Jonathan Chait writes:

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has taken the brave and lonely stance that William Barr was wise and correct in his presentation of the Mueller report and decision not to charge the president with obstruction. (“It was Mueller, not Barr, who concluded there was no underlying crime,” concluded Taibbi, “so if the next stage of this madness is haggling over an obstruction charge, that would likely entail calling for a prosecution of Trump for obstructing an investigation into what even Mueller deemed non-crime.”) Now Taibbi has taken an even braver and lonelier stance: He is against war in Venezuela.

Taibbi’s latest story, headlined, “The Liberal Embrace of War,” argues that the corporate news media is “in lockstep here. Every article is seen from one angle: Venezuelans under the heel of a dictator who caused the crisis, with the only hope a ‘humanitarian’ intervention by the United States.” Taibbi runs through the history of American-backed coups and invasions, and concludes that Venezulea is yet another example in the pattern, except that liberals are totally complicit: “The cause of empire has been cleverly re-packaged as part of #Resistance to Trump, when in fact it’s just the same old arrogance, destined to lead to the same catastrophes.”

Taibbi on How Liberals Came to Embrace War as the Only Option – Rolling Stone https://t.co/Tg0UreOxuk

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 16, 2019

I have read Taibbi’s story carefully, and toted up every example he cites of a liberal endorsing war or any military means to effect regime change in Venezuela. The number is zero.

You might wonder how a story citing zero examples of liberals arguing for war could support a piece headlined “The Liberal Embrace of War.” The actual evidence he musters, when you cut through the dense thicket of verbiage and invective, amounts to precisely two sources of data. [Continue reading…]