defend the indefensible: glenn fucking greenwald

(also, the point isn't that he got the Iraq War wrong, the point is that he seems obsessed with the people who started the Iraq War, to the extent that he will overlook the crimes of everyone else if they say something negative about neo-conservatism. it seems more personal than anything at this point)

yeah he should take a page from Hillary's book and just pretend it never happened maybe take a photo op with a gold star family

I just find his casting aspersions on McMaster, the author of "Dereliction of Duty," as a neoliberal warmonger hilarious.

I used to be annoyed by how much attention he got from the LGM coalition but lately it's been funny. Chait ripped him a new one recently too.

Greenwald started blogging in 2005. Do we know about his support of the 2003 invasion because of some Livejournal posts or something?

Chait needs to be fired into space with the rest of the War Democrats

Sure, but when you're so bent by your libertarian paymaster that you can get fried by the likes of Chait, you have officially passed into punchline territory

the libertarian stuff on The Intercept must be behind some firewall

Greenwald started blogging in 2005. Do we know about his support of the 2003 invasion because of some Livejournal posts or something?

― President Keyes, 10. august 2017 18:21 (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's in his book 'How Would a Patriot Act'

I had not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president's performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed, because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country, I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt. I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.

this is adorable, the wrongest ilxor shaming someone for reflecting on a time they were wrong and the factors that led to it

No, I have a remarkable talent for getting things right immediately.

― Frederik B, 10. august 2017 18:02 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(also, the point isn't that he got the Iraq War wrong, the point is that he seems obsessed with the people who started the Iraq War, to the extent that he will overlook the crimes of everyone else if they say something negative about neo-conservatism. it seems more personal than anything at this point)

― Frederik B, 10. august 2017 18:04 (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh I don't care

lol

(also, the point isn't that he got the Iraq War wrong, the point is that he seems obsessed with the people who started the Iraq War, to the extent that he will overlook the crimes of everyone else if they say something negative about neo-conservatism. it seems more personal than anything at this point)

― Frederik B, Thursday, August 10, 2017 9:04 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hate it when people don't give the criminals who started the iraq war a fair shake

That's not his point but U take it you don't actually care either

bush got half a million people killed for nothing. trump hasn't hit that mark, and until he does, i'm comfortable saying neoconservatism is worse

GG was not a public figure in 2003 and never wrote a single word advocating for the war. the paragraph fred was quoting (from a book i assume he hasn't read) is part of a mea culpa, the point of which is basically "i was a moron to assume that the president knew what he was doing." i've been disappointed by GG's work lately and haven't found him useful at all since the election but calling him an "iraq war supporter," full stop, is a distortion.

I never liked the "but Trump doesn't have blood on his hands yet" argument when he campaigned on promises of war crimes, it was clear that he was capable of worse and especially now that he is cavalier about nuclear war during a potential crisis.

I used to be annoyed by how much attention he got from the LGM coalition but lately it's been funny. Chait ripped him a new one recently too.

― El Tomboto, Thursday, August 10, 2017 12:16 PM (four hours ago)

well when you've lost chait...

JD otm

trump's only "success" so far is unleashing ICE. otherwise, though terrifying and humiliating, he's been a failure

x-post: Bullshit. My friend Kim from highschool supported the Iraq War as well, and even though he never did anything at all and was a stupid kid from a country that didn't matter, of course he was an "Iraq War Supporter."

The mental hoops you guys jump through sometimes...

idgaf about people's opinions when they were in high school. have you ever met a teenager? they're idiots.

i similarly don't really care *that* much about someone's beliefs before they became a public figure. when your opinions and decisions actually start to mean something (for example, you're a US senator), i care a little more about the thought you put into things and the conclusions you come to

i knew plenty of ppl back in 2002 and 2003 who were sufficiently confused or awed by the amount of propaganda coming out of the administration (often helped by the press) that they didn't oppose the war. i don't judge them the same way i do politicians, pundits, or any other public figures who jumped on the bandwagon and loudly advocated for the invasion. (one of whom, btw, was the candidate frederik b stridently advocated for here during the primary season last year.)

I was completely snowed by the Bush admin throughout 2002-3 and have never forgiven them for it. I was basically an unwitting Colin Powell and I'm sure some evidence of that is all over ILE.

yeah i read too much hitchens after 9/11 but i thought reading the nation and slate was where it was at

Ah, the frantic sound at goalposts being moved by kev k and j d. I don't care how much you care about, or how you want to judge, GG's support for the Iraq War, but it's a fact that he did support it. I notice it because he seems a bit like El Tomboto, as someone whos anger at neo-cons has to do with the fact that they feel personally deceived.

I demonstrated against both the Iraq and Afghan wars, do I have extra cachet to tell you you're being an asshole

cosign

I supported Afghanistan, didn't support Iraq. Do I get a cookie?

You're pulling Greenwald out of context, Frederik. I've been quoting here and elsewhere since 2006 and never saw him as anything but a non-politician overwhelmed by propaganda and, who knows, motivated by patriotism.

I never supported the war. Before we learned the extent of Karl Rove's cynicism and perfidy, I couldn't figure out what the goddamn rush was. If Saddam had nukes, why not let the UN weapons inspectors do their job? It stank from the beginning. However, I shut up after the occupation and for a time in 2003, buttressed by generous doses of Kenneth Pollack, Hitchens, and Paul Berman, thought as a liberal we should see what kind of lasting peace these cynical and perfidious men made -- a thought-experiment that showed my own cynicism. I gave up in 2004.

most americans, in 2003, were not prepared to swallow the idea that their president and his entire administration -- who had been covered by much of the press in a less-than-critical light since 9/11 -- would straight-up lie to them about something so important.

I don't take any credit for my opposition, I was a typical anti-authoritarian punk (9/11 was one of my first days of high school). That said, I wouldn't trust either the American (or Canadian) militaries' judgment, planning, or justifications for basically any armed action in the Middle East at this point so maybe not that much has changed lol

i was in yeshiva at the time so i was pretty out of touch with everything that happened except for seeing newspaper headlines in vending machines on friday when we out went to put tefillin on ppl. but i remember feeling for weeks like war was inevitably coming - that it just seemed stacked that way and the GWB administration just seemed v full of shit like obviously trying to sell a war while pretending they didn't want one. lots of bellicose statements about how this is the last straw etc.

i was listening to a lot of chomsky lectures at the time and was probably against it on principle. the whole time after 9/11 was just exhausting tho - and being sequestered i felt especially helpless.

I think the patriotism aspect is really interesting, the way Greenwald explicitly evokes it in his book title as well. The Patriot Act is doubly wrong because it hurts patriotism, almost, as if patriotism isn't a corrosive idea to begin with. I mean, is it really that surprising that he is now writing about Bannon as somehow representing the vote of the people?

link?

As the Atlantic’s Rosie Gray reports, McMaster has successfully fired several national security officials aligned with Steve Bannon and the nationalistic, purportedly non-interventionist foreign policy and anti-Muslim worldview Trump advocated throughout the election. As Gray notes, this has provoked anger among Trump supporters who view the assertion of power by these Generals as an undemocratic attack against the policies for which the electorate voted.

[...]

The combination of the “Goldman Boys” and the Generals has taken over, Wilson crows, and is destroying the Bannon-led agenda on which Trump campaigned.

[...]

Whatever else is true, there is now simply no question that there is open warfare between adherents to the worldview Trump advocated in order to win, and the permanent national security power faction in Washington that – sometimes for good, and sometimes for evil – despises that agenda.

[...]

the military triumvirate of Kelly, Mattis and McMaster has been cast as the noble defenders of American democracy, pitted against those who were actually elected to lead the government.

[...]

In terms of some of the popular terms that are often thrown around these days – such as “authoritarianism” and “democratic norms” and “U.S. traditions” – it’s hard to imagine many things that would pose a greater threat to all of that than empowering the National Security State (what, before Trump, has long been called the Deep State) to exert precisely the power that is supposed to be reserved exclusively for elected officials.

From upthread

the king of bad faith strikes again.

bannon's fp is what trump ran on.

Are you joking?

Trump bought into a lot more of Bannon's ideology than his fp, lol

Not that that has anything to do with what I'm getting at.

gg is either supporting the democracy principle even when it results in things he doesn't like, and/or he is more in favor of bannon's isolationist/nativist fp than the "deep state's" - both seem justifiable positions to me. what's insanely stupid is that he's talking about mcmaster and mattis as tho they're unelected officials undermining the potus's agenda but the potus appointed both of them and can fire both of them - they are a result of the democratic will, not some kind of anti-trump alliance.

he is more in favor of bannon's isolationist/nativist fp than the "deep state's"

This is my assumption (because your first solution is undermined by your explanation in the next few sentences), and I'm noting there might be some overlap between his frustrated patriotism and the isolationism/nativism.

Bump

Expanding scope of thread to include general douchiness and asshattery at The Intercept:

https://www.theroot.com/hey-i-can-play-this-game-too-guys-1819822866

FOIA requests are a tactic used to expose vast corruption, dirty cops and human rights abuses, not to snoop after other journalists who say things you don’t like. I guess Fang was hoping to find some type of nefarious collusion between me and the Stacey Abrams campaign (which is ironic, since I thought The Intercept didn’t believe in collusion).

I’m surprised that Fang thinks I’d be dumb enough to communicate with any political source on my work email. That’s Journalism 101. He might need to retake that class; I’ll save him a seat when I teach it next fall.

I honored the FOIA request, but I didn’t have anything to give him because there was nothing to give.

lol @ Angry Loomis though

Recent great hires at The Intercept have forced me off of my position to never read anything sponsored by that site curated by racist Rand Paul-curious dishonest libertarian Russian stooge Glenn Greenwald.

I was wondering if you bumped this thread because of Loomis.

I read LGM every morning but Loomis' old-dude-discovers-Facebook prose style gets on my nerves at times.

I get aggravated at Loomis because he is so prolific and knowledgeable it makes me feel like a bum