Glenn Greenwald Retweets “If Obama Were Consistent He’d Bomb Israel,” Then Deletes It
If you’ve followed Glenn Greenwald’s work at all (and you aren’t one of the acolytes who rush to excuse anything he says or does), you’re probably aware that his criticism of the United States is relentless, at times bordering on pathological, and today at the Intercept he’s published another one of his trademark “everything the US does is wrong” pieces: U.S. “Humanitarian” Bombing of Iraq: A Redundant Presidential Ritual - the Intercept.
The purpose of his screed is to attack the Obama administration’s limited airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. These airstrikes are intended to degrade ISIS’s ability to attack American advisers, and also give cover for humanitarian airdrops for the Yazidi people, who are under quite explicit threat of genocide from the Islamist militants.
Greenwald, however, alleges that the Obama administration has hidden motivations for this military action, and that it simply cannot be for humanitarian purposes because the US “does not oppose tyranny and violent oppression in the Middle East.”
So what would Greenwald suggest instead of airstrikes against ISIS and humanitarian support for the Yazidi people? Well… nothing. He makes absolutely no constructive suggestions to deal with this serious problem. As far as I can tell, his solution to the threat of genocide against the Yazidi is to simply let it happen, because the US is unreservedly evil and driven by unspecified conspiratorial motives.
But as unhinged and unhelpful as Greenwald’s criticism of the United States may be, there’s one other nation on Earth that arouses even more ire in him: Israel.
And he inadvertently provided an excellent example of this raging antipathy today, when, right after denouncing America’s limited bombing plans, he retweeted this twisted comment (hat tip to Tommy Christopher for pointing it out):
Oh man, if Obama were consistent, he’d bomb Israel to protect Gazans like he will bomb ISIS to protect Kurds & Yazidis.
— ¯\(?)/¯ (@subverzo) August 8, 2014
A screenshot, in case it goes missing:
That’s right; the guy who says bombing and military action cannot possibly solve anything and should always be condemned, retweeted a comment that Obama should bomb… Israel. A jaw-dropper, indeed.
And interestingly, Greenwald then immediately used the “Undo Retweet” function to delete his retweet, within minutes. Did he realize he was uncovering something ugly about himself by echoing this comment, and delete it to hide it? We can only speculate, but the fact is he did try to hide it.
Tommy Christopher was the one who actually noticed that Greenwald’s retweet had disappeared, but by digging into the replies for that comment about bombing Israel I discovered proof that Greenwald had indeed retweeted it.
First, people replied to Greenwald’s retweet, which caused his handle to be included in the reply along with the original tweeter’s handle. For example:
@subverzo @ggreenwald If Obama bombed Israel, what do you think would happen?
— Joe_in_Indiana (@Joe_in_Indiana) August 8, 2014
And shortly after that, someone else tried to retweet Greenwald’s RT of the original, and got an error — because it had been deleted at that point.
@subverzo @ggreenwald cannot RT this,tried another tweet,no probs…?????
— Chris (@Globert42) August 8, 2014
It’s a very revealing moment in Greenwald’s non-stop crusades against the United States and Israel. His bias utterly blinded him to the implications of what he was doing — and when he did realize those implications, he tried to conceal that he’d echoed this awful comment.
Greenwald is definitely aware of this discussion. He favorited this tweet by Tommy Christopher 3 hours ago: