Glenn Greenwald: Always right. At least in his mind

By Ben Cohen: I’ve received quite a few emails and comments about my piece on Glenn Greenwald’s rant on the progressive media last week. Some readers took exception to my position that Greenwald’s rhetoric is unhelpful and counter productive, claiming my attack on him was pointless and without substance. The most concise criticism came reader Steve Rice who wrote:

The progressive blogosphere is already bursting at the seams with people who do nothing but rant about Republicans all day. Greenwald has different priorities. Yes, his focus is somewhat narrow, but that’s always been the case. If you read him, you know what you’re getting into. Given that, I fail to see the point of this article, aside from getting easy page-views from the anti-Greenwald brigade. It’s the same vague pseudo-criticism you’ve leveled at him before and you admit yourself that it has little to do with the substance of his work. So why write about Glenn Greenwald?

I’m unsure how my piece on Monday consists of ‘vague pseudo-criticism’ given I was quite explicit about what I was attacking Greenwald on. As the reader says, I don’t have a problem with the substance of Greenwald’s work, I have a problem with the tone of it and his relentless attacks on other media outlets and writers who do not follow Greenwald’s specific editorial agenda. Perhaps Bob Cesca does a better job of what I was trying to articulate. He wrote about Greenwald’s attack on MSNBC and other progressive outlets:

This new Greenwald rant is a continuation of his ongoing crusade to badger progressives who don’t make it part of their daily routine to screech at the president regarding Greenwald’s preordained three or four pet issues. Greenwald operates under the mandate that because drones are his primary concern and the prism through which he evaluates the president, so it should be with everyone else. The slightest deviation from that narrative in lieu of delivering news of a presidential success is a punishment-worthy trespass.

Greenwald has a long and storied history of extreme pettiness when it comes to dealing with other progressives, going as far as claiming Obama supporters would stand by him if he raped a nun on live television. When a blogger named “DrDawg” tweeted about Imani Gandy: “Obama could rape a nun live on NBC and you’d say we weren’t seeing what we were seeing,” Greenwald felt the need to add: “No – she’d say it was justified and noble – that he only did it to teach us about the evils of rape.” (pic of the exchange below):

Greenwald was probably being sarcastic (and trying to be funny), but the exchange was spiteful and unnecessary – particularly given it was directed towards a woman. Rape isn’t exactly a topic you make jokes about. And instead of apologize when lambasted by much of the blogosphere, Greenwald tweeted that Obama supporters would defend him in the face of “ANY evil: assassinations, child-killings: EVEN rape violent crime like rape.” Of course in Greenwald’s world, he can never be wrong, so an apology was completely out of the question.

This type of rhetoric is extremely counterproductive for a number of reasons. Firstly, you can be a supporter of any political figure, Republican or Democrat, without explicitly endorsing everything they do. I have many Republican friends who voted for both George Bush and Mitt Romney and I would never level that type of hostility towards them. Yes, I think Bush and Romney are backwards thinking dinosaurs who have spent their entire careers lining the pockets of the wealthy and cheer leading wars in the Middle East, but I don’t hold my friends accountable for their actions. Going after political leaders is one thing, but relentlessly attacking their supporters is something completely different. You can have a civilized debate with those who disagree with you without insinuating they support rape and child murder.

Secondly, Greenwald’s vindictiveness and tone detracts from the often excellent points he makes. I wrote about this in my article on Monday, but it’s worth repeating: Greenwald is a very good journalist and he does important work. He’s just limiting himself by behaving like a smug spelling bee champion.

I wrote a story on Greenwald’s excessive smugness and pettiness a few months back on these pages, and I’m guessing as a result, I have been blocked from following Glenn on Twitter (and I’m sure if he reads this, he’ll respond with something even smugger like “I don’t know who Ben Cohen is….”). My twitter account is open for anyone to follow, and as long as they are not abusive towards me, I don’t mind debating them. Greenwald apparently sees the twittersphere as a playground where he gets to pick on people he doesn’t like and block those who politely disagree with him.

Going after Glenn Greenwald isn’t an ‘easy-page views’ endeavor either. As the reader rightly points out, ranting about Republicans is quite the rage these days and people do tend to tune into scathing pieces about the latest Republican insanity more than debates between left wing political commentators. I’m going after Greenwald because he’s behaving like a spoiled child and should stop hurling bombs at people who don’t believe he is the be all and end all of progressive politics.

And just to show you this is nothing personal, I’m going to end this piece with a link to Greenwald’s excellent piece on massive US and Israeli hypocrisy in the Middle East. It’s well worth a read, regardless of what you might think of him.

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Finally, some significant developments on Obama’s highly contentious and unconstitutional targeted kill policy. From Mother Jones:

Congress is finally standing up to President Barack Obama on targeted killing. Almost a year after three American citizens were killed in US drone strikes, legislators are pushing the administration to explain why it believes it’s legal to kill American terror suspects overseas.

Congress is considering two measures that would compel the Obama administration to show members of Congress what Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) calls Obama’s “license to kill”: internal memos outlining the legal justification for killing Americans overseas without charge or trial. Legislators have been asking administration officials to release the documents for nearly a year, raising the issue multiple times in hearings and letters. But the new proposals, including one from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) first flagged by blogger Marcy Wheeler and another in a separate intelligence bill, aren’t requests—they would mandate disclosure. That shift shows both Republicans and Democrats are growing impatient with the lack of transparency on targeted killings.

However, writes Glenn Greenwald:

This push is coming from Republican Senators, while leading Democrats such as Dianne Feinstein are attempting to impede these efforts to bring basic accountability and transparency to this most radical power. Note the debate here: not whether the President should have the power to order Americans executed without due process, but simply whether he should have to account to Congress for what he does and what the legal framework is that he believes authorizes this.

On a side note, Greenwald’s article is worth reading in full as he goes into significant detail on the worrying normalization of extremism in America. While the tone is typically lecturing, Greenwald makes some interesting points. Take his example on torture:

After Dick Cheney criticized John McCain this weekend for having chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, this was McCain’s retort:

“Look, I respect the vice president. He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not. I don’t think we should have.”

Isn’t it amazing that the first sentence there (“I respect the vice president”) can precede the next one (“He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not”) without any notice or controversy?…… “Torture” has been permanently transformed from an unspeakable taboo into a garden-variety political controversy, where it shall long remain.

I don’t think this train of logic is completely valid as pro-lifers use the exact same logic when denouncing pro-choice politicians. Many Christians in America will never vote for a Democrat because they believe they are explicitly condoning and funding the murder of unborn fetuses (I personally believe you can disagree with someone’s policy position vehemently but still respect them for their other principles/beliefs). However, Greenwald’s still has a point – extreme positions in the US political spectrum are increasingly accepted as normal, and once everyone starts to refer to them amicably, it gives them a validity that can pollute dialogue and make issues like torture mainstream – which it clearly should not be.

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Greenwald a master of shooting himself in the foot

By Chez Pazienza: So over the past week this site has turned into the “Let’s Take a Few Shots at Glenn Greenwald” show, with two of its highest-profile columnists — Banter founder Ben Cohen and blogging machine Bob Cesca — penning pieces that take issue with Greenwald’s smugness and intransigence in the face of political reality. One of the essays that started it all actually quoted something I’d written months ago, but I’ve been loathe to step into the fray myself around here simply because these days I honestly regard Glenn Greenwald as a nonentity, having come to the conclusion quite a while back that the less I think about Greenwald’s insufferable sanctimony and ongoing propensity for childish tantrum-throwing, the better. I genuinely don’t read what he writes at all anymore; I see the headlines over at Salon, know in short order exactly what he’s going to say before he even says it, chuckle and shake my head for a second, then move on to something more informative, balanced and worth taking seriously.

With that in mind, though, I do think there’s one thing worth addressing when it comes to the discussion of Greenwald. It’s something I’ve noticed all week, something I’m frankly tired of seeing: I’d like to know why anyone feels as if he or she needs to go through the requisite genuflection procedure before spelling out just how worthless Greenwald is as a voice for smart progressive politics. I obviously don’t mean to insult either Ben or Bob, because I believe their overall appreciation for Greenwald’s work to be sincere, but it does seem as if any criticism of Greenwald from the left has to be tempered with the disclaimer that he’s an intelligent guy who often does good work that’s deserving of consideration and praise. In other words, to crib an old bit from comic Dom Irrera, it seems like anytime someone on the left decides to take on Greenwald, that person has to begin with the obligatory, needlessly deferential and often laughably full-of-shit, “With all due respect…”

Well, as it turns out I don’t do that. And that’s because I’m more than happy to admit that I have no respect at all for Greenwald. Not anymore.

I actually have spelled out in the past, in semi-articulate fashion I hope, just a few of the reasons that I think his relentless fusillade of self-righteous indignation aimed at the Obama administration amounts to little more than white noise and disqualifies his opinion from serious, continued attention by anyone interested in the promotion of a progressive agenda in this country. Greenwald’s ongoing love affair with four or five subjects, at the exclusion of almost anything and everything else, has become, if you’ll pardon the pun, a dull “drone” at the periphery of intelligent political debate. No one’s arguing that the White House under Barack Obama has and hasn’t done quite a few things worthy of criticism and even outright denunciation, but to hector this presidency without compromise or the consideration of any dissenting argument, to equate it wholesale with the administration of George W. Bush or the potential administration of Republican President X, and to condescendingly ridicule anyone who dares to defend Obama as some sort of “cultist” or intellectually dishonest automaton — that makes you nothing more than a fringe element whose opinions will never make a bit of difference in the overall political discourse because you offer zero room for the possibility that you’re wrong. It’s one thing to stick by your ideals — it’s quite another to arrogantly believe that you’re Horatius at the Bridge and to blithely dismiss those not willing to stand on that bridge with you.

The main issue for me comes down to this bit of hypocritical dissonance: Greenwald once wrote a lengthy piece questioning President Obama’s progressive bona fides, in essence claiming that he had none, that he wasn’t really a liberal thinker and therefore no one on the left should approach his presidency with the assumption that he has their best interests at heart. First of all, this is a nonsensical thing to say by any objective measure, given that while Obama has indeed made decisions that reflect centrist and even conservative politics on occasion, he’s taken progressive positions across a wide range of subjects and has pushed through or attempted to push through liberal legislation as a matter of policy more so than just about any other president in a half-century.

But more than that, I’d argue that it’s Glenn Greenwald who doesn’t truly care about progressive politics — certainly not more than he cares about, well, Glenn Greenwald and the absolute satisfaction he demands on his pet issues. He speaks out, always in an almost inhumanly detached and Aspergerian fashion, not as someone who wants to see real-world liberal politics succeed and flourish in the United States but as someone who wants his personal utopian ideals catered to in the manner he feels he deserves. He figuratively and somewhat literally — if you take into account the fact that he lives as an expatriate a good portion of the time — offers the “view from nowhere” in his diatribes. Not only are his opinions divorced from modern political reality in this country, he’s throwing rocks at a house he chooses not to live in and therefore there are no negative consequences to his actions. He can look from on-high and pass judgment, piously casting himself as ethical journalism’s Last Man Standing, because in the end he won’t have to live with the disaster that would be the alternative to the Obama administration coming to power in November.

Politics is about compromise and, as much as you or I would like it to be otherwise, that’s always going to be the case. While this president has done plenty of things I vehemently disagree with, I understand that if you’re looking to see progressive political policy pushed by the White House he is the absolute best you’re going to do in a country that’s made up of as many conservatives as there are liberals. Demanding accountability is always a necessity — but constant vilification accomplishes nothing other than doing the job of Republican strategists for them. And that matters if the debate isn’t merely an academic one for you — a lot of pseudo-intellectual masturbation — and if you’ve actually got something to lose. If you live in a world where political reality is a consideration for you. But again, Greenwald isn’t on anyone’s side but his own and his only consideration is what he personally believes is right — and if something infinitely worse and more unjust comes from relentlessly voicing that intractable belief system and patronizing anyone who offers a contradictory argument, so be it.

A smart and potentially powerful voice for the advancement of progressive policy and against the frightening reality of Tea Party-era conservatism is instead content to settle for dispensing town crier-style shtick on a handful of subjects — evil drones, Bradley Manning as a martyr, Assange as a saint, al-Awlaki as an innocent victim of imperial murder — and to make a really nice little career for himself doing it it. This is what makes it so easy to simply shrug off Greenwald’s pedantic ranting. Which is what anyone interested in keeping this country from going to total shit should be doing.

Oh, by the way, Greenwald supported George W. Bush’s invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, then had the balls to turn around a couple of years later and punch way above his intellectual weight class by calling Christopher Hitchens a “war monger” for having done the same.

Tell me I need to take him seriously.

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By Ben Cohen: Part of me feels bad for doing this – I don’t dislike Glenn Greenwald, and I’d rather focus on the positive work he does, but part of The Daily Banter’s mission is to have an ongoing conversation with our readers and it looks like the topic isn’t going away just yet. In response to my last post on Greenwald’s pious lecturing, a couple of readers took me to task for failing to provide examples of Greenwald’s distasteful writing. Wrote Mark Smith in the comments section:

Maybe you could provide some quotes that demonstrate your claim that GG is setting himself up as a sole arbiter of the truth. I read this hoping I might learn something about another point of view, and there’s not much there to work with.

I did actually, in my previous blog post (linked in the article). But here it is again – Glenn Greenwald lambasting Raw Story for not measuring up to his standards on ethical journalism:

Raw Story is a moderately well-read political outlet that touts itself as “a progressive news site that focuses on stories often ignored in the mainstream media.” It recently began publishing a blog devoted exclusively to venerating the President and sliming his critics: because that’s so edgy, brave and rare; after all, the meek “MSM” would never dare glorify the nation’s most powerful political official and the party in power, so we really need a brave, dissident anti-MSM site like Raw Story to provide that.

Maybe Greenwald was having a bad day and was feeling particularly vindictive, but this type of sarcasm leveled at a site that is generally speaking very good, just isn’t necessary. Greenwald’s major problem with Raw Story is that it focuses on the misdeeds of the GOP rather than Obama and the Democrats, and Greenwald for some reason finds it personally offensive.

Take for example, this headline from his blog last week:

Whether you agree with Obama’s drone policy in Pakistan or not (and I don’t), it’s probably accurate to say that Obama isn’t sitting in his office figuring out ways to attack rescuers and kill mourners. US foreign policy is, and almost always has been particularly nasty, but this is largely a function of its institutions that codify things like torture, drone attacks, rendition etc, not the President coming up with ways of hurting women and small children, as Greenwald would have everyone think. Headlines like this simply turn people off and stop then listening. If Greenwald had written “Obama’s Drone Policy Responsible for Killing Mourners”, I bet that many more readers would dig into his interesting and well substantiated article (and it is definitely worth reading). Instead, he hyperventilates and turns off thousands of readers who really do need to understand what is happening in Pakistan.

Another far more serious example of Greenwald’s irresponsible and self defeating screeching was a horrifically offensive tweet he sent out comparing a Jewish Obama supporter to Nazi film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Greenwald later tweeted to ‘rescind’ his ‘invocation of Leni Reifenstahl’ after an outcry (notice his high handed choice of words – he could have just said sorry), but the pattern is a familiar one.

Greenwald comparing an Obama supporter to a Nazi. Not exactly helpful in fostering civilized debate

Another reader, Martin Danz chimed in with a list of Greenwald’s relentless assaults on liberals who don’t agree with him:

You can start with his relentless months-long blacklisting of Justice Elena Kagan when Greenwald was tirelessly making her and the president over as an Obot-usurping apologist for Obama’s planned illegal takeover of the U.S. Constitution, of course.

When president Obama, who had campaigned all along and was elected to get us out of Iraq– quietly got us out of Iraq– Greenwald didn’t hesitate to pass on the memory of all that death and criminality of Bush Republican war crimes and treason to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in a laughable miscarriage of justice.

Greenwald doesn’t really fight fair, as much as he scratches and claws, often wildly.

What’s worse, he essentially blew off what is arguably the challenge of our lifetimes with all the corporate money now pouring in to overrun American democracy, and when the president stood up in front of the country and declared the Citizen’s United decision an act of war on democracy– getting the silent “you-lie!” Joe Wilson treatment from a visibly retarded Samuel Alito– Greenwald shrugged and dismissed the decision and reaction as an acceptable norm. I think the new meme in that circle of jerks is that Obama taking money from Hollywood is no better than Republicans taking money from oil corporations. Go figure. I actually think Ben Cohen is being too kind.

Greenwald’s attacks on Kagan can be found here, his attacks on Obama’s Iraq war handling here and his support of Citizens United here.

I don’t necessarily completely disagree with Greenwald on the actual issues (although I think he was way off the mark with Citizens United), but I do disagree with the tone and the obsessiveness – both of which make his writing tiring and increasingly niche. It should be remembered that Greenwald  supported George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place – an issue he almost never talks about anymore. Why? Because Greenwald’s opinions don’t actually mean anything in the real world. He can shout and scream all he wants and there will rarely be significant consequence other than more people visiting his blog or turning off the TV. Had Greenwald been in an actual position of power when he wanted to bomb two defenseless countries, he would be as criminally culpable as the people he now attacks on a daily basis. But he wasn’t, and that’s a luxury he’ll never fully understand.

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By Ben Cohen: Yesterday, I blogged about Salon.com’s featured writer Glenn Greenwald and called him out for an incredibly smug post about Raw Story. The post kicked off a bit of a twitter storm with quite a few people re-tweeting the article. It seems I hit a bit of a nerve, no doubt because Greenwald isn’t particularly popular in many Left wing circles. I’d like to expand a little on the point of my post – not to continue bashing Greenwald, but to explain a wider point that I think is highly relevant when it comes to having political discourse.

I want to repeat that I do have a lot of respect for Greenwald and rate him highly as a writer. He does important work and should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in understanding the facts about US government policy. Generally speaking, I think Greenwald is usually correct in his analysis of current affairs – his work is thorough and well substantiated and it’s often hard to find disagreement with his logic.

However, there is a common theme when reading writers like Greenwald – it is that they have come to believe so strongly in their own perception of reality that there is no longer room for debate. Greenwald enters every discussion knowing that he is right, and everyone else either doesn’t get it, or is flat out wrong.

While Greenwald’s voice is important, he becomes completely pointless after while because people start to tune out. While Greenwald would argue that it doesn’t stop him from being right (after all, facts are facts) it does mean that his work no longer has any tangible impact. Chez Pazienza has spent quite a bit of time rebutting Greenwald for his militancy, and I think he makes the point most astutely:

When I shrug off the often shrill and selfish criticism of Greenwald — and it is selfish in the sense that, like it or not, it risks the greater good in the pursuit of perfection that he seems to demand on his personal pet issues — it’s because I don’t feel that there’s any real sense of conscience behind it. I’ve actually come around on the idea that Greenwald isn’t simply interested in getting people to pay attention to him — although I do believe he enjoys being able to think of himself a thorn in the side of the world — and I now accept that he genuinely seeks to adhere to a very strict laundry list of political issues because he considers those issues important above all. The problem is, and always has been, that he’ll sacrifice everything else — burn down the whole village if he has to — just to get his way on them.

The mainstream Left in America is an imperfect union of divided interests, corruption and some good intention. The Democratic Party has been subverted by corporate interests, and the liberal media is a reflection of that. By virtue of his job, President Obama is the figurehead of all of this, and presides over the future direction of the country. Glenn Greenwald devotes post after post, day after day, week after week attacking Obama, the Democrats and the liberal media for their misdeeds, never skipping a beat or missing an opportunity to rake the Left over the coals. Which is fine – a journalists job should be to hold power to account, and the media in America generally fails to do that. For that, Greenwald can give himself a pat on the back.

But the world is a complicated place, and changing it for the better is an extremely messy process. I know many people in the mainstream media and in government, all of whom I’d classify as decent people trying to make a change. The understand the system they are a part of, and largely do their jobs to the best of their ability given the constraints they are under. For people like Greenwald, this is never good enough – if people don’t adhere to his own strict guidelines, they can be dismissed as irrelevant. Greenwald scathing attack and arrogant dismissal of Raw Story is a classic example of this, and underlines his inability to see his own faults.  The problem is, if everyone took Greenwald’s attitude, nothing would ever change. Yes, President Obama has failed to live up to his promises, and yes he has been co-opted by the same power interests as every other President in history. Yes the media is subservient to corporate interests and political power, but that doesn’t mean Obama or these media outlets aren’t sometimes doing good work and having a positive effect. As Pazienza writes:

It’s easy to say that a sacrifice needs to be made to ostensibly teach a political party a lesson when you’re not living in the country — which Greenwald isn’t, by the way — that will look fundamentally different, and monumentally worse, in short order should the party that benefits from your act of insurrection come to power.

Glenn Greenwald isn’t the one who would be doing the sacrificing here. The whole debate for him is strictly academic. And that’s the problem.

There’s a great story in the remarkable documentary ”The Power of Nightmares’ on the rise of Al Qaeda and the Neo Cons about a sect of militant Islam in Algeria, the G.I.A (Armed Islamic Group) that was so extreme that members were killed for not conforming to the perfect ideal of a Muslim. The sect got smaller and smaller as members were killed off:

The main Islamist group in Algeria, the GIA, ended up being led by a Mr. Zouabri, a chicken farmer, who killed everyone who disagreed with him. He issued a final communique, declaring that the whole of Algerian society should be killed, with the exception of his tiny remaining band of Islamists. They were the only ones who understood the truth.

Greenwald has appointed himself the sole arbiter of the truth, and decides on his blog who is worthy and who is not. I’m not arguing that Greenwald should stop doing what he does – I’m asking him to change his tone. I’m asking him to engage with the other people rather than lecture them, and entertain the shocking notion that he could sometimes be wrong. Maybe then his work would reach people who could actually instigate some of the changes he fights so hard for.

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Glenn Greenwald: King of the smug (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Generally speaking, I respect Salon’s Glenn Greenwald – he’s a serious journalist and commentator, and has done a great deal of work to expose some of the awful things the US government gets up to. However, I’m starting to find his writing irritating beyond belief. Greenwald’s relentless attacks on government and the establishment Left are so monotone that his criticisms just seem boring rather than relevant. Greenwald adopts a holier than thou approach to his writing and takes a strict, constructionist view of politics. Greenwald is a former constitutional lawyer, so it’s certainly understandable, but if you’re looking for nuance and an understanding of the real world, Greenwald is not your man. Take for example, his recent attack on Raw Story for publishing a blog that posted a silly and baseless rumor about Scott Walker having a love child. It was an embarrassing episode for Raw Story, but Greenwald took it upon himself to smear the entire publication – not because it published something silly, but because it dares to publish writers who support the President. The sarcasm and smugness literally oozes from every sentence in Greenwald’s piece. Just check out the intro:

Raw Story is a moderately well-read political outlet that touts itself as “a progressive news site that focuses on stories often ignored in the mainstream media.” It recently began publishing a blog devoted exclusively to venerating the President and sliming his critics: because that’s so edgy, brave and rare; after all, the meek “MSM” would never dare glorify the nation’s most powerful political official and the party in power, so we really need a brave, dissident anti-MSM site like Raw Story to provide that.

I understand the need for journalists to hold both sides of the political spectrum accountable, but Greenwald’s belief that anyone who focuses on the good things government do, or the positive aspects of Obama’s Presidency is automatically a sell out and a hack, is just plain wrong.

I take the view that much of what the US government does is illegal both constitutionally and according to international law. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rendition, wire tapping, torture, the list goes on. I agree with Greenwald that these are serious issues and should be covered by the media – they usually aren’t, and Greenwald should definitely get credit for drawing attention to them. But the government also does good things, and some writers like to draw attention to those things too, particularly when faced with the nihilistic Republican Party bent on dismantling what is left of government. That doesn’t make you a hack – it means you live in the real world where people, politicians and government are both good and bad. Greenwald is lucky – he doesn’t have any actual responsibilities, he doesn’t have to make any decisions, or compromise to get things done – he gets to lecture everyone else and never, ever be wrong.

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Welcome to this week’s installment of The Daily Banter mailbag! We discuss Bob’s twitter beef with Glenn Greenwald, the scariness of the Sarah Palin movie and the dangers of a Romney Presidency.

The questions:

Bob, read your piece on Greenwald with interest. I think the dude is a fanatic libertarian and can’t be reasoned with. Why did you bother interacting with him? You’re just going to get the same reply: war is bad, America is bad, the constitution should be interpreted literally etc etc. I say save your breath. 

-Darren Jacob

Bob: I don’t believe he’s entirely unreasonable, and there have been a couple of times when we’ve reached some sort of concensus. That said, my goal isn’t necessarily to change his mind on the usual issues, but instead to convince people who typically rubber-stamp some of the things he writes. I think there’s a misconception on the left that he’s always right — a sort of touchstone for progressive thought. Well, he doesn’t appear to be as progressive as he is, as you wrote, libertarian (and he’d object to me assigning of labels), and I strongly believe that many of the absolutist positions he holds will actually damage the progressive cause. Accountability for similarly-minded politicians should always be constructive and smart because, naturally, we want more progressive-leaning politicians to succeed. I don’t think Greenwald or his supporters understand this distinction and it hurts the movement.

Chez: I’m always telling Bob that it’s worthless arguing with Greenwald. Even if you put him in his place it’s a pyrrhic victory because ultimately you’re not going to sway him in his opinions or knock him from that throne he sits on in Rio, the one from which he issues all kinds of sweeping edicts about awful the U.S. is and how Bradley Manning’s a martyr and Barack Obama’s a judicial murderer or whatever-the-hell. Worst of all, once Greenwald’s legion of mindless acolytes figures out you’re debating him, they’ll descend on you en masse like some kind of Twitter virus. Greenwald’s incapable of budging on anything because, as Bob said, his mind can’t process nuance. I’m genuinely convinced that he has an at least mild form of Asperger’s and that’s what’s to blame for his long-winded, pedantic diatribes and what seems to be his complete lack of human emotion. Either that or he’s just an asshole.

Ben: I thought Bob’s argument with Greenwald was extremely interesting, and that both sides made excellent points. I find Greewald’s inability to understand the complexity of issues like war annoying sometimes – his views are dogmatic and inflexible making debate with him next to impossible. Having said that, his contribution to public debate is immense and he does some excellent and necessary work. I think it’s always a good idea to engage with people like Greenwald regardless of how stubborn they are, particularly when you are able to articulate complexity as well as Bob does.

Gentlemen, any thoughts on the Sarah Palin movie? just watched it on HBO, and was horrified. Do you think anyone should be held responsible for allowing her to get so near to power?

-Jim

Bob: I hate that everyone who saw the movie gave John McCain such a pass. I don’t care how badass he was at the time, he elevated Palin for political expedience and ought to be condemned for it. If he had won that election, Palin would’ve been a heartbeat from the presidency, and no amount of badassery should absolve that. All that said, I thought Moore’s portrayal of Palin was brilliant and it was a compelling story, but all of these recent-history biopics are too soon and, because of it, they look like extended SNL sketches complete with shitty wigs.

Chez: I haven’t seen the movie because a while back I made the decision to have a life. Not insulting you for soldiering through it, of course — just saying that for me personally I don’t specifically seek out things to piss me off anymore. If I want to be infuriated, I’ll pick up the phone and call my ex-wife. That said, I also feel that everything that can possibly be said about how dangerous, intellectually incurious and, ironically, filled with moral certitude Palin was and still is has actually been said. In a more advanced world, John McCain would be in prison right now for willfully and opportunistically trying to put this country in mortal danger and for foisting Palin’s dumb, hillbilly ass on our culture for who knows how long.

Ben: I saw the movie and was horrified too. I think McCain’s campaign manager Steve Schmidt is personally liable for putting the country at risk – he knew how utterly incapable Palin was and should have pulled the plug on her political career as soon as he discovered she had the mental capacity of a 14 year old school girl. McCain’s motto was ‘Country First’, and putting Palin so close to power was putting country very far behind the McCain team’s political careers.

Ok guys, what happens if Romney gets elected? I know it probably won’t happen, but I thought the same about Bush. Do you think he could f$%k it up as bad as Bush did?

-Mark

Ben: From a technical point of view, Romney isn’t an idiot, and left to his own devices his Presidency wouldn’t be an utter disaster. However, Romney is a weak character who will pander to everyone and anyone, and the people he would surround himself would be incredibly dangerous. He’d have to appease the Right in order to form a functioning administration, and they’d go about dismantling government in the same way the Bush Administration did. So yes, he could screw it up as badly as Bush did.

Bob: We’d be screwed. He’ll absolutely roll back everything President Obama does and the far-right Tea Party wing of the party will control his White House. Worse, the Supreme Court will end up swinging to the right for another generation, which will, of course, doom women, minorities and our electoral system for longer than I care to contemplate. Anyone who thinks he’ll be a reasonable chief executive is utterly delusional. Worse, a far-right Republican like Santorum or Gingrich will be heartbeat away from the presidency.

Chez:  I don’t worry about it. I’m wearing my special Mormon underwear to protect me from stuff like that.

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By Bob Cesca: Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday and the issue of the president’s targeted predator drone killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki came up. Naturally, since it’s one of his pet topics, Glenn Greenwald spoke against the assassination, while Sullivan and Maher spoke in support of it.

Greenwald’s ongoing defense of Al-Awlaki is based on the fact that the al-Qaeda operative was born in the United States, and therefore, as a U.S. citizen, he ought to be somehow grabbed and afforded due process by our justice system.

I have some very strong views on this issue — all of which circulate around the general idea that the moral and legal aspects of war, like politics, are never black-and-white. It’s entirely judged in shades of gray. I’ll get to that momentarily. Meanwhile, after watching the debate on Real Time, I posted the following item on my blog and added the following remarks:

As soon as someone takes up arms against the United States, they’ve entered a field of battle, and a war, of sorts, is engaged. Likewise, if a criminal aims a deadly weapon at a soldier or law enforcement officer, that criminal runs the risk of being fatally shot — and it’s perfectly legal to do so.

While that example isn’t exactly a 1:1 analogy, since Al-Awlaki wasn’t literally aiming a weapon at an American when he was killed, another point of comparison is the U.S. Civil War in which half the nation seceded and took up arms against the U.S. military and president. Should Lincoln, who considered the Confederates to still be Americans, have spared the 250,000 rebels who were killed during that war after they collectively threatened the stability of the United States? Clearly, and for a variety of reasons, the U.S. military effort during the Civil War, while brutal, was justified. Similarly, Sullivan brought up the American-joining-the-Nazi-Army concept.

I agree with Greenwald that due process and justice is crucial — but only in criminal cases where the assailant isn’t engaged in a shooting war against American citizens and soldiers.

Glenn Greenwald responded on Twitter and the following conversation took place:

GLENN: You’ve embraced the core Bush/Yoo Terror theory: no rights for **accused combatants, and the President alone decides. Congrats

@PHPRESS: Bob hates our freedom. He’d prefer a totalitarian state with a powerful dictator, the tiny penis syndrome.

GLENN: Only when there’s a Democrat in office – he’ll discover the Constitution again when there’s a Big Bad Republican

ME: So I’ve abandoned the Constitution for party politics? This kind of kneejerk reaction is poisoning the debate, Glenn.

GLENN: I just explained the *substance in the last tweet – you`ve embraced the Bush/Yoo theory – now that there’s a Dem

ME: No. Bush/Yoo justified torture, rendition, wiretaps, suspension of habeas etc – all of which I oppose, irrespective of party.

GLENN: Hilarious: it’s OK to KILL ****accused combatants w/o judicial review, but not to eavesdrop on them or detain them w/o it

ME: There’s a clear distinction! Al-Awlaki is ONE instance. Torture, wiretaps, etc are happening secretly on a widespread basis.

GLENN: Wheter you admit it or not, you`re arguing Bush/Yoo: accused combatants have no rights, and the President alone decides

ME: No, there are shades of gray here and you know it. Eg: you defended Ron Paul on terrorism even though he voted for the ’01 AUMF and introduced HR3076.

ME: War, like politics, is murky. We can justify Hiroshima but condemn Dresden. Praise FDR’s liberalism but condemn Japanese camps.

On a certain level, I understand Greenwald’s perspective here. He’s against war. It’s always difficult — if not impossible — for a pacifist to justify military fatalities of any kind. In Greenwald’s view, the Al-Awlaki killing is additionally heinous due to the man’s citizenship and the governmental powers used to bring him down. That said, war and how it’s prosecuted is not unlike politics — only with funny hats and firearms. It’s a muddy, murky endeavor with massive gray areas where morality (or immorality) literally collides with human bodies.

The leaders who play the game operate on the fringes of what’s possible, practical and acceptable. As I referenced above, Lincoln’s actions during the American Civil War would have absolutely forced Greenwald into apoplectic shock. There was the suspension of habeas corpus even though suspending the writ is assigned to Congress in Article I. Subsequently, there was Lincoln’s attempt to arrest Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney who objected to Lincoln’s suspension of the writ — an action that would have precipitated a massive constitutional crisis around the separation of powers. There was Lincoln’s authorization of “total war” — civilians became fair game for General William Tecumseh Sherman and other commanders. American civilians.

The end result was victory for the United States, the Constitution and for the American democratic experiment.

Fast forward to World War II and FDR, the great liberal president of modern times, also careened well beyond the bounds of what we would consider to be decent, moral and constitutional. Developing the atom bomb alone — the mere development of it, much less the use of it by President Truman — was a trespass far more serious than anything Presidents Bush or Obama have done in pursuit of terrorists. Couple that with the firebombing of civilians and the indefinite detention of Japanese-Americans and, again, there would have been a major freakout had “Glennzilla” existed at that point.

None of this is meant to forgive the questionable policies of the executive branch in wartime. I’m simply drawing from historical examples to illustrate the murkiness of war.

Clearly many of the actions initiated by the Bush administration should never have been engaged. Torture, wiretapping and data-mining, suspension of habeas, extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention are blights on the American record, and the same goes for the several policies that have been continued by the Obama team. But when we’re engaged in military action against a defined enemy — al-Qaeda — killing its leadership, be it Osama Bin Laden or Al-Awlaki, on the world’s battlefield is one of those fringe actions that, while not savored, are necessary. If you participate in plots to kill Americans in a declared war, you run the risk of being killed in retaliation. That’s a matter of war: killing or capturing the enemy before they do the same to you.

As I tweeted to Greenwald, Ron Paul, for all the praise heaped upon him by Greenwald as a anti-terror-war hero, sponsored HR3076 which authorized the raising of a mercenary army to capture or kill Bin Laden and al-Qaeda terrorists. This was Ron Paul in legislative action and not Ron Paul the campaigner. Very, very murky.

On the “kill the enemy” note, Greenwald attempted to catch me in some hypocrisy when he tweeted, “Hilarious: it’s OK to KILL ****accused combatants w/o judicial review, but not to eavesdrop on them or detain them w/o it.” Yes, okay. It’s a contradiction but it’s intellectually honest. In all wars, it’s permissible to kill the enemy even though it’s also a crime torture the enemy. In one case, the enemy is dead. In latter case, the enemy is totally alive but in considerable pain. Death is the acceptable option. Weird how that works, but it’s true.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting here that given the choice (and I underscore given the choice — in other words, if we have to do something), I’d rather have unmanned drones engaged in targeted strikes than to send soldiers into hostile areas in the context of yet another hot war.

Admittedly, this all seems cloudy. It always does. There are very few absolutes. And it’s only made cloudier when broad assumptions are made and black-and-white generalities are hurled at people with whom we share some common ground. If Greenwald and his acolytes were aware of my writing, they would know that I’m not an across-the-board apologist for the Obama administration. I strongly believe the president has been successful and historic given the divisiveness in Washington, but much like every president before him, he’s made mistakes. It’s part of the job. And I’ve attempted to evaluate the mistakes and successes based on historical precedent, as well as their impact on American democracy. Yet instead of debating the murky areas of warfare and politics point-by-point, we too often end up debating the other participant’s character, and unfair assumptions are injected into the discourse — he or she is an “Obama lover” and so on.

I simply wanted to hear what Greenwald has to say about HR3076 or FDR’s handling of World War II or Lincoln’s handling of the Civil War as it relates to modern events. But mainly, and more than anything else, I want to know how the president was expected to arrest Al-Awlaki without risking American casualties — a very real possibility when we’re talking about Greenwald’s alternative capture-and-arrest plan. Which plan is better: Killing Al_Awlaki outright; arresting him and risking the death or deaths of American soldiers; or simply ignoring the al-Qaeda problem?

If we can have that discussion, I’m all in.

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