Not that there's much chance of that. Greenwald's proven to be one of the more fearless pundits, and he has an independence that allows him to say controversial things.
In case you hadn't heard, GG's run into some trouble here (elsewhere, too, I assume) for suggesting that if the U.S. assumes the right to assassinate anyone it so chooses, then our enemies could choose to do the same to President Obama.
Some people here have responded with Have-You-No-Shame horror, and others, while acknowledging that he has a point, argue that he should have chosen his words more carefully.
But I think he chose his words with utmost care. They were designed to expose in stark terms the shaky moral and legal footing of the U.S's claim that it can basically do whatever the hell it wants in the name of FIGHTINGEVIL.
And he should be able to do so without progressives claiming hysterically and dishonestly that he's "comparing" Obama to OBL. Even mass murderers have rights, and even the United States is bound by international law, or should be.
The fact is, U.S. foreign policy, with all its killing and maiming and border-crossing, raises difficult questions, and I applaud GG for addressing them. Imo, he's become our leading critic of American exceptionalism.
The U.S. asserts that we are in a global war against terrorism, but as a legal and moral matter, insists that it be fought on its terms and in the locations of its choice. The U.S. has the power to mostly control the shape and substance of this war, but I remember hearing somewhere that might doesn't make right.
President Bush killed tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. President Obama has killed thousands, including many innocents. That's just a fact. And many of those killings -- drone attacks, summary executions, the killings in the Libyan misson formerly known as humanitarian -- have arguably run afoul of international law. We should be able to talk about this without enduring flag-waving demagogy from fellow progressives.
The United States violates the sovereignty of any nation it so chooses in the name of fighting terrorism. Let's say another country like Pakistan decided to wage a Great War on Drone Attacks. Citing the thousands killed or otherwise victimized by U.S drone attacks, Pakistan claimed the authority to violate U.S sovereignty and bomb in Nevada where the drones are controlled. Would it have the authority to do so -- if not, why not?
Or let's say victims of American drone attacks responded not in kind but in a way they were capable of. Let's say that a group of parents who've lost children in U.S. bombings in Yemen launched an attack on a military base in North Carolina. Would they have the authority to do so -- if not, why not?
These kinds of questions are important questions. Let's not shy away from them or hide behind the flag.
UPDATE: Some people find it odd and off-putting that I'm fretting over the death of OBL. While it's certainly true that I oppose killing whenever and wherever it can be avoided -- I'm a strangely Christian atheist that way -- this debate really isn't about OBL; it's about whether the United States is bound by law (both its own laws and international law) as well as the legal and moral ramifications when the U.S. exempts itself from the law. As Naomi Klein says, the system of international law and universal human rights "flawed as it is, remains our best protection against barbarism."
I want to point out that I haven't given a firm opinion on the legality of the killing of OSM in part because it's not clear what happened, and in part because the law is murky. It's clear, though, that a flat-out kill mission, as opposed to a capture or kill mission, would trigger different legal concerns. The former amounts to assassination. (The latter could amount to assassination.) Aside from that narrow question, there is the broader ongoing issue of the U.S. violating Pakistan's sovereignty.
Greenwald did what Chomsky's been doing for years, questioned the legality of American actions and challenged our assumptions by asking us to pretend that "they" did to us what "we" did to them. In fact, here's the old lion himself responding to OBL's killing.
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.
I realize many of you have an aversion to Chomsky, just as you have an aversion to questioning the government's actions during such a heady time for the home team, but you could do worse things today than perform Chomsky's thought experiment.
UPDATE II: To me, the least bad argument against GG's words is that it's wrong to raise the issue of assassinating the President given that he's received so many death threats. But GG was, of course, opposing assassination, not advocating it. And if I may infer, his argument points to the fact that by violating international laws prohibiting certain abuses, the U.S. makes Americans, including American presidents, more vulnerable to those abuses. It's in our own self-interest not to legitimize abuses, like assassinations, on the world stage.
Updated by david mizner at Mon May 09, 2011 at 10:18 AM PDT
One more quick point: I've seen several people say it matters that President Obama is elected, but the U.S. status as a democracy is irrelevant where international law and the rules of war are concerned. All countries are bound by them.