Yes, an argument remains. And Greenwald makes it best, as often. Just as Cockburn sinks to the occasion. I remember that New York Observer piece by Ron Rosenbaum depicting the two of us as pith-helmeted Englishmen riding forth into battle against al Qaeda and subsequently, Saddam. Here's what I wrote in the Sunday Times of London today:
His finest moment in this was his instant understanding of what the fatwa against Salman Rushdie meant. It was an act of war against the free mind. He saw the gathering cloud before it hit America's shores. He loved Jefferson for a reason. And he saw the totalitarian evil in Tehran and Baghdad more clear-sightedly than most. He wouldn't want me to hold back on one criticism, but I found his refusal to disown that war, and to re-think its premises, a rare act of pride over reason.
Yes, he acknowledged the torture and the chaos and the failure. But his hatred of religion and tyranny overwhelmed his pragmatism. There were times when he relished violence against the violent and evil – and even believed in its virtue. I cannot. My faith prevents me. But I understood his secular good faith and realized how big and sudden a leap he had made from "left" to "right" and the difficulty of admitting, in retrospect, that the left had been right, in this seminal case, if for almost all the wrong reasons.
As Nietzsche put it, "In a friend one should have one's best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him."
The Dish 