Power Has Been Abused, but It's 'Well-Intentioned'

The National Security Agency’s spying scandal keeps unfolding. Additional phone tapping has been revealed: 60 million calls in Spain. Also, news is surfacing in Japan about the collaboration of the Tokyo government, which — allegedly — has allowed NSA agents to penetrate the Western Pacific’s communication nodes. The NSA spying scandal, however, is also creating a dangerous precedent. So far, political common sense suggests that “you cannot spy on anyone without authorization.”

Spying entails a political or legal punishment. In this case, however, nobody seems willing to use impeachment of Obama as a deterrent. Even the Republicans, who are willing to challenge him on any reform, are showing some reluctance to go against the president. They too have lined up behind the reasoning of “my country, right or wrong”: National security is at stake, so it is fine.

But the problem is that it is not just about national security, as Vittorio Feltri and Giuliano Ferrara have also written in their most recent editorials. Once we know that our friend is listening to us, what they hear can be used appropriately as well as inappropriately. We do not know if Merkel’s conversations — or those of other governments — were useful in fighting terrorism. We do know, however, that once calls are intercepted, Washington has in its hands a lot of political and industrial confidential information. There is also the well-founded suspicion that the NSA exerts industrial espionage, even to our detriment.

Moreover, there is also the well-founded suspicion that the same Democratic administration collects data and information on rival political groups, such as the Catholic organization Manif Pour Tous and pro-life and pro-family NGOs, who have an agenda that is contrary to Obama’s pro-gay agenda: The alarm has been raised, with an open letter from Deputy Luca Volontè. On the other hand, not the NSA but the IRS had recently spied on members of the tea party, not exclusively for fiscal reasons, but also political reasons. So do we really have nothing to worry about? Leaving the NSA’s spying unpunished or justifying it would overturn the principle set by Watergate, the previous precedent. In the latter’s case, members of the Democratic Party — rivals of incumbent President Richard Nixon — were spied on.

When the scandal surfaced, thanks to a journalistic investigation and a “Deep Throat” — the equivalent of Snowden — Nixon had to resign to avoid impeachment. Please note that the “I was not aware” excuse was invalid. Nixon kept insisting that he was not the one who had given those orders and that he was unaware of the situation. In fact, according to the most recent historiography, Nixon did not order all the spying operations on the Democratic Party, but in some cases he did give tacit consent. It was a matter of objective responsibility. The commander in chief commands and is responsible for what his people do. Barack Obama, some 40 years after Watergate, uses exactly the same excuse: “I was not aware.”

Does that mean that objective responsibility does not apply to him? Or maybe there is a distinction between what can and can’t be spied on? Is intercepting Democrats’ calls more grievous than spying on the tea party, Angela Merkel, the Mexican president, 70 million calls in France and 60 million calls in Spain? Also, we don’t yet know how many calls have been intercepted in Italy. In Nixon’s case, there was a near certainty of impeachment and an anti-Nixon media campaign that is still ongoing to this day. Even as we speak, “Frost/Nixon: The Debate” — inspired by the script from Ron Howard’s famous movie of 2008 — is being performed at a theater in Milan. The former Republican president was disgraced; he remains the symbol of abuse of power. The current Democratic president does a lot more. Nixon was an amateur compared to him. But Obama’s power abuse is “well-intentioned.”