Hero or Villain?Follow

When has politics ever been about ethics?

Ahaha, can't find someone to blame. That's a good one.

IG to start off with. You possibly can't believe that the system isn't set up with checks and balances. There are too many people seeking power to believe that there wouldn't be someone who wouldn't want to legally/ethically disclose/bust wrong doing, especially if it's political.

That sometimes goes well for the person who gets the information, it's almost always career ending for the person who provides the information. There's not a good way to be a government whistle blower. It's partially that way by design in a culture that values loyalty above ethics in many cases.

And the next potential employer isn't necessarily going to know for sure which it was, so is likely to just not take the chance in the first place.

While there is a revolving door at the top, there frequently isn't a viable "next employer" for many career government employees, especially if they've burned their network of contacts still in government service.

I was expanding the issue to include private business as well. Also looking at local level government whistle blowing (which I'd assume numerically is where it happens the most). Obviously, once in the federal government employment system, you've got one bridge to burn, then it's over.

Well, duh.

If that were true, then we wouldn't be having these discussions of "Hero or villain". As long as there are decent people and/or people who seek power (good or bad), there will always be a job for person who whistle blows. Regulations are there for a reason and the concept of upholding logical regulations that aren't illegal, unethical and/or immoral will always exist. Especially if we're dealing with something on such a large scale that most people might agree with. You don't get fired for "whistle blowing", you get praised for doing the right thing that negatively affects a large number of people.

There is absolutely no excuse for this guy (or anyone for that matter) can put together to excuse his actions.

Except that technically, no (US) laws were violated. The problem is that the government often engages in operations that are "legal", but which would not look good politically if the public were aware of it (like say, selling drugs in one country, to fund/supply rebels in another). It's not technically illegal (within the US) for the US government to use CIA operatives to sell drugs or provide guns (or assassinate people) in other countries. But it's bad politically for those kinds of operations to become public knowledge.

Where the illegality often comes about is that the need to not allow public knowledge (which btw usually has more to do with not pissing off or embarrassing foreign governments than our own citizens) often leads various people in the know to lie about the operations. Which then results in them going to jail. And sometimes, they go to jail even though what they did was completely legal and authorized by their chain of command (leading to the president), but solely to protect that chain (and president) from the political fallout of having ordered something that the public might not like. Sad fact is that not all secret missions involve killing OBL and can be publicly declared after the fact. Most are no more illegal (legality is a gray area when it comes to executive operations outside the US btw) than that operation, but not so publicly acceptable.

Doesn't mean that there aren't cases of actual illegality outside the bounds of what was authorized, but a good percentage of the time the operations *were* authorized (and thus legal), but they don't want anyone to know it was authorized for numerous political reasons, so someone has to take the fall by claiming it wasn't, and he violated the law anyway. Which was precisely what Oliver North did in the aforementioned Iran Contra deal.


What's somewhat interesting in all the various scandals surrounding the Obama administration is that no one is coming forward and taking the blame. Which only makes these sorts of things worse in the long run. You have to either say "we authorized this" and take the political heat for doing something unpopular, or you must have a fall guy who'll say "It wasn't authorized, and I broke the law". This administration is trying to thread the needle between those, and I'm not sure that's going to work.