Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 141

Obama defends "ground zero mosque"

(updated below)

This is one of the most impressive and commendable things Obama has done since being inaugurated:

President Obama delivered a strong defense on Friday night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to proclaim that "as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country" . . . .

"I understand...

Obama defends "Ground Zero mosque"

(updated below)

This is one of the most impressive and commendable things Obama has done since being inaugurated:

President Obama delivered a strong defense on Friday night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to proclaim that "as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country" . . . .

"I understand...

Does the past record of journalists matter?

The Atlantic's James Fallows, whose analysis I often find worthwhile, yesterday defended Jeffrey Goldberg and his Iran article from unidentified critics (emphasis added):

Is this article warmongering? Or to put it more delicately, is it meant to condition the American public and politicians to the prospect of an attack on Iran? Many people have portrayed it as such. I disagree. I think that those reading the piece as a case for bombing Iran are mainly reacting to arguments about the...

How propagandists function: Exhibit A

Jeffrey Goldberg, in the new cover story in The Atlantic, on an Israeli attack on Iran:

Israel has twice before successfully attacked and destroyed an enemy's nuclear program. In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, halting -- forever, as it turned out -- Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions; and in 2007, Israeli planes destroyed a North Korean-built reactor in Syria.  An attack on Iran, then, would be unprecedented only in scope and complexity.

Good...

The Omar Khadr travesty

The only real reason I thought Robert Gibbs' comments yesterday merited a response is not because of the ephemeral melodrama it created -- the White House said Fox-copying, mean things about the Left -- but because of the "substantive" claim he made that comparisons of Bush and Obama were so blatantly insane that they merited "drug testing."  That Obama has vigorously embraced and at times even exceeded some of Bush's most controversial and radical policies is simply indisputable.  I'd...

Robert Gibbs attacks the fringe losers of the left

(updated below - Update II)

You may think that the reason you're dissatisfied with the Obama administration is because of substantive objections to their policies:  that they've done so little about crisis-level unemployment, foreclosures and widespread economic misery.  Or because of the White House's apparently endless devotion to Wall Street.  Or because the President has escalated a miserable, pointless and unwinnable war that is entering its ninth year.  Or because he has...

Imperial ironies

(updated below)

I'm having a great deal of difficulty choosing which of these is the Most Ironic Headline of 2010. Please be so kind as to help me decide:

CHOICE A - from Politico, today:

CHOICE B - from TPM, last week:

 

One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates.

 

UPDATE:  At the risk of unduly tilting the scales in favor of Choice A, Chris Dowd recalls the following incident, as...

Marriage and the role of the state

Ross Douthat uses his New York Times column today to put what he undoubtedly considers to be the most intellectual and humane face on the case against marriage equality.  Without pointing to any concrete or empirical evidence, Douthat insists that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is objectively superior to all other forms of adult relationships:  such arrangements are the "ideal,"  he pronounces.  He argues that equal treatment of same-sex marriages by secular institutions will make it...

What collapsing empire looks like

(updated below)

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay.  But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the...

The alleged political benefits of moderation

My advocacy against the choice of Elena Kagan to replace Justice Stevens largely ceased once she was selected because, as I always acknowledged, her confirmation would be virtually inevitable if she were chosen.  So uninspiring was Kagan's nomination that one should be forgiven for not having noticed that the Senate yesterday confirmed her appointment to the Supreme Court.  It was actually painful watching progressive Democratic Party judicial advocacy groups trying dutifully to pretend with ...