American Militarism: Greenwald vs Obama and Co.

Gosh, this is becoming a Glenn Greenwald fansite! Actually, I'm not a total fan - he gets it terribly wrong about 10% of the time. But when he gets it right, boy it's crystal clear. Here's the latest:

What might cause another 9/11?

"One of the many reasons I oppose Obama’s ongoing aggression is precisely that I believe the policies Sullivan and Packer cheer will cause another 9/11 (the other reasons include the lawlessness of it, the imperial mindset driving it, the large-scale civilian deaths it causes, the extreme and unaccountable secrecy with which it’s done, the erosion of civil liberties that inevitably accompanies it, the patently criminal applications of these weapons, the precedent it sets, etc.). I realize that screaming "9/11" has been the trite tactic of choice for those seeking to justify the U.S. Government’s militarism over the last decade, but invoking that event strongly militates against the policies it’s invoked to justify, precisely because those policies are the principal cause of such attacks, for obvious reasons."

America can be great in so many ways, but it has been extremely blind militarily. It destroyed so many countries in the Cold War because of the misguided fear of the domino effect regarding communism. And it missed so many opportunities to create unity and goodwill because of it's fear of so-called "appeasement".

I can understand people making big stupid mistakes, but when the stakes are so high (risk of terrorism in America plus causing so much harm to other countries), you would think they would bring all their resources to bear in getting it right.