Greenwald: US, Israel, Saudi Arabia 'Bring Enormous Amounts of Violence to the World'

Glenn Greenwald appeared on “CNN Tonight” Tuesday night to discuss his own recent Intercept article on terrorism with host Don Lemon.

“In your article, you write this:         

‘It is always stunning when a country that has brought violence and military force to numerous countries acts shocked and bewildered when someone brings a tiny fraction of that violence back to that country.’

“So Glenn, for many people, it is still shocking that violence comes to North America, to the U.S. and to Canada,” Lemon prodded.

“Well, I think the reason why it’s shocking is twofold,” Greenwald said. “One is, we seem to think that it’s perfectly normal and OK for the Middle East and for parts of Asia to have a never-ending stream of our [American] bombs dropped on them, but somehow North America is sacred soil, and that’s the one place bombs shouldn’t be dropped, and wars just don’t work that way, you don’t get to go around dropping bombs on people all over the world and then think that your precious soil won’t ever be the target of violence.”

“And the other thing is, we pay a huge amount of attention whenever there’s a single person killed or two people killed in one of these attacks; our government has killed thousands upon thousands of children and women and innocent men and we never focus on them, we don’t know any their names the way we do our own victims, we don’t hear from their grieving relatives, so it’s very easy to fool ourselves into thinking that our government isn’t bringing violence to other parts of the world. But it is, and I think it’s important to realize that.”

“How do you justify acts of violence?” Lemon asked Greenwald.

“Well, I’m not addressing the question of justification whatsoever,” Greenwald said. “I’m addressing the question of causation. I think if you want to be a rational citizen, and decide whether or not you want to support your government bringing violence to other parts of the world, one of the things you have to accept as a consequence is that violence will be brought back to you, that’s a reason not to do it.”

“You asked me, ‘How can you justify violence,’” Greenwald continued. “It is the United States that is doing more violence in the world than any other country. We’re bombing more countries, we’re invading and occupying them, we’re supporting countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia that bring enormous amounts of violence to the world, so I think if we’re going to ask, ‘How can you justify violence,’ we ought to begin with our own government and ask that question.”

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