Another gem of an article by Mr. Greenwald (it refers to the types of people here who are so astonished that someone could offer an explanation behind what has happened):
Andrew Sullivan, terrorism, and the art of distortion
Challenging the conventional western narrative on terrorism produces unique amounts of rage and bile. It's worth examining why
Everyone who participates in political debates sometimes has their arguments publicly misrepresented. Like many writers, if I noted and refuted every case where that happened to me, I would have time for nothing else. But sometimes the distortions are so fundamental and obvious - as well as pernicious - that they are worth examining. I had intended to write today about the reaction to this week's War on Terror speech by President Obama, but will postpone that until tomorrow so that I can instead discuss what Andrew Sullivan (and others) did yesterday. Beyond my wanting to correct their glaring distortions, the episode raises some interesting broader points that drive debates on these issues.
On Thursday, I
wrote about the London killing of a British soldier by two men using a meat cleaver. The sub-headline, which I wrote, called it a "horrific act of violence", a phrase I repeated in the very first sentence. I described that event as one where the solider had been "hacked to death". In the second paragraph, I wrote:
That this was a barbaric and horrendous act goes without saying."
I then proceeded to raise two main points about the attack. First, given that the person killed was not a civilian but a soldier of a nation at war (using US standards), it is difficult to devise a definition of "terrorism" that encompasses this attack while excluding large numbers of recent acts by the US, the UK and many of their allies and partners.
Second, despite the self-serving bewilderment that is typically expressed whenever western nations are the targets rather than perpetrators of violence - why would anyone possibly be so monstrous and savage as to want to attack us this way? - the answer is actually well-known and well-documented. As explained by the CIA ("blowback"), the Pentagon (they "do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies"), former CIA agents ("we could try invading, occupying and droning Muslim countries a little less, and see if that helps. Maybe prop up fewer corrupt and tyrannical Muslim regimes"), and British combat veterans ("it should by now be self-evident that by attacking Muslims overseas, you will occasionally spawn twisted and, as we saw yesterday, even murderous hatred at home"), spending decades bombing, invading, occupying, droning, interfering in, imposing tyranny on, and creating lawless prisons in other countries generates intense anti-American and anti-western rage (for obvious reasons) and ensures that those western nations will be attacked as well. In the London case, the attacker cited precisely such anger at US/UK aggression as his motive ("this British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. . . . the only reason we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily"). Those are just facts.
Having written about these matters many times before,
I know exactly how some people reflexively try to radically distort the argument beyond recognition in order to smear you as a Terror apologist, a Terrorist-lover or worse, all for the thought crime of raising these issues. To do so, they deceitfully conflate claims of causation (A is one of the causes of B) with justification (B is justified). Anyone operating with the most basic levels of rationality understands that these concepts are distinct. To discuss what motivates a person to engage in Action B is not remotely to justify Action B.
To use the example
recently provided by former CIA agent Barry Eisler in his brilliant explanation of "blowback", if Person X walks up to Person Y on the street and spits in his face, and Person Y then pulls out a gun and shoots Person X in the head and kills him in retaliation, one can observe that Person X's spitting was a causal factor in Person Y's behavior without remotely justifying Person Y's lethal violence.
One can point out that a potential cost of walking up to people on the street and spitting in their face is that they are likely to respond with similar or worse aggression - and that this is one reason not to engage in such behavior - without justifying or legitimizing the response that is provoked and without denying (or even minimizing) the agency or blame of the person who responds.
This is all so basic and self-evident that it should be unnecessary to point it out. But I know from prior experience in having my arguments on this issue wildly distorted and smeared that it's quite necessary. So I did point it out: by several times making clear exactly what I was - and was not - arguing, and did so as explicitly as the English language permits:
As I've endlessly pointed out, highlighting this causation doesn't remotely justify the acts."
Concerning whether this attack should be categorized as "terrorism", I explained precisely why it's vital to ask that question: because the term bears such great significance legally, politically, culturally, and emotionally and yet has no clear or consistently applied definition, and is thus used as a propaganda tool to glorify violence and other conduct by western states while rendering inherently illegitimate all violence directed at those states. In doing so, I was equally explicit about what I was and was not arguing [emphasis added]:
"I know this vital caveat will fall on deaf ears for some, but nothing about this discussion has anything to do with justifiability. An act can be vile, evil, and devoid of justification without being 'terrorism': indeed, most of the worst atrocities of the 20th Century, from the Holocaust to the wanton slaughter of Stalin and Pol Pot and the massive destruction of human life in Vietnam, are not typically described as 'terrorism'. To question whether something qualifies as 'terrorism' is not remotely to justify or even mitigate it. That should go without saying, though I know it doesn't."
If anyone knows of a way to make that any clearer, do let me know.
So now we come to
what Andrew Sullivan and others told their readers that I argued. Announcing at the start that "I really have to try restrain my anger here", Sullivan quickly accused me of spreading "Islamist propaganda". Arguing that US intervention in the Muslim world both before and after the 9/11 attack was noble and often beneficent -
yes,
he actually argued that with a straight face - he demands to know of me: "How can that legitimize a British citizen's brutal beheading of a fellow British citizen on the streets of London?" He then added: "The idea that this foul, religious bigotry . . . is some kind of legitimate protest against a fast-ending war is just perverse." He concludes with a real flourish: my "blindness to the savagery at the heart of Salafism", he decrees, "is very hard to understand, let alone forgive".
That I "legitimated" the London attack or argued it was a "legitimate protest" is as obvious a fabrication as it gets. Not only did I argue no such thing, and not only did I say the exact opposite of what Sullivan and others falsely attribute to me, but I
expressly repudiated - in advance - the very claims they try to impose on me. Even
vociferous critics of what I wrote, writing in neocon venues, understood this point ("I do find myself wanting to agree with Greenwald in arguing that this is an atrocious murder rather than an act of terror"). Does Sullivan actually think that people who argued that the London attack should not be called "terrorism" (
like Chris Hayes), or who pointed out the role played by western aggression in motivating them (like
former British soldier Joe Glenton), or who have long warned of "blowback" in the form of such attacks (like the CIA and Pentagon), are remotely arguing that the attack was
justified? Sullivan's behavior evinces a blatant inability or refusal to critique what I wrote without distorting it beyond all recognition.
So self-evident was Sullivan's Friday night bad conduct here that, within hours, numerous people had harshly condemned it. Law professor Kevin Jon Heller
wrote: "Sullivan distorts Greenwald's argument beyond all recognition; I can only assume deliberately." University of Chicago Professor Harold Pollack
complained that he "shouldn't have to click past Sullivan's angry post to see that Greenwald labelled [the] beheading 'barbaric and horrendous'". One of Sullivan's readers wrote him a lengthy and very astute email, published in full
here, explaining to him that "your fundamental misreading of Greenwald's column is succinctly stated in your sentence: 'How can that [U.S. history in the Mideast] legitimize a British citizen's brutal beheading of a fellow British citizen on the streets of London?' Greenwald never remotely said that."
Now we arrive at the broader points that I think are raised by all of this. Contrary to Professor Heller's suggestion, I actually don't think that Sullivan's flagrant misrepresentations of what I wrote were deliberate.
I definitely do think that about Jeffrey Goldberg and other various neocon smear artists who spent the last couple of days endlessly and loudly accusing me of being a pro-Terror, US-blaming Terrorist-lover, Jew-hating Terror-apologist and all the other tired neocon clichés that have been hurled at anyone and everyone over the last decade who questions the Mandated Narratives about "Islamic Terror", the US and Israel. Willfully smearing people as pro-Terrorists in order to deter free and rational discussions of US and Israeli aggression is what they do. It's their function, their chosen tactic. One expects that from them. It's just part of the landscape. Had it been confined to that crowd, I barely would have noticed, let alone responded. They and their deceitful smear tactics ceased being effective eight or nine years ago. Nobody cares anymore.
But Sullivan's behavior here is more interesting and revealing. He's certainly smart enough to comprehend the points being made, so that's not the problem. Amazingly, as his reader pointed out, Sullivan - a mere ten days ago - himself sought to defend President Obama (his life's mission) in the Benghazi controversy by
posting an article in
the American Prospect arguing as follows:
Benghazi was not a terrorist act. Or an act of terror. Or an act of terrorism . . . . So why wasn't Benghazi terrorism? Because the people targeted weren't civilians."
That's
exactly the argument I raised about the London attack that sent Sullivan into spasms of moral denunciation. Does denying that the Benghazi attack was "an act of terror" mean that one is justifying it? Sullivan answered that very question when he quoted that same Benghazi article as explaining: "That doesn't make their deaths any less tragic or painful for their families, but it's the truth. Nor is a CIA outpost a civilian target."
Indeed, as I documented, the only standards that could be used to support the choice of an off-duty solider in London as a target to kill are the standards promulgated by the US (which I vehemently reject) that holds that we are "at war", that "the entire globe is a battlefield", and that it's legitimate to kill anyone suspected of being a combatant in that "war" no matter where they are located or what they are doing at the time they are targeted for killing.
So Sullivan not only understands my point here, but grants himself license to make it himself when doing so advances his cause of praising and defending Obama. What, then, accounts for the distortions and sustained rage that ensues every time I make these arguments - not just from Sullivan but generally?