To join in with Zandar, it’s obviously controversial to characterize American foreign policy over the last eleven years as nothing but “invading, droning, cluster-bombing, occupying, detaining without charges, and indiscriminately shooting huge numbers of innocent children, women and men in multiple countries,” which is what Glenn Greeenwald basically did. Our country did all of those things, at least at times. But it is by no means all we did. I agree with Zandar that there is something slightly unsettling about Mr. Greenwald sitting in his home in Brazil and musing in wonder about why more American civilians haven’t been killed in retaliation. But I don’t think the appropriate response is to shout Greenwald down and not engage in the debate he’s initiating.
Update [2012-6-14 10:10:25 by BooMan]: [Based on Greenwald’s comment in this thread, I retract the sentence about his Brazilian residence].
For Greenwald, the response to 9/11 has been immoral and misguided, and has come with an unacceptable cost. He makes no distinction between the policies of Bush and Cheney and the policies of Obama and Biden.
One of the many reasons I oppose Obama’s ongoing aggression is precisely that I believe the policies [Andrew] Sullivan and [George] Packer cheer will cause another 9/11 (the other reasons include the lawlessness of it, the imperial mindset driving it, the large-scale civilian deaths it causes, the extreme and unaccountable secrecy with which it’s done, the erosion of civil liberties that inevitably accompanies it, the patently criminal applications of these weapons, the precedent it sets, etc.).
It’s actually frustrating that Greenwald won’t acknowledge any legitimate rationale for going after people who are plotting (or have plotted) attacks against civilian aircraft or other American interests, including our soldiers in the field. How does Greenwald think the president should handle the folks in Yemen who have been trying to explode bombs on our planes? How does he think Obama can morally and responsibly extract our military forces from Afghanistan? What it permissible when it comes to bringing the people responsible for 9/11 to justice?
If he were more willing to explore these types of questions, it would be a lot easier to debate him. But his overall point is valid. The way we conduct our foreign policy in the Muslim world creates a lot of new enemies and that does suggest that our policies aren’t making us safer. And even if they are making us safer, our actions are of questionable morality and come at an unacceptable cost to the integrity of our criminal justice system and our civil liberties.
To debate things on Greenwald’s terms, though, is impossible. If there is no legitimate reason to kill a terrorist, then a drone strike cannot ever be justified. The entire point of drone strikes is to reduce civilian casualties. Clinton and Bush just fired off hellfire missiles and dropped 500 lb. bombs. But if you don’t accept the premise that there are bad guys who should be killed, then no civilian casualties are acceptable.
If our own actions justify retaliatory strikes, then even defending ourselves isn’t morally acceptable.
Greenwald holds up a mirror. It’s a distorted mirror that shows only one side, but that doesn’t make his arguments unimportant. In fact, once you engage his argument, certain things become clear. For example, he says this:
Just consider what one single, isolated attack on American soil more than a decade ago did to Sullivan, Packer and company: the desire for violence which that one attack 11 years ago unleashed is seemingly boundless by time or intensity. Given the ongoing American quest for violence from that one-day attack, just imagine the impact which continuous attacks over the course of a full decade must have on those whom we’ve been invading, droning, cluster-bombing, occupying, detaining without charges, and indiscriminately shooting.
While he diminished 9/11 as just “one, single isolated attack” when it was really a Pearl Harbor-level attack, he makes a compelling point. But he doesn’t consider something that is somewhat troubling. He doesn’t consider what a rational person would think when they looked at how America responded to that “one, single isolated attack.” If we went so apeshit over that, just imagine how much carnage we’d cause if our homeland and our civilians and our Pentagon were attacked again? The very ferocity and irrationality with which our elites responded to 9/11 did create a quite compelling disincentive to poking us with any more sticks. The way we single-mindedly refused to consider any responsibility or culpability for 9/11, our total lack of introspection, our complete refusal to change anything (other than moving troops out of Saudi Arabia to other Gulf States), and our extreme aggression towards Iraq, all stand as proof that attacking us will not make us behave better. What is to be gained by it?
If the 9/11 hijackers had lived to see the result of their actions, I believe they would have regretted their actions. Nothing they could have possibly hoped to produce has come to fruition. Quite the opposite, in fact. With the sole exception of our decision to move our troops out of the Saudi Kingdom, everything they cared about has gotten worse.
This may be our version of assuring that the terrorists didn’t win, but it has come at a giant cost.
Personally, I see the Obama administration as doing a decent job of unwinding this. I wouldn’t haven’t committed more troops and time and money to Afghanistan, but I understand the complexity of the region and of the internal politics here at home. And I am very troubled by many of the administrations’ policies, from lack of accountability for torture, to acting in Libya without congressional approval, to punishing whistleblowers, to using state secrets in court.
As I’ve said before, I want us to get out of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is decimated. While we need to keep an eye on the people in Yemen who are plotting attacks on civilian aircraft, we are basically at the point where we can declare victory in the War on Terror and bring our forces home. And then we’ll have to worry about the many new enemies we’ve created.
What Greenwald said is controversial. But that’s a good thing. Engaging his arguments helps to clarify things. Shouting him down accomplishes less than nothing.
