Snowden wasn't "a random person in an airport in a random country" forced to figure this out himself. He was an incredibly famous and important political figure that had numerous people, organizations, and even countries offering him help or helping him directly. This included both Wikileaks and the Venezuelan government who collaborated on plans to smuggle him out of Russia.
I can't find any sources to back up your claim that Venezuela and WikiLeaks, or anyone for that matter were offering to smuggle Snowden anywhere, but hey let's take that at face value. We'll assume Venezuela was prepared to take the risk of very publicly smuggling someone out of a Russian airport (which Russia would of course be completely chill about), and the resources to do it successfully.
In that scenario Snowden is taking an incredible risk to trade being stuck in Russia for being stuck in Venezuela, which is also considered a national security threat to the US and is also an authoritarian regime. How is that better?
>Interviewed in August 2015 by the Bolivian newspaper El Deber, Assange stated that Wikileaks and the government of Venezuela discussed smuggling Snowden out of Russia aboard the presidential plane of either Venezuela or Bolivia.
Source about his other options for asylum [2]
>Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia offer asylum to Edward Snowden
The whole argument was that he was stuck in Russia because he couldn't get to where he really wanted. Where did he really want to go? From my understanding, that was Ecuador, but they didn't seem to want him there. I'm not judging Snowden specifically because he chose Russia over Venezuela. I am judging him for the hypocrisy of decrying US political oppression while fleeing to a country that is even more oppressive which seemed to be a forgone conclusion as soon as he left the US.
"Discussing" something is not the same as offering it, and your same source mentions that indeed said plane was then grounded due to suspicions Snowden was on board. In other words someone discussed a plan, that had it been put into action would have failed. Not great evidence for "he could have left if he wanted to".
And it should be plainly obvious that offering someone asylum is not the same as offering to smuggle someone out of a foreign country.
>Discussing" something is not the same as offering it
I never said they were "offering" to smuggle him out. I said "collaborated on plans". The phrase you used is "discussed a plan". Are you really going to quibble over the semantic difference between those two?
>and your same source mentions that indeed said plane was then grounded due to suspicions Snowden was on board. In other words someone discussed a plan, that had it been put into action would have failed.
But it wasn't the actual plan because he wasn't on board. As I have said multiple times now in this thread, if he was on board, they could have planned the flight to not fly through the airspace of US allies. That was the only reason the plan was grounded. The US isn't going to shoot down a plane carrying a foreign head of state over international or foreign airspace.
>And it should be plainly obvious that offering someone asylum is not the same as offering to smuggle someone out of a foreign country.
No, but it is an offer that would have made him safe if he was smuggled there.
> No, but it is an offer that would have made him safe if he was smuggled there.
I don't think anyone is arguing that if he magically had the ability to be smuggled somewhere wouldn't then have options. But there's no evidence to suggest he had that ability.
The fact that Assange said "hey do you think you would want to smuggle Snowden out on your plane" and Venezuela said "nah, I'm not really looking for ways to piss of Russia and the US simultaneously" does not constitute an opportunity.
