A joke is circulating in Brazil in relation to the scandal of the U.S. spying on the phone of Brazilian President Dilma Roussef, who figures that the fastest way to inform President Barack Obama of her decision to cancel her visit to Washington is to send a text message to her own cell phone, since Obama monitors other presidents' phones more than he looks at his own phone. Although this is just a joke, it does reveal the extent of mistrust now reigning between the Obama administration and its allies not only in Brazil and Latin America, but also in the allied European capitals like Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and perhaps other capitals that we still don't know about. The damage is increasing on a daily basis. The latest reports indicate that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitored 700 million phone conversations in France in one month and more than 60 million conversations in Spain (between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013). Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy thus supported the request made by France and Germany when they asked the European Union to work on obtaining a UN resolution preventing the surveillance operations carried by the NSA and targeting the EU countries. The worst thing about this scandal is that when German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Obama to object against the monitoring of her personal cell phone for more than ten years (i.e. before any of them acceded to present posts), Obama – according to American newspapers – responded by saying that he did not know about the spying; and that he would have issued orders to stop it as soon as he became president had he known about it. Other pieces of information indicated that NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander had clearly informed the president that the agency is indeed monitoring Merkel's phone in addition to the phones of thirty-five world leaders. Whether Obama is lying or not is not important. The worst part is that the American president admitted that he knows nothing about the surveillance activities carried by officials in his administration and involving leaders of some of the US's allies. Angela Merkel thought that these practices are reminiscent of the era of the East Germany intelligence services where she used to live. Following the collapse of East Germany, millions of files were uncovered indicating that Germany's citizens and visitors were being closely monitored under the pretext of protecting national security, which dictatorships are quite fond of. When she learned that her phone was being monitored, Merkel spontaneously blurted out: Allies don't spy on each other. Security officials in the USA responded to this by saying that the German chancellor is probably just discovering the world! One of these officials recalled the scandal where Jonathan Pollard was spying on the American security in favor of Israel. The head of the intelligence committee at the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Rogers, told CNN that the United States saved the lives of thousands of Europeans by monitoring the events taking place in their countries. He added: Remember the rise of Fascism and Communism in the 1930s in Europe. We had not anticipated that and it ended up with the death of millions of people. Today, we are protecting Europe against itself! In its latest issue, Foreign Policy Magazine considered that now that former NSA agent Edward Snowden has uncovered the violations and illegal spy operations carried out by the agency, the United States will be forced to reconsider the politics of hypocrisy when it comes to its foreign policies. In this piece, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore wrote that Washington must choose between the realpolitik of "all nations spy" and its rhetoric about transparency and higher values in foreign politics; adding that Washington can no longer follow both approaches at the same time. What we Arabs must do is call on our leaders to revert back to the time of carrier-pigeons in order to communicate. If Washington is spying on the phone calls of Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel and others, then it must be spying on Arab leaders since Washington believes it is its duty to protect them!
