Letters to the Editor
GlennGreenwald
Published Letters: 2221 Editor's Choice: 18
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Lisa S.
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're neglecting important points of these poll numbers. While 11% of Iranians say that attacks on civilians are justified often/sometimes, that number jumps to 53% in the very next question of that same poll when asked about attacks by Palestinians against Israeli citizens and declines to 5% for the converse (Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians).
That's a fair enough point (though all it really does is establish that support for violent attacks on civilians among Americans and Muslim countries is roughly the same), but I don't think the comparison you're making is valid.
The questions I compared were roughly identical. But you're trying to compare a conflict-specific question asked of Muslims to a generalized violence question asked of Americans.
Without trying to provoke a debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (indeed, with an affirmative desire to avoid such a debate), and without offering any position one way or the other on that conflict (since such a position is irrelevant to the question at hand), allow me to suggest that if you wanted to know how Americans felt about a comparable situation, you'd have to ask, in essnece, something along these lines:
If Russia attacked, invaded and then proceeded to militarily occupy Sweeden tomorrow, would the Swedes be justified in staging attacks against Russian civilians? How about if the occupation of Sweeden lasted 38 years?
I realize all the objections to that comparison -- some of which are definitely valid -- so perhaps you could ask whether Israeli attacks on Palestinian or Lebanese civilians can be justified, and my guess is you'd find a substantial number of Americans who said they were.
All of that, though, is speculation, since those questions don't seem to have been asked. The comparable questions that were asked were the ones I included.
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Shooter asked:
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who does the bombing, shooting, rioting, burning of cars, threatening of lives, stoning of women, advocating genocide of a nation? Methodists? Episcopalians? Jehovah's Witnesses?
This is what I find so very striking and interesting, and was really one of the principal points of the post -- the very same people who advocate American bombings and invasions and shootings in other countries then turn around and make statements premised on the notion that only Muslims, but not Americans, do such things.
Shooter supports all of the wars and military campaigns and yet asks "Who does the bombing, shooting?" as though he doesn't. That is exactly what I found so amazing about the discussion of the Pew poll this week -- the most basic facts were literally absented.
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Rufus X -
[Read the article: Attacks on civilians, torture and lawless detentions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The hardest challenge on the planet is satirizing Bush followers. They go to such extremes that no matter how far the satirist goes, they always manage to match and exceed it. That often generates substantial confusion over whether the satire is real. In your case, I thought it was satire, but I can see how others would mistake it for real. Bush followers have few limits these days.
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TomOfCDA
[Read the article: Major troop reductions imminent -- again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, none of the other times mentioned in Greenwald's excellent article had a competitive general election attached. Perhaps I'm just bitter after the week that has been, but really, if the Repugs take away the Dems signature issue -- troop withdrawal -- it's hard for me to see how this unprincipled collection of Dumbocratic cowards stands a chance in 2008.<.blockquote>
It was conventional wisdom before both the 2004 and 2006 elections that Bush would start to withdrawal troops in order to claim victory and eliminate dissatisfaction with the war from the election. That just isn't how Bush works.