It is being confirmed that the information contained in the leaks by former IT analyst at the US National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden is true. Or at least, heads of state are dealing with it as if it were. Even President François Hollande, with the NSA having monitored about 80 million telephone calls made by French citizens, described these leaks as useful and said the press should continue to publish them. This is with the knowledge that Snowden is a refugee in Russia and a wanted fugitive by the United States on charges of treason, who would face a tough penalty before a US court. What would make the President of France praise a wanted fugitive in the United States? One of the documents recently published, according to the newspaper The Guardian, has revealed that it was the US administration that provided the NSA with the telephone numbers of 35 heads of state whose calls should be monitored. (This means that every head of state who would take the risk of speaking with President Barack Obama on the phone would be placing his telephone number on the US surveillance list!) And it has become known that among the latter are two of the United States' closest allies, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Latin America and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Western Europe. President Obama's administration only makes things worse for itself when it tries to respond to the world's objections to such surveillance practices. Thus, it says that such practices are widespread, that every country seeks to obtain information, and that the purpose of monitoring phone calls is to combat terrorism... This would make, according to this excuse, Rousseff and Merkel among those suspected of terrorist activity or drug trafficking, like the millions of French citizens whose phones have proved to have been tapped by the NSA...! What is paradoxical about this practice by the US is that it comes from a Democratic administration whose President, in both of his electoral campaigns, had purposely focused on placing ethics at the core of politics. On the other hand, he also made one of the goals of his foreign policy the attempt to reach understanding with the world's nations, in order to establish peace and avoid wars. US surveillance scandals have thus come in such a way as to expose the extent of the deception shown by this administration, or, at best, the extent to which the US has departed from the principles set down by Obama for his administration. At a time when the administration has, under the slogan of abstaining from waging wars, engaged in complete political abandonment in Afghanistan and in Iraq, to the benefit of its declared adversaries, it has also, in the name of combating terrorism, chosen to engage in practices that violate human rights to the greatest extent, as has been documented by American and international human rights organizations. Most prominent among such violations are the death sentences issued on charges of terrorism against individuals in different parts of the world, especially Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and carried out through missiles launched by unmanned drones. Despite the objections raised by American human rights advocates to this arbitrary practice, the Obama administration considers that drone strikes spare it the burdens of land intervention and of hunting down those suspects on land. This type of operation has proven not to differentiate between suspects and innocents, and to kill many times more civilians, among them women and children, than it does fugitives, without Washington appearing to reconsider such a practice. It in fact clings to it, even though it violates the most basic human rights, and despite the most vehement objections being voiced by the governments of the countries in which such strikes are being carried out. At the same time, President Obama's administration has resorted to commando operations and kidnappings of suspects in several parts of the world, without any consideration for the sovereignty of the countries concerned or for any legal frameworks. Such practices deprive the Obama administration from any claim of clinging to ethics in the exercise of politics, and in fact render it ethically bankrupt, especially after it has started dealing with heads of state as if they were mere terrorists and drug traffickers. History will record that Obama was able to reform the health care system in such a way as to benefit America's poor. It will also record that he allowed the surveillance of heads of state, especially friends of the United States, and caused the most profound crisis of trust between the country and its allies.
