Who knew that things had gotten so intimate between the erstwhile Cold War adversaries? Senator Charles Schumer (of New York) says
Russia has stabbed us in the back, and each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife.
As Mr Schumer surely knows, the “stab in the back” is a favourite antisemitic trope, or more generally a reference to treacherous fellow citizens who are “behind us” because we think we can trust them, while our eyes are focused on the enemy across the border. They are the internal enemy, taking advantage of our attention focused on the external enemy.
In Schumer’s telling, Russia is the one on the right.
Now, Russia is a powerful nation, and I hope that the US has a reasonably cooperative diplomatic relationship to it, but I would never have thought it was a US ally.
So, what I want to know is, who screwed up and let the Russians have our backs?
Of course, we wouldn’t have this problem if Snowden (like Bradley Manning) was gay. Maybe we should stop giving security clearances to heterosexuals. It’s too easy for them to get asylum…
Common Infirmities 