In a March 1 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein asks, “Is Chris Matthews rooting for civil war in Iraq? It’s hard to interpret his words otherwise.” He adds that Matthews was “hoping for the worst.”
But Finkelstein ignores that folks such as Fox News (which asked “All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?”) and conservative-leaning Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes (in a Feb 28 commentary at NewsBusters sister site CNSNews.com) are also apparently rooting for an Iraq civil war. Pipes claims that an Iraq civil war “would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one,” noting that it would “[r]educe coalition casualties in Iraq” and “[r]educe Western casualties outside Iraq.”
Where’s Finkelstein’s outrage about that?