"Survivor Baghdad": reality TV for the foreign policy elite

Glenn Greenwald has been doing important work raising consciousness of the imperialistic dogma of the Washington-based “Foreign Policy Community.” It is a bipartisan community that enforces the dogma in its strongest form: that America must continue to be the world’s policeman, and that America has the right to start war with any country even in the absence of the accepted justifications. Yet these people who favored and promoted the Iraq War, and in many cases now are pushing us into some kind of warfare against Iran, continue to enjoy privileged status in so-called “liberal” think-tanks like Brookings, in the mainstream press, and even in the Democratic Party.

Greenwald reveals this astounding quotation from one Michael Cohen, a defender of the pro-war crowd against the growing chorus of critics:

Surely, a defensible case for war does not mean that we should have necessarily gone to war. It's a view that I share. There is a good argument to be made for going to war against Iran and North Korea -- that doesn't mean we should do it.

“There is a good argument to made for going to war against Iran and North Korea.” Obviously, in the view of these supposedly “serious” members of the Foreign Policy Community, we have the right, because we are America, to contemplate and even threaten killing hundreds of thousands of people when there is no meaningful threat from them. They really do not care about how many hundreds of thousands of people die if there is “a good argument to be made.”

And we are supposed to continue listening to these people, even though Americans by large majorities reject the idea of the U.S. playing “policeman” role? At the very least, a picture of every last one of them, the thousand or so chief-enablers who actively helped to sell Americans on the need to invade Iraq for reasons that shifted as each of the then-current public justifications was discredited, should be put in some square in Baghdad, identified for their role in promoting the destruction of the country, whereupon they can be beaten into shreds with the shoes of Iraqis. Better yet, how about “Survivor: Baghdad,” some reality TV to see how many can find their way out?

At long last, do these people have no sense of decency? It is long past time for the “Foreign Policy Community” to acknowledge and apologize for the mess they have created, and then shut up forever. And we should be taking every chance we can to remind the enablers of the enablers, the major press organs, that they are continuing to perpetrate frauds when they give these people the platform.

You really should read the Greenwald piece.