Friday, October 25, 2013

Seeking the Soul of America.

From The New York Times:

BERLIN — ...[T]his week’s disclosures about the extent of America’s spying on its European allies have added to a series of issues that have sharply eroded confidence in the United States’ leadership at a particularly difficult moment.
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...the broader perception that President Obama himself — for all his promises to rebuild relations with allies after the presidency of George W. Bush — is an unreliable partner.
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This American administration is “misreading and miscalculating the effects” of its deeds in a Europe that is less ready than it once was to heed the United States...
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The disclosures contained in the documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have crystallized a growing sense in Europe that post-Sept. 11 America has lost some of the values of privacy and accountability that have been the source of the world’s admiration for its version of democracy.
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...Elmar Brok of Germany, the chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a pillar of trans-Atlantic exchanges since 1984, spoke Friday of America’s security establishment as a creepy “state within a state.” Since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, “the balance between freedom and security has been lost.”
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After this week, the older European generation is wondering about the marriage, too. “America has always been about freedom and a guarantor for freedom,” said Mr. Brok, bitterly. “Perhaps we were too naïve.”... “In China, I expect such behavior,” he said. But, from America, “this is real disappointment.”

"Such behavior" as "in China:"  "unreliable," "misreading," "miscalculating,"  "creepy,"  "lost privacy and accountability."