I Thought I Was Tough on Glenn Greenwald!

This entry is a follow-up to my Blog Watch post on Glenn Greenwald. That one was one of my better posts in the series, but for comparison, check out this exchange flying across the blogosphere today between Greenwald and his enemies:

It starts with Greenwald's post up today attacking conservative foreign policy hawks as anti-Islamist bigots. He mounts some special animosity for Protein Wisdom, which called him a (stupid) faggot:

On Protein Wisdom - the right-wing blog of Pajamas Media's Jeff Goldstein - there is a "response" to a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago concerning the exaggerations of the Muslim threat from Marty Peretz's assistant, Jamie Kirchick of The New Republic and Commentary. The Protein Wisdom response to my post is entitled "Hey (Faggot) Stupid."

I don't advocate calling ideological opponents rank ad hominems, although I can see why conservatives really hate Glenn Greenwald. Still, Greenwald gets some nasty hate mail, such as this:

Glenn -- just read your post about how we're all over-reacting to Islamic fundamentalism. How refreshing! I had no idea that our fears were so ill-founded. There I was, all set to actually believe the rhetoric of Al Qaeda and Iran and the countless video tapes of suicide bombers, not to mention the actual language of the Quran. In fact, I'd even begun to believe this poll, which says that quite a few American Muslims think that there is justification for strapping a bomb to yourself and walking into a mall [GG: I wrote about that poll here and here]. But who needs polls when I have Glenn Greenwald! Thank heavens we have you to balance all this with an argument that can basically be summed up as, "well none of these people who mocked Islam have been killed, so you all need to relax, OK?"

I picture this moment, Glenn, and it brings me a little chuckle. It's you, begging some terrorist for your life, pointing out all the wonderful things you wrote that undermined America's resolve to fight against Islamic terrorism. "Look," you say, pulling articles out of your pockets with shaking hands, "I have served you! Clearly this means that I deserve to be spared!"
I won't tell you how it ends, Glenn.

The e-mail's from RH Potfry at The Nose on Your Face. Now, while I really dislike Greenwald, I'm just not willing to get this down and dirty in attacking him (so consider this as the rejection of conservative ad hominem smears some of my lefty readers keep demanding).

But back to the issues in play: Check out Greenwald's response, which dismisses any possible inkling of an Islamist threat to American national security:

One can only marvel at how developed and richly detailed is the fantasy that he has created and carries around with him -- being on one's knees before a Muslim terrorist, begging and pleading and shaking, dialogue about "having served you." It is really right out of some cheap, trite sadomasochistic pornography script, and yet these fears and truly creepy fantasies are the foundation for their political beliefs, driving most of our political discourse and policy.

And this bile that spewed forth really illustrates so much about why we continue to fight one of history's most absurd wars ever, whereby we occupy Iraq indefinitely even though the original justifications for invading have long ago vanished and even those who want to stay have no idea what we are trying to accomplish. It is the same dynamic that fueled so much of the intense and obsessive hatred for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and which drives the insatiable quest for new Enemies to attack, including what looks increasingly like the new War with Iran.

Bombing and killing Muslims is the only path for avoiding the humiliating scenarios which our nation's war cheerleaders carry around obsessively in their heads, and which are currently filling my inbox. They're not going to be the ones on their knees, begging. They're not going to be the "faggots." Instead, they are going to send others off to fight and bomb and occupy and kill and thereby show who is strong and tough and feel protected.

Greenwald's really stuck on his "wimp factor" theories, which are of the garden variety "chicken hawk" kind, but read the whole post for more. For now, though, note how the debate continues back over at Protein Wisdom. Especially this section, with updates:

UPDATE: Gleen begins an update to a post with the formula, “I honestly just read . . . .” No, really. Were fatwas issued against them? No, but good old religieuse Gleen is deeply concerned about the blasphemy and wound to the sensibilities of Allahpundit’s handle. O tempora, o mores!

UPDATE2: More fun spun off from Gleen’s fantastical inferences regarding our fantasy lives: They are terrified but they can’t look away. “Tormented, they invent their own counter-fantasies where they are the ones holding the long, hard, dark penis and telling the source of their agony, ‘Suck. On. This.’” Because the only explanation for why one might differ from their point of view has to do with psychosexual deficiency. That’s the Progg Fantasy in a nutshell.

UPDATE3: Another numbskull weighs in:

None of this should surprise anyone. America is filled with people like Dan Collins, some of whom may be in your own families. I recall a relative of mine arguing in favor of extensive war in the Middle East, saying that if we didn’t bomb the Arabs into submission, they would come over here and “fuck us in the ass.” That’s a direct quote, by the way. I remember that line well because I had no real come back to it. I mean, what do you say to that: “To the contrary, they won’t fuck us in the ass”? Not exactly Oxford debate material. Still, the rightwing fascination with homosexual rape and queer-tinged scenarios in general says more about their confused psyches than the actual politics of the real world. I’ve run into this time and time again. Hell, twenty years ago I heard similar violent and gay-oriented rhetoric from the ex-Dartmouth Review editors and writers I had gotten to know. Back then, it was the Sandinistas who wanted to fuck us in the ass. You’d think that the U.S. has the most tantalizing rear the planet has ever seen, given how many countries desire cramming their dark, uncircumcised pricks deep inside our cheeks. This is why we must kill them before they drop their pants and pull out the bad news. Call it the Tucker Carlson school of international diplomacy.

I’m not worried about getting rammed up the ass by a Muslim, you jackass. I’m flummoxed by Gleen’s running interference for homosexual-murdering regimes and then turning around and lecturing us on our insensitivity to a particular brand of cultural difference that seems to inculcate that practice.

Of course, none of this should surprise anyone, because whatever that cultural difference may consist in, it cannot possibly be as dangerous as Neo-cons.

In fact, Gleen pretty much embodies Lacanian disembodiment:

Because of this lack of signifieds, Lacan says, the chain of signifiers–x=y=z=b=q=0=%==s (etc.)–is constantly sliding and shifting and circulating. There is no anchor, nothing that ultimately gives meaning or stability to the whole system. The chain of signifiers is constantly in play (in Derrida’s sense); there’s no way to stop sliding down the chain–no way to say “oh, x means this,” and have it be definitive. Rather, one signifier only leads to another signifier, and never to a signified. It’s kind of like a dictionary–one word only leads you to more words, but never to the things the words supposedly represent.

But people being stoned to death because of their sexuality by a regime that represents no threat to anybody, that’s rather real, I would imagine, in the moment the rock breaks the skull. On the other other other hand, you have one sockpuppet that refers to another sockpuppet that refers to another sockpuppet, ad infinitum.

And to think: I thought I was getting pretty tough on Gleen Greenwald!

Blog Watch: Glenn Greenwald

This week's "Blog Watch" entry dissects and exposes Glenn Greenwald, a far-left blogger who's actually one of the more interesting Bush-bashers among those of the radical blogosphere.

I say he's interesting because it's hard not to notice Greenwald's strenuous effort to demonstrate scholarly expertise in international politics, found for example in his constant vitriolic barrages against the administration's Iraq policy, and his righteous fulminations against the coterie of Washington's allegedly evil neocons. Unfortunately, for Greenwald, the more he spews against the administration and its supporters, the more of a left-wing lunatic he appears.

Case in point: Greenwald makes himself an easy target for ridicule with his recent attack on the apparently despicable "Kagan-Kristol" neocon foreign policy cabal.

Greenwald takes issue with the neoconservative foreign policy agenda of Fred and Robert Kagan and William Kristol (and by extension Donald Kagan, Fred and Robert's father, and Kimberly Kagan, Fred's wife). Greenwald excoriates this "Kagan-Kristol" cabal as promoting "endless wars" from the safe confines of their think tank offices. Greenwald lets loose on Fred Kagan for his criticism of the Webb amendment, the recent failed backdoor Senate attempt to weaken the military and force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. Here's Greenwald on the Kagans, with reference to the Webb proposal, attacking their "illegitimate" armchair strategic advocacy:

None has any military service. They have no need for the troop relief provided by the Webb bill (which Fred opposes) because they are already all sitting at home.

Fred Kagan yesterday went to National Review - home to countless tough guy warriors like him who fight nothing - to argue against Senator Webb's bill. There is no need to give our troops more time away from the battlefield....

If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting." Of course, that would not even work, because Kagan and his friends at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute have many more wars planned beyond Iraq for other families' sons and daughters to fight. For that reason, Kagan actually had the audacity several months ago to type this:

The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation.

That's the history of our country for the last six years at least. The Fred Kagans and his dad and his brother and his wife and his best friend Bill Kristol sit back casually demanding more wars, demanding that our troops be denied any relief, demanding that the President call for other families to volunteer to fight in their wars -- all "as an intellectual or emotional exercise," as Webb put it.

That's all revolting enough... But it is worth forcing oneself to observe it, as unpleasant as it might be, because within this ugly dynamic lies much of the explanation for what has happened to our country since the 9/11 attack, and the personality type that continues to drive it today.

At base, Greenwald's criticism of Kagan-Kristol's war advocacy is nothing more than a rank "chicken hawk" attack, the same type of adolescent, idiotic slur mounted by the most diehard antiwar activists of the unhinged left (see here and here).

Note further though Greenwald's phrasing: Neoconservative foreign policy advocacy is the foundation of the "ugly dynamic" of the administration's "warmongering" of the last six years.

Such language provides a nice glimpse into Greenwald venal antiwar stance. In a recent post, "The Rigid Pro-War Ideology of the Foreign Policy Community," Greenwald takes on some of the country's top experts on international relations, particularly those of the think tank variety. He accuses them of a uniform program of unrelenting war advocacy, a trait obviously responsible for the "ugly dynamic" in America's international policy since 9/11. Check this out:

The Foreign Policy Community - a term which excludes those in primarily academic positions - is not some apolitical pool of dispassionate experts examining objective evidence and engaging in academic debates. Rather, it is a highly ideological and politicized establishment, and its dominant bipartisan ideology is defined by extreme hawkishness, the casual use of military force as a foreign policy tool, the belief that war is justified not only in self-defense but for any "good result," and most of all, the view that the U.S. is inherently good and therefore ought to rule the world through superior military force.

It's worth reading Greenwald's post in full, but his key point is that America's foreign policy elite forms a monolithic pro-war machine intent to take over the world in some Trotskyite mission of endless conquest, rape, pillage, and imperial plunder. Greenwald's entry is just one attack in a flurry of salvos launched by top antiwar bloggers. But for all of Greenwald's seemingly firm foreign policy acumen, his analysis is deeply flawed by its wholesale generalizations and ferocious enemy-baiting. International relations expert Daniel Drezner, a key participant in this exchange, took exception to Greenwald's wild exaggerations:

Greenwald is conflating an awful lot of disparate but "mainstream" views within his definition of the "foreign policy community." There is a big difference between not taking force off the table as a policy option and vigorously advocating its use. As I said in my previous post, there are vigorous debates about what constitutes a "vital national interest" Greenwald himself acknowledges that force should be an option when other countries "directly threaten your national security" or harbor terrorist groups that will do the same. How does one define direct threats to national security? For the United States, would civil war in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan qualify? Should the use of force be categorically rejected in both cases? Does Iran's links to the Khobar Towers bombing justify the use of force against Teheran, as per Greenwald's criteria?

Read the full post. Drezner cuts to a real problem in Greenwald's writing, which is that Greenwald is so intent to delegitimize the war and its backers that he can't parse out real differences of opinion among foreign policy experts, and he fails to recognize the significant shift in opinion that has taken place on Iraq among the nation's policymaking elite. (Drezner notes, further, the flaws in Greenwald's generalizations by mentioning that Brent Scowcroft, who's among the elite of the foreign policy elite, firmly opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.)

Check out as well Greenwald's recent defense of MoveOn.org's attack on General David Petraeus, captured in Greenwald's denuciation of Brit Hume of FOX News, who hosted a Petraeus broadcast following the general's congressional testimony:

A country with a functioning political press would never pretend that the pro-war, Bush-worshipping Hume could conduct an actual interview with Petraeus, let alone be the only journalist allowed to do so. And a government subject even to minimal levels of accountability would be too embarrassed, or at least deterred, from decreeing that its top general, burdened by a dubious record and making highly precarious claims about an ongoing war, would sit for a television interview with only one "journalist," and that journalist would be Brit Hume.

Notice first the allusions to the Bush administration's dismantling of the rule of law (a common delegitimization technique of the anti-American crowd). But more importantly, see how Greenwald piles on MoveOn's attack campaign to undermine Petraeus, and by implication the war. The MoveOn debacle has been a disaster for the hard-left, and Greenwald's ravings position him far outside of mainstream, intelligent discourse on the future direction of American military policy.

In sum, Greenwald on foreign policy - despite his bookish pretensions - is no better than any other low-level, hate-addled anti-Bush blogger. His work simply feeds the endless appetite for anti-administration fodder among the tasteless surrender-crowd hammering the Democratic Party for its alleged pro-war spinelessness. It's this very pseudo-intellectualism that makes Greenwald worth monitoring. He's got a quick wit, and an even quicker keyboard, pumping out his nasty stuff. Antiwar types digest his swill whole, but the rest of us can see through the balony for what it is: An unexpurgated campaign of antiwar radicalism and anti-Americanism.

Don't believe this guy for a minute.

For more on Greenwald, check his YouTube attacking Washington's prowar "establishment":

See also Greenwald's current post attacking FOX News for its alleged hypocrisy (via Memeorandum).

See also the previous entries from Blog Watch: The Blue Voice, Firedoglake.