run things nowadays, and are probably less likely to bother us. Seeing Edward Snowden come in from the cold only confirms this sense that the government are us. Here's this guy from Maryland who didn't even graduate high school living in Hawaii with his girlfriend and suddenly feeling guilty about his job working for the biggest eavesdropping operation in the history of the world. But really, Edward, come on. You were working for the NSA. What did he expect, they were doing market research for toothpaste manufacturers?

I think if Obama were smart he would let this go away. We already have a genuine whistleblower hero on our hands in the person of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who decided to answer to a higher morality and betray systematic massacres of innocent civilians in the immoral war we waged in Iraq and now faces a possible death sentence from a military tribunal for his genuinely sacrificial actions.

Three Stories

We do live in times of great change. We are responsible for bearing witness, for staying awake and alert to the great heroism displayed in the course of the fight. In the light of that charge, here are three noteworthy characters, moved by a common impulse to defend their honor and highest ideals. Their stories display what I would call the invisible hand of altruism, proof to me that we are not just material beings motivated by self-interest alone.

Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, charged by the military with passing secrets critical to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel. Most famously, the website Wikileaks posted Mannings files directly to the Internet, including an onboard military video of the helicopter strike in Baghdad in 2007 when soldiers heedlessly gunned down civilians, among them two Reuters employees. Although President Obama rightly noted that nothing in the files was a totally new revelation, it is Manning's impulse, nonetheless, to disclose the full brunt of the hypocrisy that passes for our country's notional effort at self-defense that should interest us. Branded a traitor for his efforts, and facing a life-sentence, if not execution in the military courts, Manning acted out of an impulse for truth telling honed by his years as a non-conformist growing up in Oklahoma and Wales. Think what you want of him, you have to admire the soldier who wears a customized dogtag of "humanist". That's clear thinking in a world gone mad.

Lt. Col. Terence Lakin, is an army doctor with a distinguished educational and military record, including six tours of duty in our country's South Asian and Middle Eastern battles, who now faces court martial for refusing orders based on his lack of confidence in Obama's status as a natural born citizen. Here is a man clearly not just a right wing nut, but someone who genuinely feels dismayed to the point of rebellion at what he perceives as the duplicity of a President who has failed to produce a document. To most of us, it is pretty clear that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, not in Kenya, but Lakin, now the hero to the millions of Americans of the "birther" persuasion, wants the proof of the original birth document, which the state of Hawaii does not routinely provide. So the country now is looking at the court martial of an officer two grades below general, with 17 years of tremendous service and expertise, refusing to deploy and facing dishonorable discharge and up to two years in the brig, out of principle. I call him misguided, but millions would not. I have no doubts, however, that Lakin's rebellion would not have happened if the war effort were moving in a positive direction instead of being Obama's flush down the toilet of Bush's mess.

Anne Rice is a novelist best known for her gothic New Orleans vampire novels, the forerunners of this season's trendy vampiretas. She grew up a Catholic, became an atheist in her fashionable beatnik years and some years ago rejoined the Church. This week she announced she was "quitting Christianity, for Christ's sake." Unable to fathom the dictates of organized Christianity, including calls to reject abortion, gay rights, and a female clergy, Rice decided her disappointment was just too much to bear and went walkabout.

This is undoubtedly a complicated and personal decision. However, it leaves me with a feeling of anger. To me it is akin to saying "sorry, Jesus, dude. That cross is getting a little heavy. You're on your own." Yes, the Church is deeply flawed and this Pope is a man with questionable impulses, as was John Paul, in terms of bringing us into a truly enlightened communion. But you either believe we are the body of Christ or you're just intoxicated by the candle smoke and statuettes.