It wasn't simply tapping phones, it is the warrantless collection of close to all global electronic communications.
And the immorality doesn't stop there, that's where it starts.
"We kill people based on metadata."
- General Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and former Director of the CIA.
This includes innocent people. Women, children, civilians. Deliberately. "Acceptable collateral damage" is the euphemism used to mask the moral evil of deliberately murdering women and children.
If you're in a war of attrition (like the the US was in Afghanistan), and the other side already has agreed it's okay to kill innocents (9/11), then you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means.
I'm not going to defend the CIA/NSA for actions taken inside the country. On the other hand, I'm not going to second guess decisions happening on the ground in an active war zone.
It's working so far for Russia. It worked for Germany in WWII until the US stepped and fought our way through Europe.
If you see a certain group as your sworn enemy for life which should be destroyed at all means possible -- then you will never have peace. All you can have is war.
The long term result of justifying the mean is always the subordination of the individuals, you migrate from a democratic society to totalitarian state.
I feel it's safe to say that no society prefer dictatorship to democracy.
So you won (maybe), your life is worst, you have no freedom anymore.
Beside you say in some case war is inevitable because there is too much hate. I don't agree, people (individuals) can be so hateful that war is inevitable but populations always aspire to peace.
Even totalitarian state always have to justify the war by pretending they're the one merely defending, being attacked because this desire for peace is so powerful.
> ...you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means.
By not fighting ethically abroad and by permitting our authoritarians largely free-rein both abroad and domestically, we gave the folks who planned and caused the destruction of the WTC towers nearly everything they were hoping for.
Overreacting and letting Bush II run his military campaigns in the Middle East was one of the greatest gifts we could have given Al Qaeda and those like them. Encouraging our populace to permit themselves to be (and continue to be) terrorized is a lesser but still significant gift to those same organizations.
Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. Neither did Syria, or Iraq.
Vietnam wasn't self-defense. Korean war wasn't self-defense. CIA-instigated Color revolutions and Euromaidan weren't self-defense. Kosovo wasn't self-defense. Launching a cruise missile (a precision weapon that requires the operator to enter precise geographic coordinates prior to launch) at the Chinese embassy in Belgrade wasn't self-defense.
A vast and overwhelming majority of the military operations the post-WW2 USA conducts overseas are not acts of self-defense, they are acts of imperialism.
"I want to grow the imperial empire's influence and footprint" is not justification for murdering unarmed civilians. Never has been, never will be.
And the immorality doesn't stop there, that's where it starts.
"We kill people based on metadata." - General Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and former Director of the CIA.
This includes innocent people. Women, children, civilians. Deliberately. "Acceptable collateral damage" is the euphemism used to mask the moral evil of deliberately murdering women and children.