Amidst the well-deserved mocking of the Atlantic Monthly’s resident neocon buffoon, Jeffrey Goldberg, I think Jonathan Schwarz succinctly nails the underlying media dynamic that leads to people like Goldberg convincing themselves that they’re the serious ones, and the people who keep pointing out their glaring mistakes and hypocrisies are not.
UPDATE: Just a quick hint to the traditional media folks who can’t seem to understand this Greenwald post; the point wasn’t to equate the invasion of Iraq to the Nazi conquests leading up to World War II. It was to point out that since even the Nazis were able to point to small subsets of the conquered nation’s populations who welcomed them to justify their invasions, that pointing to a small subset of Iraq’s population who welcomed our invasion tells us absolutely nothing about the overall morality or worth of the invasion itself. This shit ain’t hard.
The Busheviks promised us Iraqis would welcome our troops with flower petals and hugs. Two years later, polls showed 97% of Iraqis wanted the American troops to get out of their country. Another Republican miscalculation.
Ya gotta give Republicans credit for one thing, it takes a certain kind of talent to succeed in pissing off 97% of another country’s population. Most of us couldn’t do that even if we tried.
Betcha our approval ratings were higher in Japan after Nagasaki than they are in Iraq after Bush.
Humans are so smart, sometimes I frighten Me.
I am that I am.
Lee
Is this the text you meant?
Leaving aside Greenwald’s sloppy thinking, at first I thought this was a joke. Does he always write such run on sentences and confuse his antecedants?
As for his effort at reasoning, the term rationalization comes to mind. OF CORSE every war, just or not, is justified by the side intitiating it. To follow this reasonng, we should all reject the intent and the outcomes of the American Revolution because it was “justified” by the interests of a few wealthy smugglers and land owners.
As for Iraq II, we all can agree that the war was carried out by incompetents … from Chaney on down. Their PR justification was a incompetent as the their lack of understanding of Iraq’s sans Hussein society. That failure is not the same thing as saying there were not good reasons as well as bad reasons for making this war.
Just imagine where we would all be IF the invasion had found real weapons of mass destruction (as some estimates claimed must be there). A few barrels of anthrax powder or plutonium smuggled out of Ukraine and Chaney might well now be our President.
I would say “thank God” this did not happen if I were not afraid of approbrium from the Trolls!
@5
As for his effort at reasoning, the term rationalization comes to mind. OF CORSE every war, just or not, is justified by the side intitiating it. To follow this reasonng, we should all reject the intent and the outcomes of the American Revolution because it was “justified” by the interests of a few wealthy smugglers and land owners.
You’re not even in the ballpark of understanding this discussion.
Just sit this one out. You can only humiliate yourself at this point.
@1
Remember that Bush and his cronies said that they would leave when the Iraqi people wanted us to leave. Apparently the 97% figure wasn’t good enough, they insisted on a plebiscite, despite the country being in such shambles that there was no way an orderly election could have taken place.
[Deleted – off topic + slander]
@8
Sorry Steve, go somewhere else today. You absolutely cannot pull that horseshit in this thread.
If anyone is curious why this comment was removed, I’ve saved it and will be happy to forward the original comment with the reasons for its deletion pointed out.
[Deleted – slander]
@10
Since you’re obviously too stupid to figure out what the problem is, I’ll help you out, shit-for-brains. It’s this line:
Here’s the definition of slander:
Find something else to do today, you’ve been given enough chances to express yourself intelligently without making shit up. I’ve told you I won’t tolerate that and I meant it. If you leave any more comments in this thread, they’ll be deleted.
Again, I apologize to the other commenters here. I like to be flexible with the off-topic rules and generally don’t mind people going off on tangents as long as they’re promoting intelligent discussion, but Steve’s comment at #8 was a very blatant attempt to slander someone in order to create a false debate about a tangential, but ultimately off-topic subject. As is well-known by now, he’s been warned about that before. I saved the comment and will gladly send it to anyone who thinks I was too harsh.
@11 What you excerpted from SJ’s post may be wrong -I don’t know- but it doesn’t appear any more slanderous than many other undeleted comments in the HA cesspool.
@13
What you excerpted from SJ’s post may be wrong -I don’t know
You can click the first link in the original post to see how blatantly wrong – and clearly defamatory – it is.
but it doesn’t appear any more slanderous than many other undeleted comments in the HA cesspool.
No doubt about it, but a lot of those are clearly goofball comments, or they come from people who have no real ability to leave intelligent comments. The problem with SJ is that he’s been warned about doing this repeatedly (for about 4 years now) and continues to do it. It’s about intent. He has the ability to make intelligent points (unlike many of the HA crazies), but he chooses instead to be an asshole – by accusing people of having beliefs they don’t have in order to tear those imaginary beliefs down. If I didn’t remove that comment, I’d be going back on my word.