Rampant patriotism breaches on America's Right

[Jefferson23]

By Glenn Greenwald

Friday, Mar 19, 2010 04:20 EDT

During the Bush years, the Bush-following Right's Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, frequently accused opponents of the Iraq War of being "unpatriotic," endangering the Troops, and committing treason: "They're not so much 'antiwar' as just on the other side," he often wrote. Today, the same Glenn Reynolds wrote (emphasis added):


If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I'd do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.



Calling on a foreign country to act in a way that creates "as much trouble as possible" for your own country seems to be the very definition of being "on the other side," does it not? (and his cover sentence -- "Are the Israelis less obnoxious than me? I guess we’ll find out soon enough . . . ." -- changes nothing). That's especially true since the action Reynolds is endorsing -- Israel's bombing of Iran -- likely would, according to America's top military official, directly result in the deaths of American soldiers:


Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, warned last Thursday that an Israeli attack on Iran might lead to escalation, undermine the region's stability and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf "who are under the threat envelope right now."


By Reynolds' own standards, blithely endorsing such outcomes would seem, definitively, to place one "on the other side." But over the last week, as the U.S./Israel dispute has blossomed, the American Right generally has engaged in much conduct that they have always denounced as disloyal and treasonous. Almost unanimously, they have adopted what Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously condemned as a "Blame America First" attitude, with super-patriots such as National Review and Charles Krauthammer, among many others, heaping all blame on America and siding with the foreign government. According to these Arbiters of Patriotism, this dispute is The Fault of America; indeed, when it comes to American conflicts with Israel generally, as Kirkpatrick put it in her famous refrain: "somehow, they always Blame America First."

Along those lines, the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman yesterday formally condemned Gen. David Petraeus for warning that Israel's conflict with the Palestinians increases anti-American hatred and endangers American troops due to a "perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel." Foxman attacked Petraeus' remarks as "dangerous and counterproductive" -- and, indeed, they are: "dangerous and counterproductive," that is, for those (like Foxman and the neocon Right) who want the U.S. to blindly support Israeli actions even when doing so directly harms American interests. As Andrew Bacevich explained in Salon yesterday, the fact that Petraeus has now linked U.S. support for Israel to harm to U.S. interests will make it impossible for Israel-centric neocons to stigmatize that linkage ever again, and is thus "likely to discomfit those Americans committed to the proposition that the United States and Israel face the same threats and are bound together by identical interests." Isn't it Barack Obama's overriding duty as Commander-in-Chief to listen to his military commanders and take aggressive action against anything which undermines America's war effort and Endangers the Troops -- including Israel's settlement expansions?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

[90-percent]

1. MY hunch

Reynolds probably has some ponzi scheme cooked up to profit from a revived military draft.

If this happens we'll need more teenage war fodder than mere $100,000 a year Blackwater mercenaries can provide.

I bet the tons of $100 dollar bills have already been palletized, shrink wrapped and loaded in to the C5A's!

-90% jimmy

[Jefferson23]

2. lol, I don't know about that but his ideas on foreign policy go further than bizarro world.

I read he hosts a talk show for Pajamas Media....how fitting.

[BeFree]

3. heh

They will say anything and do anything they can to get their war on.
The same people who are blaming America for Israels problems are the same people who, to this day, still think bushco had every right to shock and awe Iraq.

They are simply warmongering bastards who we need to put in prison.
Imprisoned for their war crimes. We do that and the rest of them will STFU, guaranteed.

[Jefferson23]

4. It is the hypocrisy of going after Petraeus I find amazing, time will

tell how this impacts Obama's decision process regarding the conflict.