Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiDenying Responsibility for the Wars One Cheers On
The NYT columnist who has supported 4 wars on Muslims in 6 years decries the Islamic disregard for human life.
David Brooks' column today perfectly illustrates what lies at the core of our political discourse: namely, self-loving tribalistic blindness laced with a pathological refusal to accept responsibility for one's actions. Brooks claims there is a unique evil that one finds in the "fringes of the Muslim world":
Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.
That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don't see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.
This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," and then start murdering.
But Brooks himself was a vehement, vicious advocate for the attack on Iraq, which caused this:
The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of many Iraqi civilians . . . Many international organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations have counted excess civilian casualties using such methods; however all have reported different numbers. Reports range from 128,000 to 1,033,000.
That's at least 128,000 innocent human beings -- at least -- whose lives were eradicated by the war Brooks repeatedly cheered on. It also resulted in this: "More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country." But Brooks accuses Islamic fanatics -- but not himself -- of "causing incredible amounts of suffering."
Brooks also justified the Israeli attack on Gaza, including its worst excesses -- a war that wiped out the lives of 1,400 Palestinians (including 252 children under the age of 16) and that entailed "the shooting of [Gazan] civilians with white flags, the firing of white phosphorus shells and charges that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian men as human shields," all of which, according to a U.N. investigation, were "the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers." He also cheered on the Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanon and derided those calling for a cease-fire, even as the war wiped out more than 1,000 Lebanese people, at least 300 of whom were women and children, during which "Israeli warplanes also targeted many moving vehicles that turned out to be carrying only civilians trying to flee the conflict." And Brooks is now demanding escalation of the war in yet another Muslim country, this one in Afghanistan -- making it the fourth separate war on Muslims he's cheered on in the last six years alone.
So here's a person who is constantly advocating and justifying the killing, bombing, and slaughtering of Muslims, including well over 100,000 innocent civilians. And yet today he writes a column saying: Look over there at those radical Muslims; can you believe how degraded and inhumane they are? In fact, he says, "they" -- those Muslims over there -- "don't see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so." That's from the same person who cheerleads for the endless deaths of Muslims and destruction of the Muslim world while thinking that it makes him strong, resolute, Churchillian, righteous and noble -- exactly that which he accuses "fringe Muslims" of doing. And even as he blames the U.S. for "absolving" radical Muslims for the "evil" of their choices, Brooks will never make the connection between what he does and its results because he believes he is free from accountability and that his righteousness justifies the killings he desires -- again, exactly that which he says today is the hallmark of Islamic monsters ("They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so").
The tribalistic narcissism and depraved refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences of one's actions on vivid display here is hardly unique to Brooks. The very same people who express such moral outrage and self-righteous horror over events like the Fort Hood shootings themselves have immense amounts of innocent human blood on their hands, but they simply avert their eyes from what they have caused or believe that they are too inherently Good to be responsible, let alone culpable, for what they unleash.
79 Comments so far
Show AllI think Brooks should study Carl Jung and get in touch with his shadow self!
Brooks might get closer to his shadow self with the Malleus Malleficarum.
when people are trained to kill there can be no surprise if they turn into killers.
and what roll did junior's conceit of Pre-emptive War play in the Ft. Hood shooter's motivation/justification?
a conceit not denounced by 0.
The hypocrisy with the whole Fort Hood deal is so transparent. Hearing the memorial -- Obama's smarmy, empty and laughingly phony call for decency and ending cynicism, the obnoxious singing of Amazing Grace -- I wondered why none of these same people, weeping and feeling so grave and so good and so sad, don't give a single thought to all the people killed or damaged irreparably in Afghanistan and Iraq thanks to our illegal romps in their countries.
And these parents of the killed -- they can't understand, their sons were so good, how could this happen. The preachers and the President raising a lantern for God's way -- what the hell, those kids went off as hired murderers, that's what they're doing! And where were your moral compasses, preachers, and parents and President, as those boys and girls went off to kill in order to steal someone else's oil? Why did you not advise them to follow the path of love and peace and not the path of invading other peoples' countries in order to steal their resources?
The sentiment is 100 % selfish, self-centered, self-serving. Those bawling idiots have absolutely no feelings for anyone outside of their team. So why should we care if one of the team members goes ballistic from the abuse he suffered and he takes out a few of his fellow murderers? Really, why should we care -- the parents, the preachers, the President don't give two sh-ts about the Iraqis and Afghanis or the Palestinians, either. And you know what, they don't give a half a sh-t about the vets who go crazy and end up homeless or turning a gun on others, until that gun goes off and takes away their "loved" ones. But they are on God's side, so that's why we should sing Amazing Grace and shed some tears for the fallen hired murderers.
Well stated, licketyglick.
My phobia towards directly observing the Amerikan Unitary Executive in action (i.e, running his mouth) really set in during the previous maladministration, and the present monarch hasn't lessened it.
But I couldn't get past the part of his speech that sounded very much like, "Rest assured we're gonna give this son of a bitch the fairest trial in the world before we hang him!" Yeah, he's a real scholar of the Law, all right!
I paraphrase in the interest of counter-obfuscation.
· Yr Obd't Servant
VERY WELL-STATED. you put more eloquence in that statement what all the crying, and beating of breasts and "poor baby of mine" that americans have SPILLED the blood of their own and that of others for the sake of "glory of empire"
which NONE of these - pitiful and tragic as their lot has become for losing their children and fellow americans - ever so much as consider the children, parents, families and friends of those in other lands which by these american parents and "glory and honor of the military fighting for freedom" supporters and enablers even think about.
they think, in their self-centered, american-centered way, that only America's losses are of any worth.
it's as if they do not even have a thought that the USA is being WATCHED the world over - for its IMPERIAL SIZE HYPOCRISY of displaying horror and sadness at the loss of "its children" - doing the "task" of KILLING other people in THEIR lands through its imperialism.
the taliban, pashtuns, arabs, muslims, venezuelans, chileans, peruvians, hondurans, etc. etc. etc.
did not INSTIGATE hostilities against america in her own land.
it is the other way around - it is america that instigated hostilities , however it disguised them as "liberation, democracy, freedom, civilization"...and is the one thing that binds all those other countries ....
AMERICAN AGGRESSION INTO THEIR OWN LANDS.
and then american parents CRY over the spills of their children's blood that THEY brought up as warriors of empire?
they think the mothers and fathers that cry over their dead children, many of them innocent KIDS under US bombs , in THEIR OWN LANDS are somehow without feelings for their loved ones lost or destroyed BY america through its meddling and imperialism?.
in a link in ANTIWAR.com
there is an article that reports :
apparently the Justice Department has now begun issuing "secret" subpoenas to "independent" (i.e. , left-leaning or critical of government and status quo) news organizations...
who knows how many have already been issued such things and simply have succumbed to the "instructions" to KEEP THE SUBPOENAS themselves SECRET?
the article says - a certain well-known "independent" news organization, deemed by the government as "left leaning" -
has issued a subpoena to its editor - a woman -
BUT the woman reported THAT to another news organization after she consulted with her colleagues and volunteers in the organization.
the justice department's arm (i think in illinois or minnesota) - as well as the washington main office did not respond to inquiries, other than saying: to effect,
"no comment".
supposedly the subpoena was "withdrawn" after it was "aired" by the lady from that newspaper that she receieved the subpoena.
NOW - here is the cinch:
the Subpoena by the US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
was for the news organization to supply the Justice Department ALL INFORMATION
about ALL visitors to the website.
Phone nUmbers, Internet Address, PHYSICAL ADDRESS, WORK place, Social Security number, BANK ACCOUNTS...
EVERYTHING.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/09/taking_liberties/entry5595506.shtml
November 10, 2009 12:01 AM
Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists
Font size PrintE-mailShare254 comments Posted by Declan McCullagh .
(AP / CBS)In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.
Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of unity and mission statement – work toward "promoting social and economic justice" and "social change.")
The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.
"I didn't think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention," Clair said in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com on Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost.
Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."
Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: "We have no comment." The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.
Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, replied to the Justice Department on behalf of his client in a February 2009 letter (PDF) outlining what he described as a series of problems with the subpoena, including that it was not personally served, that a judge-issued court order would be required for the full logs, and that Indymedia did not store logs in the first place.
'The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis ...'
I suspect he's one of the hundreds of Bush (in)justice appointees that Obama, upon taking office, refused to replace. The cheney/bush legacy continues...
Article continued
-=====================
Morrison replied in a one-sentence letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn. Around the same time, according to the EFF, the group had a series of discussions with assistant U.S. attorneys in Morrison's office who threatened Clair with possible prosecution for obstruction of justice if she disclosed the existence of the already-withdrawn subpoena -- claiming it "may endanger someone's health" and would have a "human cost."
Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press, said a gag order to a news organization wouldn't stand up in court: "If you get a subpoena and you're a journalist, they can't gag you."
Dalglish said that a subpoena being issued and withdrawn is not unprecedented. "I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter's privilege says, 'Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general's office'... I'm willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking."
Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there's no hint about what sparked the criminal probe. Clair, the system administrator, says that no IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are recorded for Indymedia.us, and non-IP address logs are kept for a few weeks and then discarded.
EFF's Bankston wrote a second letter to the government saying that, if it needed to muzzle Indymedia, it should apply for a gag order under the section of federal law that clearly permits such an order to be issued. Bankston's plan: To challenge that law on First Amendment grounds.
But the Justice Department never replied. "This is the first time we've seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site," Bankston said. "That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights."
This is not, however, the first time that the Feds have focused on Indymedia -- a Web site whose authors sometimes blur the line between journalism, advocacy, and on-the-streets activism. In 2004, the Justice Department sent a grand jury subpoena asking for information about who posted lists of Republican delegates while urging they be given an unwelcome reception at the party's convention in New York City that year. A Indymedia hosting service in Texas once received a subpoena asking for server logs in relation to an investigation of an attempted murder in Italy.
Bankston has written a longer description of the exchange of letters with the Justice Department, which he hopes will raise awareness of how others should respond to similar legal demands for Web logs, customer records, and compulsory silence. "Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they're legally baseless," Bankston says. "We're telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence."
Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general's office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that's correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the "express authorization of the attorney general" for media subpoenas -- and it means that neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor Acting Attorney General Mark Filip were involved. I wouldn't be surprised to see an internal investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility; my source would not confirm or deny that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com. He can be reached at declan@cbsnews.com and can be followed on Twitter as declanm. You can bookmark Declan's Taking Liberties site here, or subscribe to the RSS feed. .Tags:first amendment ,justice department ,privacy
And David Brooks is constantly on the Sunday morning political talkshows circuit and spews this stuff without hardly a challenge. MSM purposely puts on certain people as a propaganda tool to set the tone of the way Americans should think. Afterall, if nobody challenges Brooks on the show, it must be okay to think that way.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Brooks is a sordid little viper and one of the ugliest dissemblers on television. Watching him do his think-tank talking points hatchet jobs is like watching a rotten dead horse's stomach explode open to reveal a heaving mass of turgid maggots. So predictable if you catch it quick enough you can change the channel before he finishes his first sentence. His inclusion as a regular "conservative" commentator on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer really dragged down the reputation of that program.
Brooks is widely considered one of the most "level-headed conservative" commentatora in the MSM but is, in fact, a gleamy-eyed opportunist, word twister, plutocrat worshipper and all around phony. When belligerent neo-conservatism was all the rage he was one of its most ardent foot-soldiers up there with Judith Miller. When Team Bush went down in flames he pretended he was a younger paleo-conservative more than slightly ashamed of them. Now that the Dims are wasting their once-in-40-years golden majority expect him to veer back into neo-con la-la land as the atavistic GOP starts filing its teeth and collecting shrunken heads before engaging in another orgy of cannibalism.
Great post!
Excellent, necessary piece by Greenwald. And I don't understand Not Allan's pressing need to attack some of Zionism's severest critics with a reasonably wide audience--Chomsky, Zinn, Greenwald et al--for allegedly being its apologists. Doesn't he realize that in trying to discredit them he is behaving no differently from the Zionist hatchet-job propagandists who similarly attack them from the other side? Probably every one of these men rejects the basic "blood and soil" ideology underlying Zionism as presently and originally conceived. But sorting out the violent, complex reality that it has become, in which the US is a very major player, is another matter entirely.
Brooks is an extremist by any standard and wouldn't even merit comment except for the fact that his extremism is shared by most of the power players in the USA. Thus we ignore him and his ilk at our peril. Not even his central premise of the "3000 victims of Islamic extremism" -- lately being waved in our faces yet again under this and other pretexts -- can withstand scrutiny any longer. The enemy is us, and we had better change that soon--since Obama won't--or we are toast.
[Probably every one of these men rejects the basic "blood and soil" ideology underlying Zionism as presently and originally conceived.]
Well, I don't even know what this means. But I do know that every one of these men supports the apartheid division of Palestine into two parts, and it's continuation into the foreseeable future. And, this will be the the source of endless conflict in the region and maybe the world. See, it's a big problem !
Now, the MSM gives you Brooks, who represents the oligarchies fondest dreams. The perfect propagandist.
But, the oligarchs realize that the citizens will not accept a view that is not tested in debate, so, they will allow some criticism of Brooks, but only from members of the oligarchy, or others that share the basic assumptions of the oligarchy, namely that Israel continue to exist as an apartheid state. So, they sponsor phony critics like Chomsky, Greenwald, Zinn, et.al., to give the appearance of a free and open debate, when in reality, all the players accept the assumptions of the oligarchy. Get it?
Hey, I learned this from Chomsky .... see .... 'How Propaganda Works in the West'..
Keeping the People Passive & Obedient
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views.
See?
"The tribalistic narcissism and depraved refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences of one's actions on vivid display here is hardly unique to Brooks."
Of course it isn't unique to Brooks. It's called the American way!
Conclusion: Strap Brooks to the next cluster bomb mission and give him a birds eye view of what he advocates before him being squirted out of the Universe like a water mellon seed upon impact.
"These are trying times for our country. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the same extremists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans continue to endanger America, our allies, and innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. In Iraq, we are working to bring a war to a successful end, as there are still those who would deny the Iraqi people the future that Americans and Iraqis have sacrificed so much for."
Obama Bush-speak on the occasion of exploiting the Fort Hood shooting. Don't expect him to postpone trips or change his schedule for just any run of the mill mass shooting--like the one that occurred a day or 2 after this one and has already been flushed down the memory hole. Nothing to be milked from that one--no opportunity to ramp up that anti-Muslim hatred.
Next up, Obama's Veteran's Day speech. Do you suppose he'll mention the new Harvard Medical School study finding that an estimated 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they did not have health insurance?
According to the study, "being uninsured raises a person’s odds of dying prematurely by 40 percent. The researchers found that 1.46 million veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance in 2008. While most veterans are eligible to receive excellent care from the Veterans Administration, those who were not injured in combat and whose income is above a certain threshold are often ineligible. Others are assigned low priorities, providing them with less consistent and more expensive access to care."
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/10/vets-study-deaths/
"the same extremists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans continue to endanger America"
yeah - I'd read somewhere that some of the 19 were still alive . . .
What about the extremists who kill 42,000 Americans each year by denying them access to health care? Oh, sorry, I forgot, we can't talk about that--Obama and the DLC want to keep single payer off the table.
Brooks: "It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern."
"I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
I will agree that whoever made that quote was engaged in a Religious War. Will Brooks agree that he was one of our generals? (Boykin)
an unknown american poet said this a few years ago that I came across online:
"WE AMERICANS ....CAREFULLY NURTURE AN ATTITUDE OF DETACHED INDIFFERENCE TO THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS.....EVEN IF *WE* ARE THE CAUSE OF IT".
Good article.
Brooks is a ruling oligarchy, MIC, corporate sycophant and lackey.
But I could be wrong !
Not this time curmudgeon99!
David Brooks is no different on foreign policy than he is on economic policies. In both realms, David Brooks is strongly siding with protecting the elites such as Donald Trump and King Abdullah while siding strong against anti-war protesters including troops, working class Americans for economic liberalism, and unarmed poor civilians in other countries. I have seen him on PBS before and listened to him on the radio as well. His callousness and disregard for the poor here and abroad is unlikely to change given the nature of the corporate media that he chose to work for.
Two indicators about Obama from BEFORE the election of 2008.
1. Early on, in the campaign, he vowed to increase the Pentagon budget and not hesitate to attack within Pakistan.
2. He chose Joe Biden to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Joe Biden was one of the heads of the committee in the Senate overseeing the intelligence used to support the unilateral, deceit-based war on Iraq when he refused to allow testimony by anyone who contradicted Bush and company lies. He then voted in favor of unilateral aggression. Senator Joe Biden also pushed to protect credit card companies against their victims by restricting the ability of people to declare bankruptcy.
Your last sentence is correct and that is why Biden is called Mr. Mastercard.
Brooks claims there is a unique evil that one finds in the "fringes of the Muslim world":
And Shiblikov claims there is a unique evil that one finds in the "fringes of the Judeo/Christian world".
glad you cleared that up - I'd misread: "FRIDGES of the Muslim world."
hahahahahahaha...that was both funny and furry...!
long after my family has given up on a specific item in our fridge, whether or not I will eat it is what determines whether it stays in there, or not...my gut is the last potential stop on the way to the garbage or disposal...
David Brooks has been for as long as I can remember, nothing but another media whore, who is the master of casuistry. He is just nothing more than a cheerleader for the MIC that uses quiddity and obfuscation to cover his mendacious, rhetoric.
The clear objectivity of Glenn Greenwald is commendable.
yes.
Yes, Brooks needs to hang at Nuremberg, alongside Bush, Obama and about 1000 politicians and hangers-on who have waged wars of aggression against helpless peoples.
Where can I get a ticket to that event?
Brooks has shown us all how a closed minded hypocrite thinks. Notice how there is NO examination of one's own actions when compared to those of your antagonist. It's all THEIR fault, while you sit there pure as the driven snow. He is the perfect example of right wing thinking.
He complains about other's lack of compassion for others while exhibiting none of his own. He whines about other's wars while calling for an even larger one against 1/6 of the world's population. He ignores the violence done in this very country by those of OUR most populated religion while complaining about other's activities.
He is just as bad if not worse than those he complains about.
The news hour on PBS seems to think David Brooks has much value as a commentator. His counterpart gazes at Brooks with fawning eyes and a general look of subservience.
And that tells you everything you need to know about the PBS Snooze Hour.
· Yr Obd't Servant
As inter-connected, inter-dependent beings when we cause harm to one another the damage done to our own psyche can be deep and permanent.
Brooks himself is a victim and but lacks the depth or insight to recognize it.
To sit at one's keyboard and type words that'll be read by millions advocating senseless unimaginable violence of which you'll be safely protected solely for your own profit or power is the act of a madman.
Hasan exploded into violent murderous rage for reasons we don't know but being up close with those who shared nightmares of death and destruction probably played a role.
David Brooks has no similar excuse.
The problem with your argument is that it can recursively go back forever. Tribalism has not suddenly come into existence in the last fifty years. I understand your pique with DB, his head has been in the sand for years now but...
I recently saw newsreel footage of the Six-day War, taken in the early days in Cairo as the state media reported that Arab forces were overrunning Israel. Thousands were dancing in the streets, overjoyed that, at last, they were going to kill all the Jews.
It's not just the 'fringes', it never was.
Perhaps they were celebrating what they thought was the destruction of a threat to the region and the population of Palestine, as the Zionists had already revealed through Irgun and Stern Gang.
Perhaps the destruction of any nation with isreals tactics and agendas would be celebrated as well it should be, regardless of the religions involved( I would propose only a peaceful dissolution).
Historically the Jews have been treated alot more peacefully by the Muslims than by Christians.
An USns go inna "OUR" over-crowded WORLD, chanting "Gawd Bles' Merca" and start blitzkrieg and collateral Obombanations!
It is not surprising that friendly dogs trained to be vicious guards will frequently turn on each other violently. Anyone murmuring "How could this happen?" has little awareness of the negative socialization that military training foists on it's gullible victims or the fawning respect of all things military that is culturally attached, virus-like, onto Americans and their pundits.
Violence is sickening. The military is institutionalized violence. Somehow we need to sweat it out of our system. We could start by not being so shocked that a military shrink might turn on his own people in a psychotic fit of deadly rage. We should expect it.
Senseless, deadly rampage is militarism's Job # 1.
if one did not have ample other reasons,brooks is an additional one to stop subscribing to the nytimes.
funny you'd say that...he was, along with friedman and a couple of others, instrumnetal in weaning me off of my addiction to the nyt...I, too, had a period where I thought informed political engagement was of value, and thought the nyt a good source of info...not until I saw the criminal nature of the world's power structure did I realize how I was being played...this man, brooks, is a waste of thought...
Since Glenn Greenwald brought up the killings of Fort Hood, it would not be off-topic to question why those killings occurred. I think VDB's point is well taken. Reports have stated that the shooter was told that he was ordered to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. Hasan is a psychiatrist who counseled soldiers who had been through combat in those countries. It is quite conceivable, I believe, that he may have wanted those soldiers to ask themselves if they thought, either directly or indirectly, that what they had gone through was worth it and that whether they thought that they were fighting for a noble cause. Since he may have been attempting to get these soldiers to become introspective regarding their time in a war zone, this then may have caused him to wonder if the damage that he was seeing in those soldiers would also affect him in the same way after he had been placed in that same position especially if he thought that it all would have been for an unjust reason.
From an amateur point of view, one has to think that there are very few times that a person would commit an act for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever. It would seem logical that Hasan reacted in such a violent way because he could not effectively deal with the fact that he could very likely end up experiencing the very same things that his patients were going through and that, as it appeared to him, there was nothing at all that he could do that would prevent him from being shipped out to the Middle East.
It appears to me that this is another instance of how the wars have claimed more of its victims with conservatives like Brooks, as Greenwald points out, not caring at all about the fate of its victims. But then we have had the ironic sight of an [alleged] antiwar president saluting and "honoring" the dead as they return from Afghanistan and Iraq. A true antiwar president would be withdrawing soldiers from those countries as quickly as possible in order to prevent more tragedies like Fort Hood from occurring again and in order to make sure that no more body bags would be returning from overseas. Then the super patriots like Brooks, Obama, Beck, Limbaugh, et al become shocked when these victims of war manifest themselves to the people in this country as when a massacre happens at a place like Fort Hood, Texas. What happened at that military base was a time bomb waiting to explode. And it did, with most tragic results.
Maj. Nidal Hasan is a home grown, cowardly, murderous, terrorist and not any different from Timothy McVeigh.
No, Fort Hood was not terrorism. Terrorism is violence directed against innocent civilians. These soldiers were preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill and be killed. Hasan just moved the battlefield. The U.S. government thinks they should be able to bomb and occupy while their home bases are untouched. Hasan disproved this.
Now will our gov't react by ramping up the violence even further, or by reconsidering its causes? I'm betting on the former, aren't you?
Delete repeat posting
Wasn't Timothy McVeigh also a product of the U.S. military?
as was Oswald.
as was My Lai.
as was/is GITMO.
as ye sow, so shall ye reap.
When men are trained to kill there can be no surprise when they turn into killers.
The labelling of the Ft. Hood shooter as a terrist© merely postpones the inevitable realization Americans must come to:
Their country is still the world's #1 perpetrator of terror.
"ALL men are created equal" my arse.
Terrorism is the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
So what makes Maj. Hasan a "terrorist"? His last name? We have incidents like this in the U.S. all the time--someone snaps and starts shooting people pretty much at random. But it's only when the shooter has an Arab last name that we label him as a "terrorist." What Hasan did was horrible, and indicates that he has some serious mental health problems. But he's not a "terrorist."
President Obama's foreign policy, however, fits the definition of terrorism very well.
So what makes Timothy McVeigh a terrorist? His last name? .... But it's only when the shooter has an Irish last name that we label him as a "terrorist" and a member of the IRA.
Give me a break.
Was Timothy McVeigh a terrorist? Or just another mentally deranged person?
The court-appointed psychiatrist who examined McVeigh said that McVeigh was probably suffering from PTSD from his service in the Gulf War. He said that McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City because he wanted to avenge the Branch Davidians (80 people, including 20 children) who were attacked and killed by the federal government in Waco, Texas.
The psychiatrist said that McVeigh wanted to be known as a young man who struck a blow for freedom. He also said that to understand is not to condone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from
_our_own_correspondent/1325650.stm
A cowardly terrorist is insulated as is a drone operator or member of congress
May Mr. Brooks live 1,000 future lifetimes as a poor brown Muslim in a little known country brutalized and pillaged by a superpower.
In a civilized nation no one would bother to publish Brook's demonic drivel.
My guess:the Fort Hoodlum Massacre is direct blowback from the anti Goldstone Report resolution in the USA house of gangsters.
Denying responsibility for the wars one criticizes.
Glenn Greenwald is a Zionist and supporter of the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, that is, the continuation of the apartheid state of Israel that has existed for 60 years.
As Fritz Hollings said 'The US invaded Iraq to secure Israel, and everybody knows it'. Thus, Greenwald supports the existence of Israel as an apartheid state, and this is what guarantees endless wars in the region.
Then he indulges in endless criticism of the war that he and the other Zionists are responsible for. This is a new order of hypocrisy.
Anyone who glances at Not Allan's daily drivel about "Zionists" should be struck by the consistent miserable quality of his arguments.
Here, for example, he claims that the US invaded Iraq simply to secure Israel. His "proof" is simply the fact that Fritz Hollings said so. Fritz Hollings was a US Senator -- neither a particularly bad senator, nor a particularly great one.
Among other things, Hollings voted AGAINST the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall as Supreme Court Justice, and FOR Clarence Thomas. He also had to apologize to Sen Howard Metzenbaum after calling him "the senator from B'nai B'rith" on the floor of the Senate. He also told reporters in 1993, “Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find those potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva.”
Therefore, anyone (like Not Allan) who simply assumes that Hollings' remarks on any given issue are the last word on the subject -- is an idiot. There is no comparison between someone like Hollings and someone like Glenn Greenwald (who after all, does not face the pressures of functioning as a politican) as a "truth teller."
By Not Allan's definition, anyone who supports the 2-state solution in Israel/Palestine is a "Zionist." By a definition as stupid as this one, most Palestinians are "Zionists."
Please supply evidence of Mr. Greenwald being a Zionist and supporter of a two-state solution.
I spent some time on this question, first by googling Glenn Greenwald and two state and Glenn Greenwald one state ..... I could not find anything definite one way or the other.
That in itself is sufficient. He writes about Israel/Palestine all the time, and never criticizes apartheid Israel, and never condemns the two-state solution, and never advocates the one state solution. So, by not challenging the overwhelmingly dominant view, he is implicitly accepting and supporting it.
But there's more. He writes for salon.com and there is a comments section after each article. I've tried to call him out there and he hasn't responded, but his regular followers have made it emphatically clear that they all support 'Israel's right to defend itself', that is, to defend the current apartheid division of Palestine.
Take this article for example, does Greenwald say ONE WORD about the root causes of the problems in the ME, that is, the existence of a racist European Jewish state in the middle of a sea of Arabs? Not a single word. Search all his articles, he loves to criticize other Zionists for their excesses, but he never criticizes Zionism itself.
When GG has written about Israel he devotes most of his criticism towards other media for their narrow and one-sided reporting and then contrasts that against the few sources who provide a fuller picture.
GG reports facts and produces voluminous links to his sources.
He does not use his blog to spew invective.
I too spend time in his comments section.
He'll aggressively spar with those who challenge his conclusions.
Simply because he presents criticism of biased reporting is not proof that he's this or that, as long as his criticism is grounded in facts.
Not Allen,
I'm not sure it's a good idea to presume to intuit Mr. Greenwald's opinion, based on not being able to find his opinion using a google search. After all, I couldn't find anything on space aliens when I googled "Not Allen", but that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to conclude that you're a space alien.
I have no idea what Mr. Greenwald favors as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other than I am certain he would advocate that it be fair to both Palestinians and Israelis. A "two-state solution" is indeed the prevailing political wisdom of the day, in both the West and the Arab world. I wouldn't be surprised if Greenwald does indeed favor the idea of a separate Palestinian state. However, it isn't the label we use that makes a "solution" fair and reasonable, but rather the content and implementation of such an arrangement. The same can be said of a one-state "solution", or any other solution. Much depends on the details and implementation of the actual agreement.
I'd avoid cliched code-words such as "Zionist". Loose use of that label really doesn't tell us very much about what a person's actual behavior and beliefs may be, but may well imply antisemitism if carelessly applied. After all, is one a "colonist" if one lives in America? Maybe, maybe not. It kind of depends on one's philosophy, history, intentions, attitude towards the rights of native peoples, etc. After all, there are Jews living in Hebron whose families have lived there for several hundred years, or perhaps longer. Are they "Zionists"? Is George Bush Jr. a "Zionist"? How about his father? Is Obama? For that matter, do you consider the entire denomination of Southern Baptists to be "Zionists"? That's a looooooot of Zionists, pardner.
We need to avoid being trapped by labels, and get to the heart of what is needed for fairness and justice.
[I'd avoid cliched code-words such as "Zionist".]
The whole point is that Zionists are the only ones given any forum whatever in the US, the main media, the political arena, and even blogs like CD give non-Zionists absolutely ZERO space. That's not a cliche, that's is an incredibly stark reality.
There is not a single, NOT ONE, media or political figure who is not a Zionist. There is not one, NOT ONE, regular columnist featured on CD, or Salon, or Huffington, or Truthdig, or any of the other 'progresssive' blogs that does not support the continued apartheid division of Palestine into two factions. Michael Lerner, Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, these phony 'humanists' and 'progressives' don't advertise their support for apartheid Israel, they don't call themselves Zionists, instead they spend plenty of time criticizing the non-humanist Zionists. Both types of Zionists play their part in delineating and restricting the range of discussion in the US. That's why I call Zionists like Chomsky and Greenwald the vanguard of the Zionist state. They're the real advance operatives, completely co-opting the left and diverting any effective progressive action against apartheid Israel.
Anyone who thinks Israel is the cause of "all our problems in the ME" is willfully ignorant. The US is trying to dominate the world by controlling all the fossil fuels under Moslem lands. The US and UK established Israel to help in that cause. True, the Zionists have moved beyond their subservient role and now seem to strongly influence, sometimes dominate U.S. foreign policy. But they're just different offices in the same company, U.S. imperialism for short.
Also, I don't think GG supports a two-state solution. I think he considers those issues outside his realm of knowledge. He certainly attacks Israeli actions and their U.S. supporters on a regular basis.
Excellent post.
Oh come on now, give it up.
Joe
This is from one of Greenwald's followers on salon.com ....
Glenn Greenwald is a Zionist
He has said so himself, do a little more research. I would post permalinks to the letters, but I can't because they don't show up in letters anymore...
Actually that is exactly what Greenwald is condemning in Brooks...Zionism is tribalism.
BRAVO!!!!!
david is a sad little man. the pom pom waver at the neo con
department of the new york slimes. send his kids to death
and suddenly he wouldn't be on the band wagon anymore !
the times is a shadow of its former self and is a flag
waver for all that's evil in washington today. its all
about the money like anything else in the world today!
Thank you Glenn, for stating the obvious about David Brooks' rantings. The hypocrisy of christians is astounding.
David Brooks is Jewish.
Another case of a pundit being totally out of touch with reality.
Superpower and its pundits create their own reality.
I can't even read most of them any more. In years past many people read and thought about what pundits had to say, and there were many useful discussions based on their columns. These days only a few columnists are worth reading.
This is perhaps off-topic.
A thought just came to me:
Could Ft. Hood be explained by a new condition?
PRE-traumatic stress disorder.
Perhaps traumtic stress disorder transference.
Yes, people that work with troubled people
absorb some of the trouble.