Opinion | The mystery of the West's missing backbone
Philip Bowring says its over-the-top pursuit of Edward Snowden and silence on the violence in Egypt all point to insecurities about its own liberal traditions and even-handedness
The West has become afraid of its own shadow. The past few days have seen events which at first sight appear unconnected but are linked, both to fear of the unknown and lack of commitment to publicly espoused principles.
There was the lack of reaction to the Egyptian army's bloody suppression of mostly peaceful demonstrators protesting at the overthrow of President Mohammed Mursi and his elected Muslim Brotherhood government. In practice, therefore, the US and many of its allies have put themselves in the same position as the more overt supporters of the military intervention, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The massacres were on a vast scale compared with those perpetrated by the Burmese military which refused to give up power following the 1990 election. This was followed by two decades of isolation and economic sanctions. Comparison with Tiananmen 1989 is also appropriate.
Meanwhile, in London, the government yet again abuses the monstrous powers it has been given in the name of state security, this time by detaining at Heathrow Airport David Miranda - the Brazilian partner of a journalist from who worked with Edward Snowden - on cooked-up anti-terrorism grounds, and seizing his electronic data. This thuggish behaviour, sanctioned by the prime minister, seems at least in part to reflect the bond between US and British spy agencies.
The theory that governments have a right to collect every one of our electronic exchanges on the off chance that somehow they are going to thwart some terrorist is so arrogant and impractical as to justify real anger. One supposedly intelligent US Democrat insisted to me that I was "ignorant and stupid" not to have realised that this went on, and was good for security. Well, clearly the revelations from Snowden and Bradley Manning about the extent of surveillance have come as a shock even to journalists working at the centre of US power in Washington. There is a big difference between knowing one could be spied on if an agency so desired and accepting blanket collection and storage.
The Miranda detention is a minor example of abuse. Part of the anger at Snowden and Manning is that they did indeed reveal to American citizens just how vulnerable they are to eventual abuse of information which has no connection with terrorism.
