This was one of the most disgusting displays from a night of disgusting displays in the American Media, as the U.S. launched tomahawk missiles from Navy destroyers at a Syrian airfield:
Brian Williams waxing lyrical about the beauty of weapons—what in the world is this? pic.twitter.com/3hoxCgCfP1
— Taniel (@Taniel) April 7, 2017
“We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean,” he said. “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen, ‘I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons,’ and they are beautiful pictures of…of fearsome armaments making what is, for them, a brief flight over this airfield.”
This is actual insanity, and the disturbing thing is that it wasn’t even necessary—this was part of a simple question that boiled down to, “uhhh, what did they hit?”
You won’t find a better example of the American media’s gross fealty to the concept of war, and their eagerness not just to get in line behind anyone with the power to drop weapons, but to actually wax poetic about the beauty of the destruction. These are the figureheads of a country that hasn’t learned the important lessons of Iraq, Libya, or, hell, even Vietnam, and that never will.
Oddly enough, Brian Williams has lied about a supposedly dangerous helicopter journey he took in Iraq, leading to a six-month suspension without pay. He may be an extreme example of the war fetish that runs rampant through mainstream media, but he’s the poster-boy nonetheless.
The saddest thing here is Brian Williams is probably not lying this time. He likely thinks missile strikes are beautiful. https://t.co/11XnE4EbjO
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) April 7, 2017
And, of course, it should go without saying that his reading of Leonard Cohen’s line completely missed the point. Via WaPo:
Cohen, who died in November, had described the track as a “terrorist song,” saying he admires extremism in certain forms. As he said of the song in 1988, the year of its release:
“There’s something about terrorism that I’ve always admired. The fact that there are no alibis or no compromises. That position is always very attractive. I don’t like it when it’s manifested on the physical plane — I don’t really enjoy the terrorist activities — but Psychic Terrorism. I remember there was a great poem by Irving Layton that I once read, I’ll give you a paraphrase of it. It was ‘well, you guys blow up an occasional airline and kill a few children here and there’, he says. ‘But our terrorists, Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein. The whole world is still quaking.”