| Claming the credit
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006 |
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# posted by Sonic : 4:45 PM
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Patrick Porter "What do you think of news that your bete noir, Henry Kissinger, is advising the White House on Iraq?"
Christopher Hitchens "Well, I've just filed an article on just that for Slate. The Kurds were horrified when Bremer was appointed in Iraq, because the name Kissinger makes them pee green. Bush did ask Kissinger to be head of the 9/11 Commission, for which I can claim to have made him not do that – for the simple reason he was a war criminal, terrorist, couldn't travel to all other countries because he is under indictment in many of them, which would have been a significant impairment in his ability to do the job, and he couldn't declare his interests. I know he hates me because I have had an impact on his life."
See, he is not all bad!
(via Oxblog) |
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| Over.
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# posted by Sonic : 6:49 PM
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One does not have to be a regular Hitchens' reader to sense the tired resignation in this weeks Slate piece on Iraq Leaving Iraq, what's the hurry?
There is not a lot to analyse in this, we get a ho-hum attempt to tie the Iraq war to 9-11 "Many of those advocating withdrawal have been "war-weary" ever since the midafternoon of Sept. 11, 2001" (unlike those who were full of "exhilaration" I suppose)
We are also a list of the numerous bounties we have generously given Iraq, benefits that will hopefully make up for the hundreds of thousands of dead. Christopher seems to think that "the introduction of the idea of federal democracy" somehow makes up for watching your whole country be torn apart with no end in sight.
However the heart of the piece is a plea, a plea that can be summarised as we cannot "callously forget" the "the many Arab and Kurdish Iraqis who do want to live in a secular and democratic and federal country" (those who have survived uo until now at least)
Seems like a fair point, however reading it I was reminded of an article in the Washington Post this week where Pulitzer prize winning journalist Anthony Shadid put a question to Wamidh Nadhme (a leading pro-democray intellectual)
Shadid asked Nadhme whether it would become worse if the American military withdrew.
"He looked at me for a moment without saying anything, as though he were a little confused. "What could be worse?" he asked, knitting his brow.
Perhaps this is the unique achievement of Mr Hitchens' war. A country so torn apart and a people so hopeless that they cannot even imagine how the situation could possible get worse.
I doubt if many of us would share Christopher's conclusion that "If this cause is now to be considered defeated...then it will always count as a noble one."
I doubt if many Iraqis would think so either. |
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| Confused
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# posted by Sonic : 5:40 PM
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Call me confused of Auckland if you wish, but I am having trouble making head or tail of This weeks Slate Piece
So lets try and break it down.
1) In January of this year,Mr H was invited by a group called the Republican Jewish Committee to come and speak at a public meeting, this was later cancelled due to pressure from a certain Morton Klein of the "Zionist Organization of America"
2) No worries, thats the way the cookie crumbles.
3) A professor Tony Judt of New York University was due to speak at the Polish Consulate in New York, this was later cancelled due to pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, or its chief spokesman Abraham Foxman.
5) Abraham Foxman is bad.
4) Tony Judt is upset.
5) He shouldn't be.
6) Oh and what about those Danish cartoons eh! where were the protests then I ask you?
Am I missing something?
Update
Christopher Hitchens Will Determine Whether Or Not You're Being Oppressed, Thank You Very Much
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| Carrying our God's will
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# posted by Sonic : 4:05 PM
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It must be hard being Christopher these days, his nemesis Henry Kissinger is revealed as a key advisor to George Bush over Iraq, and now This
"The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.
"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Mr Hitchens is quite happy to have a go at Military Chaplains
"We are engaged in a war with theocracy, and we have at our back the armor of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly forbids the establishment by the state of any religion or (no less important) any "religious test." There is no possible splitting of this difference....Their activity is a clear and present danger to the national defense, and ought to be regarded and treated as such."
So can we look forward to his demand for the resignation of Peter Pace and Don Rumsfeld? |
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| Lance That.
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006 |
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# posted by Sonic : 6:39 PM
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Tim Lambert has taken the time to further demolish our hero's argument re the recent Lancet estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths in the continuing bloodbath that is Iraq.
Read it all Here
He also takes the time to quote from Robert Farley's excellent rebuttal
"We're obviously beyond the point where one could say with any degree of originality that Christopher Hitchens is a morally and intellectually bankrupt sociopath. He is the true heir to the Stalinist left that he relentlessly rails about; there is no limit to the death and destruction that he's willing to tolerate in service of his revolution. What's more important now is to note that those who willingly associate themselves with people like Hitchens and Bill Kristol should be viewed in the same light"
As I may have said before, ouch. |
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| The Illustrated Man
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# posted by Sonic : 5:17 PM
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Re This
"The Lancet is conjuring bloodbaths."
Victims of the evil Lancet
"We haven't heard so much about the massacre of the innocents by sanctions of late, because the sanctions were lifted since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein...... But it does seem, according to the Lancet, that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were doomed to die, one way or another, in peace or in war, unless Saddam was left unmolested."
Quit complaining kids, you would only have starved to death anyway
"if you look more closely, you will see that less than one-third of the surplus deaths are attributed, even by this study, to "Allied" military action. Grant if you wish that this figure is likely to be more exact, since at least the coalition fights in uniform and issues regular statistics"
Ok we might have killed you, but not most of the rest, probably
"We are told that 24 percent of the violent deaths were caused by "other" actors, and 45 percent of them by "unknown" ones. If there is any method of distinguishing between the "other" and the "unknown," we are not told of it."
Known? Unknown? nothing to with us Mister
"who is to say how many people were saved from being murdered by the fact that the murderers were killed first?"
Better safe than sorry!
"it is true that some of the killers are sheltered within parties that have connections to the government"
The price of democratic governence
"All the effort of the coalition is devoted to negotiating a compromise between the country's factions."
Sweet compromise
"The Lancet figures are almost certainly inflated, not least because they were taken from selective war-torn provinces...... It is a reminder of the nature of the enemy we face"
Know your enemy
There is no reason why they may not come to reflect reality more closely.
We will never surrender, we will fight to the last (Iraqi) |
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| Mastergate
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# posted by Sonic : 1:55 PM
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You do have to ask, is there any Republican scandal that the once "contrarian" Mr Hitchens will not go out on a limb to defend?
I'm only asking as in this weeks Wall St Journal our hero does his best to minimise the Mark Foley affair (Text Here thanks to blogger collective, Strangepup)
For example lets look at the opening paragraph.
"When I finally took a look at what we are all now doomed to call the "sexually explicit" emails between Rep. Mark Foley and the young male page, I found that I had an immediate difficulty in following the exchange. The congressman's side of the correspondence was denoted by his online name, while the page's name was asterisked to protect the innocent, but they both seemed to be talking about the same thing, or things."
The full text of the exchange in question can be found here I cannot imagine how anyone literate could find them "difficult to follow"
MAF54 (Congressman Foley) what you wearing
[redacted screenname] (page) normal clothes
[redacted screenname] tshirt and shorts
Maf54 um so a big buldge
[redacted screenname] ya
Maf54 um
Maf54 love to slip them off of you
[redacted screenname] haha
Maf54 and gram the one eyed snake
Maf54 grab
[redacted screenname] not tonight...dont get to excited
Maf54 well your hard
[redacted screenname] that is true
Maf54 and a little horny
[redacted screenname] ( and also tru
Maf54 get a ruler and measure it for me
[redacted screenname] ive already told you that
Maf54 tell me again
[redacted screenname] 7 and 1/2
Maf54 (8:09:04 PM): ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Maf54 (8:09:08 PM): beautiful
[redacted screenname] lol
Maf54 thats a great size
[redacted screenname] thank you
Maf54 still stiff
[redacted screenname] ya
Maf54 take it out
[redacted screenname] brb...my mom is yelling
Maf54 ok
[redacted screenname] back
Maf54 (8:14:37 PM): cool hope se didnt see any thing"
Difficult to follow? anyone?
Then the excuses, the same tired lines we have been hearing from the Republican's and their media puppets for the last three weeks.
"The case would perhaps be altered somewhat if Mr. Foley had been the boy's teacher, or employer, or even priest. But pages are volunteers who are not on any one person's staff"
No imbalance of power between a 16 year old and a 52 year old congressman who monitors the page programme you see.
"the boy in this case was obviously a very knowing one, whose virginity was somewhere in his past"
He was asking for it the dirty slut.
"there is no persuasive evidence that there was any sexual relationship"
No doubt he was being groomed for later, like Like this page who Foley did sleep with
"The youngster seemed able to look after himself, and to "turn" the conversation whenever it became too needy"
He was really asking for it the dirty slut.
"our uneasy and only half-acknowledged awareness that the age of innocence is long over by the time that most of our children have turned 16"
See above.
This is getting to be a longer post that most here on HW. I'll leave aside Christopher's brave call for the Republican speaker of the house to resign (a call being made by just about everyone) and cut to the conclusion.
"We like to think that we "learn" from such episodes, but I cannot think of any lesson that can be derived from this latest spasm of righteous indignation."
I can. From the lack of saddams WMD's, to the lies about uranium from Niger. From defending the massacre at Haditha to trashing a woman who lost her son in Iraq. There seems to be no depths Christopher will not plumb to to defend the Bush adminstration.
I've started to wonder what they have got on him, dodgy emails? |
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| Have you been paying attention?
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# posted by Sonic : 1:19 PM
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| If so this should be a snap. |
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| Action and reaction
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Thursday, October 12, 2006 |
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# posted by Sonic : 1:22 PM
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This weeks fawning profile of our hero in the New Yorker (not online sorry) has produced quite a reaction.
Alexander Cockburn recounts his exchanges with the profile's author here including this
"He doesn't deserve them, but think what Hazlitt or even, from one of the writers in the pre World War 2 New Yorker, could have done with this seedy character, the last man on the deck of America's Titanic, the war in Iraq."
Ezra Klein also gives us his reponse which includes yet another example of Mr Hitchens' mastery of the English language.
""Fine, now that I know that, to you, medical ethics are nothing, you've told me all I need to know. I'm not trying to persuade you. Do you think I care whether you agree with me? No. I'm telling you why I disagree with you. That I do care about. I have no further interest in any of your opinions. There's nothing you wouldn't make an excuse for. You know what? I wouldn't want you on my side. I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud , and you say 'That's O.K.' Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I'm telling you what I think are standards and you say, 'What standards? It's fine, he's against the Iraq War.' Fuck. Off. You're MoveOn.org. Any liar will do. He's anti-Bush. Fuck off...Save it sweetie, for someone who cares. It will not be me. You love it, you suck on it. I now know what your standards are, and now you know what mine are, and that's all the difference -- I hope -- in the world."
Nice
However the prize for comment of the day has to go to blog commentator "calling all toasters"
Hitchens foresaw "a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate."
Would that would be all the distilleries in the world beating the crap out of Mother Teresa?
(thanks to FGFM) |
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| The Beauty of the English Language
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006 |
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# posted by Sonic : 4:34 PM
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"Hitchens claims to be unperturbed by his critics... 'People say, "What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet?" It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face.'"
More stomach turning quotations Here |
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| Holiday in Cambodia
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# posted by Sonic : 3:17 PM
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It appears that the recent revelations (see below), around Christopher's bete noir Henry Kissinger being a key figure in Iraq policy making have driven our hero quite mad.
How else can one explain his latest?
Will we never be free of the malign effect of this little gargoyle?
I was going to write about Mr H's deep affection for Paul Wolfowitz (and I will return to the subject soon) however what struck me most about this article is the conclusion.
"if Kissinger really does have anything to do with the conduct of Iraq policy, then what we should fear is not just another attempt at moral blackmail of those who call for withdrawal. For the analogy to hold, we should have to find that while this militant rhetoric was being deployed in public, a sellout and a scuttle was being prepared behind the scenes. We are not fighting the Viet Cong in Iraq but the Khmer Rouge. A bungled withdrawal would lead to another Cambodia, not another Vietnam.
Now I've read a bit about Cambodia, and it has always been my understanding that the key element in the rise of Pol Pot was not that the USA withdrew it's forces from SE asia in 1974, it was the US air force's unrestricted carpet bombing of the country. This led to deaths of up to 1 million people, the destruction of Cambodian society and the horror of the killing fields.
You do not just take my word for it, here is a certain Mr C Hitchens' take in 1985.
"Chomsky and Shawcross have this much in common: that they both argue for and demonstrate the connection between the Nixon-Kissinger bombing and derangement of Cambodian society and the nascence of the Khmer Rouge." (the chorus and Cassandra 1985)
So it seems we have come full circle. The continuation of America's blood soaked war against Iraq is justified by the terrible consequences of.....America's blood soaked war against Cambodia. If only the B52s had splatted Cambodia for a bit longer instead of "scuttling" the whole terrible events that followed could have been avoided?
I'm sure even a Kissinger would be proud of that level of doublethink. |
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If I only had a heart Nerve (thanks asdf!)
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Thursday, October 05, 2006 |
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# posted by Sonic : 1:46 PM
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Brain addled warmonger Victor Hansen mourns the death of Italian racist loony Oriana Fallaci
"Radical Islam is, among other things, a patriarchal movement, embedded particularly in the cult of the Middle-Eastern male, who occupies a privileged position in a society that can be fairly described as one of abject gender apartheid. Islamism is also at war with the religious infidel, not just the atheist—and, in its envy and victimhood, fueled by a renewal of the age-old hatred of the Christian.
But so far, with very few exceptions other than the lion, Christopher Hitchens, the courageous William Shawcross, and a few others, the Left has either been neutral or anti-American in this struggle"
Indeed.
Grrrr. |
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| Guess who's back
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# posted by Sonic : 2:18 PM
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Well, well, well. It seems that Christopher's least liked person is now in charge of his most loved war.
"Cheney stunned Woodward by revealing that a frequent advisor to the Bush White House is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served Presidents Nixon and Ford during the Vietnam War.
"He’s back," Woodward says. "In fact, Henry Kissinger is almost like a member of the family. If he’s in town, he can call up and if the president’s free, he’ll see him."
Woodward recorded his on-the-record interview with Cheney, and here’s what the vice president said about Henry Kissinger’s clout: "Of the outside people that I talk to in this job I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than just about anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month," Cheney tells Woodward. "I sit down with him."
Asked whether the president also meets with Kissinger, Cheney told Woodward, "Yes. Absolutely."
The vice president also acknowledged that President Bush is a big fan of Kissinger.
"Now, what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply:
'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.' This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again. Because in his view the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will. That we didn’t stick to it," Woodward says.
He says Kissinger is telling the president to stick to it, stay the course. "It’s right out of the Kissinger playbook," Woodward says."
For a man who regularly accuses Kissenger of being a war criminal this must be hard to take, luckily Christopher is not going to be distracted from the big issues.
The real problem with military chaplains a slight article which can be summarised as "Those christians are bad enough, but next thing you know it will be muslim chaplains, then you will be sorry.
I'm sure Mr H will come out fighting, probably by trying to trash Woodward. It's going to get interesting.
Update
Our good friends at rising-hegemon. have a scoop! Christopher's first public reaction to the news. Go have a listen. |
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