War zone

Kabul Hit By Violence On Eve Of Elections [GETTY]

hmm A redhead photog at large in our global garrison system… and in some ways she is as lethal as he is.

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Glenn Greenwald has a post up on the ‘Joe Klein unraveling at the beach’… Madman posted a comment in a thread, from “No More Mister Nice …” blogger Aimai, who confronted JK…

Glenn:

Sunday Aug. 23, 2009 11:24 EDT

Bush critics: still evil, crazy extremists

(updated below – Update II)

Time‘s Joe Klein was at a beach party last weekend and was confronted about his recent, vague statement that “there are Democrats who are so solicitous of civil liberties that they would undermine legitimate covert intelligence collection.”  The person doing the confronting was Aimai of NoMoreMisterNiceBlog — who also happens to be the granddaughter of I.F. Stone (which ends up being relevant to the confrontation) — and she masterfully recounts the revealing and hilarious Klein outburst that ensued, during which, among other things, he accused me of being “evil,” a “crazy civil liberties absolutist”  and “crazily anti-national security.”

Much of this is just standard Klein.  He’s been “accusing” me for years of being what he calls a “civil liberties extremist” or “monomaniacal on the subject of civil liberties” — as though that’s some type of insult, when I view it as being exactly the opposite.  For reasons I recently explained — in response to to Michael Massing’s Chuck-Todd-echoing accusation in The New York Review of Books that I fail to take into account “practical considerations” when advocating various views — it’s impossible to believe in constitutional principles and the rule of law without being “extremist” and even “absolute” because that is the nature of those guarantees.

Funnily enough, all thru Klein’s diatribe at the woman confronting him, was his toss at her that she did not know what she was talking about… how dare she characterise either Izzy Stone OR Glenn Greenwald.  Only Klein knows who is who, who is a guilty-as-a-commie Leftischer.  (Or “lefticle”, as I read someone use over at SMBIVA yesterday, cute!  I like it!)

Then, turns out she is IF’s granddaughter.  So Mr Klein, may she speak?

A bit more from Glenn:

But the more significant aspect of Klein’s outburst is its relationship to the lesson revealed by Marc Ambinder’s similar outburst earlier this week, in which Ambinder insisted that those who were right about Bush extremism and criminality nonetheless deserved to be ignored and marginalized because they were such hate-driven extremists (Politico‘s Mike Allen, on right-wing radio, similarly called such people “left-wing haters”).  Paul Krugman aptly summarized the meaning of the Ambinder episode:

It was clear from any serious analysis of that record that the Bush people consistently relied on lies and misinformation to sell their policies, consistently abused power for political gain. . . . [I]t’s really sad that those who missed the obvious, who failed to see what was right in front of their noses, still consider themselves superior to those who got it right.

Just think about this:  Joe Klein is someone who went on Meet the Press in February, 2003 and urged that the U.S. invade Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings.  Once the war went bad, he lied and claimed he never supported it.  In February, 2002, he bitterly mocked Europeans for complaining about torture at Guantanamo; insisted the U.S. would never do any such thing; and said Gitmo detainees should “be dressed in pink tutus, to give them an appreciation of the freedoms accorded western ballerinas.”  snip

Yes, we all can be so proud of Non-Lefticle and certainly Not-a-Leftischer Joe Klein.  Relax Joe… You’re Not A Lefty, it’s official.  Same advisory to Ambinder… Relax kid:   You’re not a Lefticle Lefty, either.  Chuck Todd, same deal.  Relax kids!  Unclench the sphincters!

We, the evil, crazy extremists on the Lefticle Leftischer Left, are relieved.  Bed checks later to be sure the journo-boychicks are sleeping on the right side of the bed.

Can’t be too safe.  Only reactionary, authoritarian righties are safe to cover the commodity known as the “news”.