EDIT: Also, the concept of "a human right to seek asylum" is meaningless. Asylum is a two-party arrangement. Is that a legal obligation for all nations to _grant_ asylum to seekers, regardless of circumstances?
Justice: The quality of being fair and reasonable.
He is a fugitive from injustice.
I do not care whether he is a hero or not, but I do care about whether it was a right thing to do and whether he is treated as a human should be treated. These are principles worth upholding.
How so? I mean this sincerely.
What do you think will happen to him when he is arrested? There's no brig to throw him in, as he's a civilian. Snowden was very concerned about the lack of judicial oversight in what he saw with PRISM, so why would he assume that very same judicial system would mark him for special treatment when people like Hanssen, the Walker gang, and even Aaron Hernandez have not received such?
If Snowden really felt beforehand that the civilian justice system was so completely inequitable it seems weird that he'd have been so insistent on its involvement elsewhere.
The 'justice' system fulfils what power requires from it. It will be as inequitable with a trial as it has been with this whole fiasco.
But I think underlying this is the thought that it would be good if there was an equitable justice system as opposed to an inequitable one.
"...But Obama’s Justice Department, like Bush’s, has not been above an opportunistic (and occasionally downright Procrustean) reading of particular statutes to permit whatever it is that the White House wants to do."
The flipside for Snowden is that at least it will count as time served so if he gets sentenced to more than 2 years it might actually be beneficial as I'd imagine you get to meet with your lawyers more often while prepping for trial.
This, while seeming important, is basically irrelevant as long as the US is demonstrating their willingness to torture accused people prior to trial for crimes such as these.
He could have done something 10x worse and it still wouldn't matter. Nobody should ever be subjected to torture - even if convicted. They're torturing people for years before trials even start, if they start at all.
He cannot anticipate anything resembling justice in the US.
It's a red herring.
Snowden would prefer not to find out if that trend is going to continue.
Hint: nobody has ever said they thought Manning was a suicide risk except for his torturers. All qualified medical personnel that have ever examined him (including the prison psychologist) have insisted that he wasn't. Hint 2: doing sleep deprivation and humiliation is not the way to reduce someone's chance of suicide, if you honestly believed they were a risk. Which no one did.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/01/1166253/-The-Tortur...
Additionally, Obama himself declared him (Manning) guilty in public before his trial even began. (I wish I was making this up.)
It's not speculation. We've watched it happen, and recently. They are condemned before the trial even begins, and denied basic human rights from the outset - rights we shouldn't even deny convicted mass murderers.
It's an incredible shame for everyone who used to be proud to be from the USA.
His treatment was bad enough that you don't have to be counter-factual about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning#Detention
Last time I checked May -> April was still 11 months, and definitely not "several years".
> Additionally, Obama himself declared him (Manning) guilty in public before his trial even began. (I wish I was making this up.)
As far as I can tell from Googling, he said in a conversation, in the context of the rule of law, the "he broke the law". And that was it.
Am I missing something?
The rest of the context from the sites Google finds seems to indicate that Manning can't possibly get a fair trial, because the officers who would have to decide his guilt would treat that as some kind of order. Which is simply untrue, as evidenced by Manning's own reaction by asking for a bench trial.
If he had asked for a jury trial he would have had many more people to possibly conceive of his innocence. And the jury pool would have contained enlisted members as well, not just officers.
By asking for a bench trial he's one, and only one, commissioned officer away from being found guilty. That would be an insane choice, if this officer were really that susceptible to finding Manning guilty simply because Obama failed to use the word "allegedly" in a conversation.
Luckily, as Manning realizes since he's actually in the freaking military, that isn't the case at all.
Exerting unknown influence behind closed doors with those who have the ability to grant or deny his requests for asylum is an entirely different matter, though.
"This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile"
Doesn't "exile" refer to his being without a passport? So isn't he clearly saying that it's extralegal?
To your edit: See Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution"
Which is followed by:
"This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations"
Which negates your point, because of this:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S.%20new...
I don't understand what your point is about the nature of heroism.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no jurisdiction, it is not a law... If you are confusing it for one, then I think you have some reading to do.
> http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S.%20new....
Most political charges are dressed up as non-political. Does this surprise you?
> I don't understand what your point is about the nature of heroism
If your intent for bringing up heroism was not to imply that he should be "brought to justice", "turn himself in", "should not have run", or any variation of those, then consider my point about the nature of heroism to be an aside.
Snowden's own father says he broke the law... but he wasn't a traitor in doing so. But I don't believe the UDHR talks about treason in their exception request.
He broke the law, and fled to avoid justice. All quite reasonable, from his perspective.
But why is he trying to claim something different? He claims the U.S. pursuit of him is somehow extralegal or some kind of perversion of justice. It's neither.
Snowden decided that the need of the public to know about PRISM was more important than the loss of national security value that would come from revealing the details about it. While that's his decision to make, it's not weird that there are laws in place to protect national security. His father acknowledges that. Hell, even Putin acknowledges that; why can't Snowden now? If you're going to go on the lam then hey, I see why.... but don't act like the government did anything weird in that regard.
He is fleeing "justice", he believes that the US is using extralegal, political, methods to pursue him in order to "bring" him to justice, and he finds it plausible that "justice" will involve a gross violation of his human rights.
I am not seeing the problem here that you seem to think there is. What are you expecting him to say, "The only reason I am running is so that I am not subjected to a fair trail and humane punishment."?
He could just say "I broke the law for the public good, there's no way to get this issue the attention it deserves otherwise. I intend to remain free even if I have to be in exile, as that is how I can do the most good for the people!" etc etc. Not really that hard, you know. :P
No, it's a legal obligation to not infringe on the right of people to seek and enjoy asylum. Of course, it's the UN, so it's debatable how much of a "legal obligation" any of it is, especially for the USA.
Yes. This is what's wrong with this line of reasoning.
Only in the narrowest, most legalistic sense of the term. In terms of what is just however, I think there's a lot of room for debate.