The Dishonesty Of Glenn Reynolds?

So, while wanting to ignore him, I see this headline at Memeorandum courtesy of perennial ass-hat, Greenwald:

The anti-war majority, Glenn Reynolds, and the dishonest tactics of the pro-war right

(And just incidentally, but also quite revealingly, Reynolds’ "credibility" – to the extent such a thing still exists – suffered some rather piercing and well-deserved blows again this weekend; if the mild-mannered Josh Marshall accuses someone of "being willfully dishonest and quite consciously lying" — as Marshall quite justifiably accused Instapundit this weekend – that’s a pretty good sign that the person is lacking in the integrity department, to put it generously).

And the first thing I do is click through to Josh Marshall, who appears to be supporting this nonsense:

I try to ignore these things. But yesterday Glenn Reynolds falsely claimed I said something I simply never did. And since what he claimed I did was call for the mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians at the outset of the Iraq War, it was more than the average lapse.

Well, that's BS, you simply have to read Instapundit's link: (emphasis original)

Not that Josh wants people to die, he just thinks it has a valuable pedagogical function. I think, though, that the past twelve years of sanctions and Saddamo-tyranny has been bad enough to produce the contrast that he's writing about.

And, frankly, Reynolds was being generous if one goes by the quote. Marshall was invoking Nagasaki and Hiroshima as examples of how to win a war ... and the hearts and minds which are left. But, as Reynolds duly noted, he was criticizing Bush's plan, not necessarily advocating mass death.

Not only did millions of Japanese and Germans die in World War II, but U.S. and British aerial bombing of major Japanese and German cities alone killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in what is now delicately termed “collateral damage.” And that’s not even counting the carnage caused by the atomic bombs we. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days of the war against Japan. . . .

Violence, death and destruction on such a massive scale have a profound conditioning effect on the psyches of individuals. And the same applies to whole nations. Japan and Germany weren’t just ‘defeated’ or ‘occupied,’ they were crushed — not just their armies, but their civilian populations too. This led to a sort of national humiliation and a transformative willingness to embrace defeat and change.

True defeat changes people and nations too. The fact that our subsequent occupation turned out to be so benign was extremely important. But part of that importance was the contrast between how much these populations had suffered during the war and how much better things got for them after we took over.

And thus our problem. If everything goes according to plan, the loss of civilian life in Iraq will be minimal.

Okay, so now back to our regularly scheduled Brazil nut. One needn't explore his multitude of links to discover he is lying. His argument is that everyone wants us out of Iraq, that the war was a sham ... yadda yadda yadda.

Polling data such as this conclusively demonstrates — in a way that even the national media can no longer ignore — just how dishonest and corrupt has been the favorite tactic of pro-war Bush followers:  namely, to depict their pro-war views as "mainstream," while even more loudly characterizing truly mainstream anti-war views as being fringe, radical and anti-American.

To prop up his usual blather, he links to E&P:

Gallup: Current Negativism on Iraq Echoes View of Vietnam War in 1970

Knowing enough about E&P, I decided to go to the source - Gallup, which E&P doesn't bother to link. I wonder why? Here is the lead graph.

PRINCETON, NJ -- The majority of Americans continue to believe that the Bush administration's decision to involve the U.S. in Iraq over three years ago was a mistake. At the same time, there is no clear-cut direction from the people about what to do now. Only one out of five Americans would like to see an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The vast majority favor an eventual withdrawal of troops, but disagree as to the timetable, with some favoring removal within 12 months' time, and others only when it is possible to turn the country over to the Iraqis. There continue to be strong partisan differences in views on the Iraq war.

Oh, here's a tasty bit the above left out:

Americans were most negative in September of last year, when 59% said the war was a mistake.

If I wanted to seize upon that, I could argue momentum is on the side of those who support the war. And don't think recent events in Israel aren't going to start pulling up support for Iraq, not to mention a shooting in Seattle in the news.

This below destroys Greenwald's position, which, as usual, is more reminiscent of a corpulent, wine-ripened tavern wench bent over a table, than a constitutional scholar.

Despite the majority opinion that the United States' initial decision to send troops to Iraq was a mistake, there is no consensus about what to do now. Most Americans favor a reduction of U.S. troops, but there is no clear-cut direction from the public about a specific timetable for troop withdrawal....

Given that 44% of Democrats favor a one-year timetable for withdrawal of troops, it can be said that three-quarters of Democrats do favor withdrawal of troops within the next year. The majority of Republicans, on the other hand, favor the option that closely mirrors the administration's position -- withdrawal only when the country is ready to be turned over to the Iraqis.

You can argue the Vietnam War lasted anywhere from 4 decades, or from 10 to 20 or so years; however, 1963 to 1973 were the most critical given the Westmoreland Expansion. We lost over 58,000 men and were no better off than when the war began. Despite on going problems, that simply is not the case in Iraq. The fact is, only 23% of Americans opposed the invasion of Iraq at the time. Guess what? Going to war is not a decision you get to second guess, unless your name is Kerry, or you are a liberal Democrat.

So get over it. We are in Iraq and we will be there until the Iraqi's take over their own security, which they are well on their way toward accomplishing, despite the headline news. Such a prospect was never even contemplated in Vietnam.

There is only one thing that can make Iraq, ultimately,a mistake. And that is if repetitive to the point of being pathological liars like Glenn Greenwald have their way. They won't.

Support for the war has ebbed and flowed since the start and it will do so until the end. But it will end as regards our larger troop involvement when George Bush says it will - not Brazil Nut Glenn Greenwald. Thank God.

Comments

[Mark Freeman]

Josh Marshall's intentions were crystal clear, but his writing was clumsly. It is inforgivable, however, (but not at all surprising) that Glenn Reynolds chose to close the quote where he did:

"And thus our problem. If everything goes according to plan, the loss of civilian life in Iraq will be minimal."

The very next line, of course, being: "Certainly, we all hope so."

Reynolds' elisive dishonesty is no surprise, but what's the point? Why turn a quote into a lie and then post a link to the original article as evidence? Glenn: If you're going to lie, lie boldly.

[jpe]

If I read the poll right, currently 56% think the war was a mistake, with a +-3 MoE. So you could argue that momentum has changed and that 3% more think it wasn't a mistake, but it might not be the smartest thing to do.

Re: Reynolds: he either has a very dry sense of humor, or he's dishonest.

[Grover Gardner]

Seems pretty clear to me. Josh was pointing out why our our hopes for Iraq can't be based on comparisons with the rebuilding of Germany and Japan after the WWII. He closes his article by saying, in reference to rendering Iraq as compliant and submissive as Germany and Japan were after the war, "Doing that in a foreign country may require a mauling of the civilian population that we are rightly unwilling to undertake." He's saying we can't and won't reduce Iraq to rubble as we were compelled to do with Germany and Japan, so any comparisons are useless and misguided.

If you and Reynolds are determined to misread the article, so be it. But it's pretty disingenuous, IMHO.

[Gotta Know]

I paid a little visit to chez Greenwald. Two comments: First, his comments for the past few days are all gone. The mechanism for posting comments has changed, so that may be the ostensible reason, but if it were my site, I would have preserved them somehow.

Second, I noticed a change in his tone. It's too early to tell, maybe he was having a bad day, but he let slip a comment about Jonah Goldberg that I thought put Greenwald at a new low-water mark: "It's why we hear someone like Jonah Goldberg -- who still has to move his nepotistic umbilical cord so that it doesn't get in the way when he types --..."

It was unusually nasty, and typical of his sweeping criticisms that are totally devoid of connection to reality or fact.

Same old same old.

[Dan Riehl]

GG-2
If you and Reynolds are determined to misread the article

No one is misreading the article, we agree on the intent. Now try addressing why you misread Reynolds and me.

[Grover Gardner]

Reynolds wrote:

"JOSH MARSHALL IS WORRIED that we won't kill enough Iraqis to ensure a stable postwar environment."

Josh wrote:

"In addition to our humanitarian interest in shedding as little blood as possible, a low death toll is key to convincing Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world that we are liberators, not conquerors or destroyers."

You wrote:

"Marshall was invoking Nagasaki and Hiroshima as examples of how to win a war."

Josh wrote:

"My point here isn’t to question the justice of America’s war against the Axis powers or how we chose to wage it."

You wrote:

"But, as Reynolds duly noted, he was criticizing Bush's plan, not necessarily advocating mass death."

This is incorrect, if you read the article carefully. Despite his opening sentence, Josh soon makes it clear that he is addressing those who would try to draw comparisons between WWII and Iraq:

"The debate over whether this is feasible has focused mainly on America’s successful efforts to rebuild Japan and Germany after World War II."

And:

"When pundits debate whether the same is possible in Iraq, they almost always focus on two key questions: What came before the war and what comes after."

He argues that the comparison is invalid because we will never do to Iraq what we were forced to do the Germany and Japan, and this casts doubt on the Bush administration's optimism for the kind of success we had in those countries after WWII.

So I would say that both you and Reynolds either missed his point or deliberately misinterpreted the main point of the article.

[Grover Gardner]

So, yes, you could say that Josh's "point" is that we won't "kill enough Iraqis" to succeed in Iraq the way we succeeded in Germany and Japan after WWII. But it's dishonest to say 1) that Josh is "worried" that we won't "kill enough Iraqis" and 2) that he "invokes" WWII as a way to "win" in Iraq. If I'd written the article and you'd summarized my words that way, I'd be pretty irritated.

[Bob]

You guys should be applauding Josh for his prescience! He clearly noted that since our military wasn't going to and shouldn't kill huge numbers of Iraqi civilians indiscriminately that a good plan was needed for after the initial overthrow of Saddam, one that Rumsfeld et al clearly did not provide.

You and Reynolds are purposefully misreading his column as if he said the opposite. Perhaps you would have taken the facts he cited about WWII and reached the opposite conclusion, but that's quite obviously a different issue. You are also selectively quoting him.

The end of Josh's column says it all:

"But that’s the catch. Occupying armies will always keep things under control in the short-term. But the sort of transformation we engineered in the former Axis powers required a far greater pliancy, one which allowed us not only to disarm these countries but rewrite their textbooks, reorient their politics, and do much more.

Doing that in a foreign country may require a mauling of the civilian population that we are rightly unwilling to undertake."