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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/21/18

Consensus Emerges: Russia Committed an "Act of War" Like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Should the U.S. Response Be Similar?

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IN THE WAKE of last week's indictments alleging that 13 Russian nationals and entities created fake social media accounts and sponsored political events to sow political discord in the U.S., something of a consensus has arisen in the political and media class (with some notable exceptions) that these actions not only constitute an "act of war" against the U.S., but one so grave that it is tantamount to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Indeed, that Russia's alleged "meddling" is comparable to the two most devastating attacks in U.S. history has, overnight, become a virtual cliche'.

The claim that Russian meddling in the election is "an act of war" comparable to these events isn't brand new. Senators from both parties, such as Republican John McCain and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, have long described Russian meddling in 2016 as an "act of war." Hillary Clinton, while promoting her book last October, described Russia's alleged hacking of the DNC and John Podesta's email inbox as a "cyber 9/11." And last February, the always war-hungry Tom Friedman of the New York Times said on "Morning Joe" that Russian hacking "was a 9/11-scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy. That was a Pearl Harbor-scale event."

But the last few days have ushered in an explosion of this rhetoric from politicians and journalists alike. On Friday night's Chris Hayes show on MSNBC, two separate guests -- Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler and longtime Clinton aide Philippe Reines -- posited Pearl Harbor as the "equivalent" of Russian meddling, provoking a shocked reaction from Hayes:

The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty, complaining about President Donald Trump's inaction, asked readers to "imagine how history would have judged Franklin D. Roosevelt in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, if he had taken to the radio airwaves to declare that Tokyo was 'laughing their asses off.' Or if George W. Bush had stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn and launched a name-calling tirade against the Democrats."

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[Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald] Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, "No Place to Hide," is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of expose's in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.

Foreign Policy magazine named Greenwald one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He was the debut winner, along with "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work breaking the story of the abusive (more...)
 

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