[I_DRINK_KOOLAID]

The military is the most popular entity in any country, (except when they are actively and publicly engaging in internal indiscriminate genocide). If you speak against it you'll be a very lone voice and you'll very soon find yourself socially isolated and without allies, which is exactly what happened to Snowden.

Even at the very extremes such as Abu Grahib the population attacked George W. not the military.

Snowden overestimated the potency of the material that he leaked, if the public didn't turn against the military for Abu Grahib then his material wouldn't have cut it either.

In order for whistleblowing to work and for the whistleblower to be safe and continue living a normal social life, it has to be political in nature, it has to be a hit to the reputation of a political or social leader who is already dancing around 50% or less approval rating and always in danger of falling off the cliff (like Nixon, Trump, Bill Clinton or given the current partisanship any future POTUS).

If you blew the whistle on Nixon then you had the whole left embrace you and protect you, if you blew the whistle on Bill Clinton affair, all of the sudden the right would love you.

Snowden managed to piss off both the left and the right so he had to escape to Russia, of course he won't repeat the same mistake again