Understanding the High-Handed International Discourse of the US

As the secret of PRISM is being revealed, Uncle Sam, who holds the banners of “Human Rights,” “Freedom” and “Democracy,” disgraces himself in front the whole world. Judging from its words and actions, we can spot the hegemonic logic of the U.S. in the yet-to-be-resolved PRISM issue.

First manifestation of U.S. high-handedness: trampling on human rights with no mercy. Do American citizens have privacy? Snowden tells the world: The U.S. government has surveillance forces everywhere and thus can easily intrude upon anyone’s privacy. This is to say, their evils, records of instant communication, telephone records, private messages on social media and texts might all be monitored, acquired and mastered. After the exposure of PRISM, Gallup conducted research showing that 53 percent of the people interviewed did not support the government’s acquisition of phone and Internet records in the name of combating terrorism, whereas 37 percent were in favor of what the government did and 10 percent did not hold any stance. Among these interviewees, 30 percent thought that under no preconditions should these surveillance projects be deemed proper and legitimate. Facing up to these opinions, the most “democratic” government and its officials dare not admit their high-handedness and abuse of power, and start evading this issue with excuses such as the matter being secret and not suitable for public discussion. No wonder Snowden said that disclosure of these activities would expose the hypocrisy of the U.S. government. The government claimed that it did not exercise surveillance on ordinary citizens as its opponents; however, not only did it lie, but the U.S. government is also afraid that the public might know the truth.

Second manifestation of U.S. high-handedness: being the thief but crying, “Stop, thief!” and being bold with justice. If others were caught monitoring the Internet, the U.S. would accuse them of violating human rights and restricting freedom of speech. But when it is caught monitoring the network worldwide, it justifies its behavior by saying it is for the sake of preserving national security. That Uncle Sam’s “human rights” banner only targets others is a widely known rule. This May and June, National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon said that China should take responsibility for the attacks by hackers against the Internet and that Obama had already expressed such concerns to China. But America, who takes the victim’s stance and constantly blames China for hacker attacks against itself, was exposed by U.S. citizen Snowden to have been invading more than 100 targets in Hong Kong’s and mainland China’s networks, including schools, since 2009. American hackers intruded upon global computers more than 61,000 times, targeting Hong Kong and mainland China hundreds of times. This is the real “Matrix.” It seems that, besides the 36 strategies by Sun Tzu, the not-so-honest Uncle Sam also invented strategies such as “bravado” and “being a thief while crying, ‘Stop the thief.’”

Third manifestation of U.S. high-handedness: starting to pressure others to find and arrest Snowden before the launch of relevant mechanisms. Uncle Sam is occupied with both trying to save face and arresting Snowden. Snowden openly announced that America had put pressure on the Hong Kong government, coercing it to extradite him back to America. Thus, he was concerned about the safety of his family and himself. Under such circumstances, Britain has already sent official letters to many airlines, asking them to refuse to provide service to Snowden. But America, the most “democratic” country, model of the tripartite political system, has yet to launch such mechanisms or legal procedures and is too impatient to wait. Officials keep on labeling Snowden as a “traitor” and are anxious to arrest him in “Hollywood style.” The world is watching to see what Snowden’s fate is going to be, and this is going to be a lively show of America’s legal system.