You can almost set your watch to it. Within 24 hours following nearly every recent terrorist attack or horrifying ISIS video, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald exploits the tragedies as a platform for his ongoing finger-wagging and tsk-tsk scolding of the U.S. and other western nations (but mainly the U.S.). Earlier this week, ISIS burned alive a Jordanian pilot and released the video into the world and, right on schedule, Greenwald posted another article condemning the U.S. for collateral damage in the war on terrorism.
It's the usual Greenwald game. First of all, warning, the article is preceded by a file photo of a badly burned Vietnamese child. We'll continue the debate another day about the efficacy of flogging readers over the head with graphic imagery. But since Greenwald didn't warn anyone, I suppose I will. Anyway, following his own condemnation of the pilot's immolation, Greenwald immediately segued into how America is worse than ISIS because of our use of drones and much more, illustrated with the usual Glennzilla crutch: blockquote, blockquote, blockquote, blockquote until our eyes bleed. To be fair, his blockquotes weren't strictly about drones, but delved back to the Vietnam era and napalm, so at least there was some variety.
After his stack of blockquotes about America's history of being Worse Than ISIS, Greenwald wrote the following about the U.S. condemnation of the terror group:
That’s exactly what makes the intensity of these repeated denunciation rituals somewhat confounding.
Confounding? Are Americans (and Jordanians for that matter) not allowed to condemn ISIS because of alleged past guilt? He appears to conclude that we have no right to condemn our enemies when they summarily execute journalists and prisoners-of-war. If so, how exactly are we supposed to respond?... CONTINUE READING