Ever wonder how the US looks to the rest of the world? Well, Klaus Brinkbäumer offers one view in Germany's Der Spiegel today. "America is sick," he writes. "September 11 left it wounded and unsettled," and the NSA scandal "shows that the US has become manic, that it is behaving pathologically." How else to describe a response so vastly disproportionate to the actual danger of terrorism? The US has spent $8 trillion fighting terrorism since 2011, even though more Americans die from, say, falling off of ladders.
To combat this threat—rather than much more relevant dangers like gun violence—the US has set up a spying apparatus that "is as monstrous and unlawful as Guantanamo Bay," and absolutely deserves comparison to the German Stasi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, instead of enabling the US, "should say, 'You are manic, and what you are doing is sick.' That's what friends do." Click for his full column. (More Germany stories.)