Schadenfreude in the Telecom Immunity Victory

Well, the partisan battle over telecom immunity is near an end, according to this New York Times piece, "Deal Close on Wiretap Law, a Top Democrat Tells CNN."

I haven't payed all that much attention to it, only to the extent that I've seen whacked-out hard-left blogger Glenn Greenwall getting worked up into an outrageous lather over the whole deal. To read Greenwald is to get the feeling that I should be expecting the "knock in the night" when I hit the hay every evening. This Bush administration is awful, I think...man, those Soviet Refuseniks never had it so rough!

In any case, Michael Goldfarb puts this all in perspective, especially this rowdy Greenwald smackdown in need of wide distribution:

The government shows up at your office just days after the 9/11 attack and asks for your help in the war on terror. What are you going to do? According to Glenn Greenwald, you should call a lawyer (isn't that always what the lawyers say). But telecom executives did the only thing they could do--assist the government in whatever way possible. I doubt any of them even had a moment of doubt in complying with the government's request--worst case, the NSA captures a call from some innocent, naturalized American talking to his al Qaeda-affiliated cousin in Paktia, not exactly an ethical minefield.

But the industry now faces as much as $7.243 trillion in liability, as practically every telephone customer in North America is to be considered a victim of this dastardly operation. After months of demagoguing the issue, the Dems in Congress are finally going to cave and grant the firms immunity from lawsuits that are not only frivolous, but a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, who's devoted the last three months of his life to this issue, is despondent:

There's very little point anymore in writing about how the Congressional Democratic leadership is complicit in all of the worst Bush abuses, or about how craven they are. All of that is far too documented and established at this point to be worth spending any time discussing. They were never going to take a stand against warrantless eavesdropping or the destruction of the rule of law via telecom amnesty for one simple reason: many of them don't actually oppose those things, and many who claim to oppose them don't actually care about any of it. That's all a given.

But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.

And to think of all the other things Glenn Greenwald could have not achieved over the last few months were his energy and resources devoted to other hopeless crusades!

I've administered a Greenwald smackdown a bit here and there myself, but this Goldfarb piece is pure schadenfreude.