Is Alexander seriously comparing this to him taking 50 hostages and then killing 10 people?
And this is the same Alexander who helps CIA kill that many people per day with his mass surveillance and "signature drone strikes" - right? Just checking to see if he's the right guy to question Snowden's morals.
Alexander is saying "He's already committed a crime and is promising to do another. How do we give him a free pass on the first crime if he promises not to do the second?"
Ever seen the monty python sketch where hitler, goebbels, etc. are put on trial and their defense is, basically, "we didn't kill anyone, we only gave the orders"
Sorry, i do not mean to compare alexander to a nazi, i'm just ridiculing the idea that the head of the nsa, a general, is merely a bureaucrat.
Generals are always to some extent bureaucrats (how did we get to WWI?) but they're bureaucrats in a military organization who give orders that directly result in people being killed.
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Is Alexander seriously comparing this to him taking 50 hostages and then killing 10 people?
And this is the same Alexander who helps CIA kill that many people per day with his mass surveillance and "signature drone strikes" - right? Just checking to see if he's the right guy to question Snowden's morals.
No, you read the analogy wrong.
Alexander is saying "He's already committed a crime and is promising to do another. How do we give him a free pass on the first crime if he promises not to do the second?"
I can't get past the irony of Alexander's moral indignation.
Alexander is not killing anyone. He is a bureaucrat and this is just the kind of stuff they say.
Ever seen the monty python sketch where hitler, goebbels, etc. are put on trial and their defense is, basically, "we didn't kill anyone, we only gave the orders"
Sorry, i do not mean to compare alexander to a nazi, i'm just ridiculing the idea that the head of the nsa, a general, is merely a bureaucrat.
I think that WW1 was such a mess precisely because the generals on all sides were mostly aristocratic bureaucrats.
Generals are always to some extent bureaucrats (how did we get to WWI?) but they're bureaucrats in a military organization who give orders that directly result in people being killed.