Washington continues to shirk its own responsibility in its mishandling of state secrets. Criticizing China for letting Snowden go is like blaming the fireman for the smoke detector without batteries.

When governments like the US place high emphasis on state secrets and intelligence agencies to safeguard them, there’s an understanding inherent to the business that leaks of a highly classified nature are to be safeguarded against at all costs. Why? Because state secrets conceal ties between government officials and their explicit approval and/or knowledge of highly immoral and typically illegal activities carried out in the dubious name of national security. This surmisal is key to understanding why the US government behaves the way it does diplomatically when it’s caught with its pants down in a global scandal.

Real national security blunders are rarely acknowledged publicly. The former Soviet Union conducted an effective espionage campaign to enhance their fledgling nuclear program during the early days of the Cold War. A ring of “atomic spies” procured enough pertinent knowledge of the Manhattan Project to bring their nuclear program in line with US capabilities. In terms of nuclear proliferation and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the US is arguably the worst culprit in human history.

Edward Snowden has not revealed state secrets of this nature. He’s not even in the same league as individuals who leaked information to the Soviet Union, not by a long shot. He has not, as it has been asserted by Republicans and Democrats, divulged information that will tip off terrorists to how they’re being monitored by US intelligence. It’s a straw man argument at best. What Snowden has revealed is who has been complicit in working with the government to monitor the citizens of the United States and of its allies.

The Snowden affair is a cause for much embarrassment for US officials, and this is the only reason why Snowden is being demonized and hunted down in such a fanatical manner. Not because Snowden has put anyone in harm’s way, but because the moral standing of the world’s last superpower is once again on trial for unscrupulous behavior in its totalitarian quest for global dominance.

The reactions of US politicians are almost comical in that they appear no more enlightened than stupid playground bullies. They push and shove around the “little guys” like France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, so that another smaller kid, Bolivia, has to land its plane in Vienna because Snowden was suspected of being on board. The US continues to threaten kids in its own backyard too – like Venezuela, and Nicaragua – who along with Bolivia have offered Snowden asylum. The big kids on the block, like Russia and China, offer enough resistance to the bullying so as to endure a little criticism for their roles in harboring Snowden.

Snowden Affair Publicity

US officials are losing the war of words in their quest to find a sympathetic public. In a recent poll, 55 percent of Americans indicated that they thought Snowden was a legitimate whistleblower while only 34 percent believed he was a traitor to his country. This may seem like a victory to Snowden supporters, but chances of a fair trial for a whistleblower under the Obama Administration or the next is very unlikely.

Emphatically, the American government is chock-full of politicians defending state violence as a matter of policy and discourse. These same representatives continue to sponsor Wall Street practices that crashed our economy. They routinely harbor the real criminals of government and in board rooms who jeopardize our national security in many profound ways. The real patriots, those groups and individuals who stand up against these existential threats to our livelihoods and personal liberties, by way of protest risk the harshest and most unjust reprisals from a nation that prides itself on human rights. This is why Snowden fled the country. There is not one institution or mechanism left in the public domain to stick up for the little guy when it’s a matter of national importance.

Originally published at Digital Journal