The Transformation Of Christopher Hitchens
Why Christopher Hitchens left The Left, from an interview by Johann Hari:
He explains that he believes the moment the left's bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. "The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists." He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali's books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. "It's explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings."Hitchens - who has just returned from Afghanistan - says, "The world these [al-Quadea and Taliban] fascists want to create is one of constant submission and servility. The individual only has value to them if they enter into a life of constant reaffirmation and prayer. It is pure totalitarianism, and one of the ugliest totalitarianisms we've seen. It's the irrational combined with the idea of a completely closed society. To stand equidistant between that and a war to remove it is?" He shakes his head. I have never seen Hitch grasping for words before.
Some people on the left tried to understand the origins of al-Quadea as really being about inequalities in wealth, or Israel's brutality towards the Palestinians, or other legitimate grievances. "Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid," Hitchens says. "The case for redistributing wealth is either good or it isn't - I think it is - but it's a different argument. If you care about wealth distribution, please understand, the Taliban and the al Quaeda murderers have less to say on this than even the most cold-hearted person on Wall Street. These jihadists actually prefer people to live in utter, dire poverty because they say it is purifying. Nor is it anti-imperialist: they explictly want to recreate the lost Caliphate, which was an Empire itself."
God, I love that man. Cooper's blog has an excellent sequence about this interview:
http://marccooper.typepad.com/marccooper/2004/09/hari_to_hitchen.html#comments
The thing about this war, is: Maybe Iraq IS turning to shit, and is doing so because of Bush's management incompetence. Maybe in some cosmic overview, this would have gone better if we'd waited another thirty years to start the invasion.
But freeing our vendor states from the oppression of corrupt leaders, no matter how inconvenient for us, IS the direction of human destiny... If human destiny is worth living.
Maybe the US Civil war, and the freeing of slaves that occured therein, was ONLY going to happen in the 1860's. But Jesus Fuck, wouldn't it have been great if they'd tried it in the 1840's? Or this 1810's? Wouldn't even a generation or two of immigrants NOT tortured under the lash have made a profound difference?
If you read Reynold's blog, or watch the newspapers VERY carefully, you'll see that oil-for-food is still being exposed. To wit, courtesy Reynolds:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1291280,00.html
In other words, Kerry can stick his "global test" up his asshole. Likewise the French and their 'Cowboy simplisme'.
Cridland at October 3, 2004 9:29 AM
There's this eloquence of perception that Hitchens can overlay on complexities such as the Muslim recidivism that is gaining alarming momentum throughout the world. Knowing nothing of his left leaning past, his current analyzing I take at face value despite any past or present pigeonholing of the man's political stance. He seems to break away from any conventional political pack in his thinking. Which to me lends much more credence to his analyses.
Not too many pundits have pointed out that Muslims have perhaps the worst wealth distribution systems in history. Century after century of royal families and despotic tyrants. The mullahs aren't yelling down with the capitalist imperialist warmongerers, now are they? Something about killing infidels I think it is. Let's just call it a death distribution issue.
The modern civilized are trying to contain and pacify barbarism in a civilized manner. As the world is starting to realize, the Palestinians, the al-Queda, the Hamas, et al, will not take negotiated peace for an answer. Ever try to pacify a screaming baby with something he really doesn't need? Muslims don't need more of our inflated dollars. Their poverty is not what is goading them to slicing off our non-Muslim heads. And don't expect the Muslim equivalent of peace loving Presbyterians to step in on this. They weren't raised on High Noon, John Wayne, Rambo, Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. When Ted Kennedy can yell let's roll, you'll know then that the tide has turned.
allan at October 3, 2004 10:35 AM
Granted Hitchens is correct about the radical fundamentalist Muslim terrorists wanting everyone to live in their totalitarian idea of a world. Forget all the complex theories about wealth-redistribution. We should cut down terrorists whenever and wherever. But ... invading a country, however heinously ruled, is not the way to do it. Or at least not the way Bush did it. His (meaning Bush and his cohorts') acts only made matters worse. The vast majority of Muslims don't want to subjugate the world and create the lost Caliphate, just as the vast majority of Christians don't think the end times are imminent (well, more now, thanks to Bush). People want to get along. Muslim women don't want to be uneducated any more than American women want to be told what they can or cannot do with their bodies. There's always some true-believing fringe element ready to impose their world-viewsm, but the vast middle has to rise out of their complacency to fight it. Perhaps on the heels of the first Presidential debate this might begin to happen here. We now need to find a way to help it happen over there. There are MANY more of us than there are of them (the Jihadists, the Fundamentalist Christians, the radical Jews ... etc.) We're never going to wipe out true-believers, but at least we can keep them down rather than pick at the scab and never let it heal.
And by the way, the current administration's (I'm not going to call them "the right" because I don't like to be generalized as "the left") tack to fight the terrorists ends up chipping away at our own democracy; and their domestic agenda chips away at -- to use Hitchens' example -- those hard won women's rights.
Finally, I don't think "the left's" response to 9/11 was to affect a kind of neutrality. Hardly. There just happen to be some people who wanted to take a look at the complexities and causes of 9/11. And if future 9/11's could be prevented by taking a cold hard look in the mirror to find even a tiny bit of responsibility, all the better.
david at October 3, 2004 10:58 AM
> Granted Hitchens is correct about
> the radical fundamentalist Muslim
> terrorists wanting everyone to live
> in their totalitarian idea of a world.
So don't take it back with the rest of your post! You either mean what you're saying or you don't.
> There's always some true-believing
> fringe element ready to impose their
> world-viewsm but the vast middle
> has to rise out of their complacency
> to fight it.
Isn't that what's happening?
> I don't think "the left's" response
> to 9/11 was to affect a kind of
> neutrality. Hardly.
That's PRECISELY what it is. Look at your own wording: A 'kind' of neutrality!
This is not just cowardice, though it may be that, too. It's the infantilism of the left. "Complexity" leftists don't want anyone to interfere with the fantasy that they're nice people, and that everything good in their lives just happened to come their way. They're quite happy to let subterranean forces (the CIA, crime families from Tikrit, etc) kill and maim as necessary, as long as they don't have to think about it, or pay more than $2.40 for a gallon of gas.
> some people who wanted to take a
> look at the complexities and causes
> of 9/11.
All right, name a "complexity".
Fuckit, let's shuck right down to the cob: Saddam was a puppet of midcentury American interests. He was installed for a controlling interest in the oil directly, and for coldwar chess maneuvers. And all the horrors he brought to Iraq, her neighbors, and her soil itself are America's bequeathment to that nation. As are the gangland monsters now emerging from his shadow. We did that to those people.
Or am I being simplistic?
Let's play some games with nuance, David. Consider and refute: No man in the past six centuries has done more to defend and enoble Muslim life than George W. Bush.
PS Amy/Amy's boyfriend: You can'y post after a preview 'cept by going backwards to the comments page.
Cridland at October 3, 2004 12:37 PM
Sorry about that, the opera 6.05 browser has problems getting along with the other kids.
Cridland at October 3, 2004 12:39 PM
One mo' befo' work:
> "The Middle East can never be stable until we
> wipe out Saddam Hussein." GWB? Dick Cheney?
> Paul Wolfowitz? No. That was vice-
> presidential wannabe Joseph Lieberman in
> October of 2000, debating his Republican
> counterpart, Dick Cheney, on the issues of
> the day.
http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2004/10/the_middle_east_13.html
Cridland at October 3, 2004 12:44 PM
Crid
I don't see how I'm taking back anything with the rest of my post. I'm saying that the folks Hitchens -- a guy I really admire -- refers to are a tiny segment.
I hope the middle is rising up to fight terrorists. But I don't consider Bush representative of the middle.
"Kind of neutrality" wasn't my wording, but Hitchens's.
"Complexity" leftists don't want anyone to interfere with the fantasy that they're nice people, and that everything good in their lives just happened to come their way. They're quite happy to let subterranean forces (the CIA, crime families from Tikrit, etc) kill and maim as necessary, as long as they don't have to think about it, or pay more than $2.40 for a gallon of gas."
With all due respect, I think that's bull. You generalize and lump leftist together -- as that side lumps righties together -- and set up a straw argument, a caricature, and then argue against it. I certainly don't believe anything good in my life just came my way. I worked hard and earned every bit. Neither do I want all the killing and maiming just to keep down the price of gas. Nothing would make me happier than $8 a gallon gas and the end of the insidious SUV and the soccer moms who sit idling in parking lots burning fuel while gabbing on the cell phones (or worse, holding them in their right hands while making dangerous left turns in their lumbering machines.)
I can see plausible reasons for going into Iraq, most of all the need to control oil in this big Risk game of a world. I think we need to get out from under Saudi Arabia's thumb and maybe even to short circuit Chinese control of the oil. But there was a better way. Spread those $200 billion in aid (not just buying people off), and reduce oil dependence here at home by pouring money into alternative energy.
You ask me to name a complexity: Why bother? You just did. And you're right. But Saddam didn't attack the Trade Centers. This is one complexity; there are many. Bush wants us to see in black or white. You want nuance? You can't handle the nuance! (Sorry, just had to run with the Nicholsonesque moment.)
And so what if Leiberman said what he said. These guys, all these guy, are fucking liars who will say what is convenient to the moment, and then other liars will come along, dredge up the quote on google, and use it against them. Pot,kettle, black ...
Upgrade Opera to 7.54. I've used it since the outset. It's the greatest and it plays better in the school yard.
david at October 3, 2004 2:15 PM
This discussion is great -- wish I could join in, but I'm on deadline (was away so I'm behind)...anyway, we just upgraded to MT 3.11 and there are issues still...so I am getting hundreds and hundreds of pieces of (name of lunchmeat here) so, thanks David, and everybody else, for letting me know when there are double comments, etc. Will do my best to manage them, but I am so busy deleting illegit. comments that the legit ones that need deleting sometimes get away from me. PS Crid, I was careful to delete the post that didn't have the additional line at the bottom...and I'm taking great care (in general) only to delete posts by the...lunchmeat-ers. (Use of that word gets them to make a beeline for a particular posting area, so I won't.)
Amy Alkon at October 3, 2004 3:55 PM
> ...the folks Hitchens (...) refers to are a tiny segment.
They're the ones we're fighting, aren't they?
> I hope the middle is rising up to fight terrorists.
Hope hope hope... Some of us are ready for more.
> ...set up a straw argument, a caricature, and then
> argue against it.
Busted. Yet every time I slap that horse it whinnies. To wit:
> I certainly don't believe anything good
> in my life just came my way. I worked
> hard and earned every bit.
So all that cheap energy that made your economy hum, and all that security that gave you time to study and so forth, all of that just came your way?
> Nothing would make me happier
> than $8 a gallon gas and the end
> of the insidious SUV and the soccer
> moms...
Agreed. And I suspect that for that, you'll always have a home here at Amy's. But if gas cost $8/gallon overnight, America would collapse.
> I think we need to get out from
> under Saudi Arabia's thumb...
Our planes are off of their airfields, we've slaughtered their friends in the Taliban, and are killing their theocratic proxies in Iraq. That's what you want, right?
> Spread those $200 billion in aid
> (not just buying people off)...
Until Iraq is a capitalist democracy, we'll never be certain that aid lands where we drop it.
> ...pouring money into alternative energy.
It's faster to just shred twenties over the toilet. If there were money in alternative sources, oil companies would be on it like a cheap suit.
> You ask me to name a complexity: Why bother?
See, that's the problem. No lefty ever has anything actually to SAY. They just prefer talk to action.
> But Saddam didn't attack the Trade Centers.
He gave a home to the first team that did, did he not?
> These guys, all these guy, are fucking liars...
Well then let's all stay home and do our nails. Can I say again that I think insistence on sincerity is part of a lefty fascination with interior lives? In politics, sincerity isn't a factor. If a Catholic president were to ignore the Pope --and perhaps his own heart-- in supporting current law, you'd have no reason not to support him. Sincerity is overvalued in people just as authenticity is overvalued in furnishings... (I have been wounded by my own misappraisals in each realm.)
It's like you mind people forming opinions, you just don't want them to do anything with them, lest people's feelings get hurt.
> Upgrade Opera to 7.54.
Better is the enemy of good enough. And it's good to see shoulders thrown roughly now and then, as by Hitchens.
Cridland at October 3, 2004 5:49 PM
Here's a nice, meaty conversation between Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/04/1523254&mode=thread&tid=25
Lena Cuisina at October 4, 2004 11:38 PM
What does a weasel have to do to start a dustup nowadays? This place used to be so twitchy.
Awright, fine. Watch your election... See you on November 3rd!
Cridland at October 4, 2004 11:38 PM
"...U.S. forces have failed to produce any weapons of mass destruction in the countryòthe stated reason for going to war against Baghdad."
That introduction is a bit troublesome...
But our boy fights the good fight. It was easier then, before Abu Gharaib.
Cridland at October 5, 2004 9:33 AM
dust-ups are boring.
see you at the voting booth -- the only dustup
that really counts.
david at October 6, 2004 7:31 AM