Doublethink for Beginners

I'm confused.  But not as confused as our leaders, it seems.  With much fanfare, the Obama administration has swapped several Guantanamo Bay inmates for a US soldier who has been held by the Taliban in Afghanistan for several years.  Said soldier is lauded as a returning hero.  However, and I might be doing him a disservice here, as I understand it, the soldier in question could be classified as a deserter.  He apparently deserted his post in Afghanistan, dropping his weapons and wandering off, abandoning his comrades.  Arguably, by doing so, he could have endangered the lives of other soldiers and, by extension, the security of the US.  At the same time, we have the US secretary of State, John Kerry, declaring that Edward Snowden, who leaked the information that the NSA was routinely spying on US citizens without due cause, should 'man up' and return to the US to face charges - of espionage or treason - for his betrayal of the US.  His actions, the Obama administration continues to claim, endangered he lives of US servicemen by exposing intelligence operations and have endangered the security of the US.  Spot the difference?

This ability to simultaneously hold two opposing view points isn't unique to the current US government.  Take the current situation in Syria, by way of an example.  Our own government here in UK has been pretty clear that in the current civil war raging in Syria, it sees the governing Assad regime as the villain of the piece and has been supportive of the rebels.  Indeed, it wasn't so long ago that they were spoiling for a fight, trying to get parliamentary approval for military action against the Syrian government after it was claimed that their forces had used chemical weapons against civilians.  (Subsequent investigations have found that the perpetrators of the attack might actually have been one of the rebel groups).  So, you'd think that they'd be cheering on anyone who went to help the rebel cause - after all, it wasn't so long ago that William Hague was keen on supplying them with weapons.  But no, it seems that any UK citizen who travels to Syria o join the rebels is an Islamic fundamentalist, jihadist terrorist bastard.  And if they weren't before, they certainly will be after consorting with those heavily bearded Al Qeaeda-supporting loons, is the gist of the government's stance.  The very same loons, of course, that they were trying to arm only a few months ago.  Hmmm.