We'll get back to that, but we like to keep light and fluffy here at Hitchenswatch, so in that spirit lets highlight one of the more laughable statements in the piece.
"The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant"
Interesting statement eh readers? The only way to stop intolerence is to never ever allow yourself to be anything other than intolerent yourself.
Lets all hope this worrying trend of Mr Hitchens making statements so contradictory that if they were ever uttered out loud the space time continuim would shatter beyond repair.
In the name of helpfullness we would like to suggest more pithy sayings along the same lines that perhaps could be used by our hero in future articles.
"The enemies of racism cannot be against racism
"The enemies of ignorance cannot be educated
"Vegetarians should never avoid eating meat"
"Against war? then you better go and start one today! (oh hold on, that was a real one)
Those I my humble suggestions, I'm sure my army of loyal readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will leave better ones in the comments. However never forget..
"Those against boring comments cannot write interesting ones"
Imagine, if you will, that a black church in Alabama was repeatedly harrassed by small minded bigots. Prayer rooms were broken into, racist threats scrawled on churchgoers cars and on bathroom walls. On two occasions bibles were defecated on and thrown down toilets.
Further imagine, if you will, that when the perpetrator of these acts was finally caught a look on the internet for his name would not find howls of outrage at his deeds, but instead wall to wall support from people who thought what he did was a right and proper response to those uppity blacks and their laughable demands for equal treatment and respect.
Finally imagine a noted writer and commentator, not only backing the racist's actions, but arguing that the blacks had it coming. The issuing a veiled threat of more to come as "The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide"hinting that while civil and religious rights would of course be preserved for white people, black people "cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy."
Of course it's only a fantasy, that could not happen here...or could it?
Relax, of course not, the only way any of that would be possible was if the victims of this hate crime were Muslims
If you are a Hitchens' fan (as I know many of our readers are) do a qick google blog search on Hitchens and see what sort of racist filth his latest article is giving intellectual cover for (and be sure to read the comments)
Finally, we have here, in the past, jokingly compared Mr Hitchens to a slug. On behalf of us all I would like to deeply apologise to all slugs everywhere for this foul smear on their good name and reputation. To our knowledge no member of the Arionoidea family has ever spent their time justifying racial bigotry or calling for people to have their civil liberties voided merely due to their religion. In recompense we would like to end this piece by bringing you, gentle reader, a positive image of our slug friends. Slugs in love.
The old boy installed his system in April but has been having a lot of trouble with the power utility who forced him to shut the thing down. But its's up and running again now, putting him well ahead of cousin Al in the carbon footprint reduction stakes.
When his solar system was finally restored to full power in mid-July, Vidal had a few choice words regarding the aforementioned municipal utility: “I’m relieved to be back on solar power and no longer dependent on public utilities,” he said. “What funny words, as they’re about as private as you can get, and they like to think that they’re universal!” Vidal claimed that the DWP wreaked havoc on a perfectly functioning solar unit, which he pronounced to be “Wonderful! ... It’s the only time I ever felt free of a society which, I think, more and more people will want to feel free of. Once you’re no longer dependent on them for energy, you are free. So, it’s good for our spirits, it’s good for the environment.”
Regarding his less generous critics from previous posts, many of whom gestured at his advanced age in order to question his grasp of technology or to cast him as an incorrigible curmudgeon or a witless fuddy-duddy, Vidal cheerfully retorted: “I have been actually accused of senility. Well, let me tell you ... I am in the springtime of my senility—a vigorous springtime! Jonquils are growing in my path. Watch out!”
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Johann Hari on how the Eustonites and Hitch fell into Tom Paine's dilemma
The marvellous Johann Hari (and love him or loathe him, you have to admit this young man can write), has penned an insightful piece (that means I agree with most of what he says in it) in The Independent, entitled The pro-war left's disastrous misjudgment.
In it, he gives a good summing up of what the Euston Manifesto ("an attempt by the pro-war left to hone its position into a coherent set of principles" and "this strange niche in Anglo-American politics— of which I was a part, for a time") was all about.
More importantly, he also makes a point that all Hitchophiles and phobes will want to mull over.
"Yet there is a bleak historical parallel for the pro-war left. For a brief period, Thomas Paine supported Napoleon and his acts of aggression, believing they were expressions of revolutionary Enlightenment values. In reality, they were squalid expressions of realpolitik. Pro-war leftist Christopher Hitchens notes wistfully in his book about Paine that he 'had fallen victim to a gigantic counter-revolution in revolutionary guise, which had succeeded in entrenching rather than undermining his original foes.' It is a moment of horrible clarity. The war in Iraq has entrenched jihadism."
He then goes on to ask his former comrades—and this prescription fits Hitch too—to repent of their errors and loosen the ideological ropes that have been constricting their blood supply.
"The few who have not recanted are tied in painful knots, and every tug cuts off a little more circulation to the brain. It is time for the signiatories of the Euston manifesto to make a confession. To rally the left to solidarity with the victims of Ba'athism and Islamism is an honourable cause; to do it with the weapon of neoconservatism was a catastrophic misjudgement.
Those on the pro-war left who ostentatiously claim Orwell's mantle have forgotten what made him great - the power to face inconvenient truths."
Johann, I think you are letting 'em off a bit too lightly, but beautifully said.
"Since he began work as a journalist, Johann has been attacked in print by the Daily Telegraph, John Pilger, Peter Oborne, Private Eye, the Socialist Worker, Cristina Odone, the Spectator, Andrew Neil, Mark Steyn, the British National Party, Medialens, al Muhajaroun and Richard Littlejohn. 'Prince' Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, has accused Johann of "waging a private jihad against the House of Saud". (He's right). Johann has been called "a Stalinist" and "beneath contempt" by Noam Chomsky, 'Horrible Hari' by Niall Ferguson, "an uppity little queer" by Bruce Anderson, 'a drug addict' by George Galloway, "fat" by the Dalai Lama and "a cunt" by Busted."
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Pundit on Iraq on Fox: "no one is willing to take the gamble, as they see it, of saying actually that it's going a lot better than it is, but it is."
With all the doom and gloom on all sides surrounding the Iraq occupation, it would refreshing to hear an objective yet optimistic view of the situation on the ground. Well, we can't quite guarantee totally objective, but thanks to the folks over at Fox News, we can certainly wax optimistic.
The interviewee has been to Iraq and seen for himself how nicely things are going. And apparently, every day and in every way, things are getting better and better. Indeed, he's adamant that Iraq is "actually going a lot better than it is," really! The only problem is these damn filthy networks of Baathists and Jihadists and frightened gangsters, and the cynicism of the Western media, of course.
Oh, by the way, I should mention that this was broadcast on July 24, 2003. It's amazing how well that optimism's been borne out by subsequent events, isn't it.
Christopher HITCHENS: Well, I had been there earlier this year in late March, in fact, on the southern border, briefly. And I remember then that the whole mindset of the press, you may remember it, was that it was a quagmire. It is a better story. Remember that week when Donald Rumsfeld seemed to have lost the plot? Most of my colleagues thought, “Well, that reads better.” And I remember that mentality when I was there recently. I was in north and south and central Iraq. The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.
And so if no one is willing to take the gamble, as they see it, of saying actually that it's going a lot better than it is, but it is. It's quite extraordinary to see the way that American soldiers are welcomed. To see the work that they're doing and not just rolling up these filthy networks of Baathists and Jihaddists, but building schools, opening soccer stadiums, helping people connect to the Internet, there is a really intelligent political program as well as a very tough military one.
John GIBSON: We wonder, if you turn a light switch, does the power go on? Does the fan go on? If you open a water faucet, does water come out? If you flush the toilet, does it go away?
HITCHENS: Good question, because until not long ago, that was more or less universally the case in Mosul. And, of course, further up in Iraq, in northern Iraq, Kurdistan (search) itself, most of the towns now look like southern California. It's incredible the difference it's made for them to have been 12 years free of Saddam Hussein. They are 12 years into national building. It gives you an idea of what it might be like. In Mosul, it was funny. They had got the lights more or less back on and they were reconnected to the grid to help out Baghdad, which is short of electricity. The Iraqi grid is very badly messed up, as you know. Then they had to lose a little bit of power to help Baghdad get power back. But that's the way Saddam used to punish people. He would turn off the lights on cities that didn't like him.
GIBSON: And what about this business that Americans are anguished about the fact that day in, day out there are attacks that take the lives of American soldiers.
HITCHENS: Well, these [remaining Saddam loyalists] are the frightened gangsters who until recently were doing the torture chambers, and digging the mass graves and running the execution centers. These are people with nothing to lose, they are the absolute scum of the earth and they're paid from the stolen money from the central bank of Baghdad. You know, $8 million was dug up in the garden of one of the people who was brought in to identify the gruesome twosome, yesterday. Eight million bucks and a lot of jewelry and gold. They pay unemployed kids and imported holy warriors $1,000 in cash if they will just take a pot shot with a throwaway gun or roll a grenade from behind. It's much more like Mafia meets Jihad than any kind of a resistance.
The other side, though, is that lots of people are coming eagerly forward to say not just that they want to help them find these ruffians, but that they want to be a part of the effort to roll them up. There are people who really want to sign up to join the hunt for Saddam and his people. And I actually think that the U.S. Army is probably not doing enough to recruit them.
So there you have it. Now we really know what it's like in Iraq. Well done, Hitch!
According to psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank, President George W. Bush is a man without a conscience. We don't know why precisely why this is the case. Perhaps he was never properly taught the Golden Rule? Or perhaps he never got to see Jiminy Cricket singing to Pinocchio "Always let your conscience be your guide." I don't like to put all the blame on the parents, but it seems that something went very wrong with that lad at a formative age. Besides boasting an embryonic conscience at best, President Bush is widely considered to be intellectually impoverished. All of which makes it hard to blame the guy for the damage and the mess he's reportedly causing. It's the folks surrounding him who are a darn sight cleverer than he is and who foist him upon the world who really deserve to be found out and followed.
Which brings me on to Hitch. Here's a man of high intelligence, rhetorical skill and a fair amount of culture—knows his Kant from his Spinoza, tells amusing anecdotes, and can negotiate a wine list with the best of them. And yet he has acted as an apologist, obscurantist, or minimizer for quite a few things that have shocked the consciences of many of us—not only with respect to the initial launching of the war against Iraq—which he attempted to legitimize—but also crimes commited in the context of that war, such as the party games at Abu Graib and the shaking and baking of Fallujah.
"So far, the press has focused on the questions "who knew" and "how far up did it go?" I'm equally interested in the question of how far down it has gone and how widespread it is. As Seymour Hersh has pointed out, the original imperative for harsh measures came from a Defense Department, and by extension a White House, that was under intense pressure to get results in the battle against al-Qaida and felt itself hampered by nervous lawyers. Almost the whole of public opinion is complicit in this, as is shown by the fury over the administration's failure to pre-empt the Sept. 11 assault: a pre-emption that would almost certainly have involved some corner-cutting in the interrogation room.
Many, many people must have fantasized about getting Osama Bin Laden into some version of an orange jumpsuit and then shackling him for a while to the wrong end of a large pig. It's not very far from that mass reverie to "Hey, Mustapha, you're gonna get to really know this porker" and similar or worse depravities. So in a distressing sense—of course you can all write to me if you like and say that you never even thought about it—we face something like a collective responsibility, if not exactly a collective guilt."
On the destruction of Fallujah in late 2004, Hitch gave a talk at Kenyon College on November 18 of that year in which he made the observation that “the death toll is not nearly high enough … too many [jihadists] have escaped.”
And on the occasion of another well-known massacre of innocents, Hitch insisted on telling the world Why Haditha isn't My Lai.
There are things that people of conscience are bound to say without equivocation when commenting on torture and massacres, and quite often I don't hear Hitch saying them. To be sure, Hitch always has a well-hashed argument on which to hang his pearls of wisdom, but the callousness of his remarks at the suffering caused to so many innocent people makes me wonder whether his conscience may have grown vestigial through lack of use. However, his passion to argue the rights and wrongs of all sorts of issues and to condemn people who fall short by his standards indicates a very highly developed and well tuned consciousness is definitely still up and running. If so, the questions we should be asking run along the lines of how has Hitch's conscience been calibrated and what are the settings?
George W. Bush is without conscience, and it would require a lengthy series of clinical sessions to find out what happened to it. By identifying himself as all good and on the side of right, he has been able to vanquish any guilt, any sense of doing wrong.
In Bush on the Couch I gave examples illustrating that remarkable lack of conscience. From his youthful days blowing up frogs with firecrackers to his unapologetic public endorsement of torture, there has been no change.
Observers are gradually becoming aware of this fundamental deficit. For example, after watching the president’s press conference on July 12, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote, “He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush?”
No Shame
George W. Bush seems also to be without shame. He expresses no regret or embarrassment about his failure to help Katrina victims, or to tell the truth. He says whatever he thinks people want to hear, whether it be “stay the course” or “I’ve never been about ‘stay the course.’” He does whatever he wants.
He lies—not just to us, but to himself as well. What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt—for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him.
That he could say so baldly that he’d never been about “stay the course” is bone chilling. So his words mean nothing. That is very important for people to understand.
Fear of Humiliation
Despite having no shame, Bush has a profound fear of failure and humiliation. He defends himself from this by any means at his disposal—most frequently with indifference or contempt.
He will flinch only if directly confronted about being a failure or a liar. Otherwise world events are enough removed from him that he can spin them into his intact defense system.
This deep fear helps to explain his relentlessly escalating attacks on others, his bullying, and his use of nicknames to put people down. There is fear of being found out not to be as big in every way as his father.
What a burden to have to face his many inadequacies—now held up to the light of day—whether it is his difficulty in speaking, thinking, reading, managing anxiety, or making good decisions. He will not change, because for him change means humiliating collapse. He is very fearful of public exposure of his many inadequacies.
Contempt for Truth?
Contempt itself is a defense, a form of self-protection, which helps Bush appear at ease and relaxed—at least to big fans like New York Times columnist David Brooks.
The president’s contempt defense protects his belief system, a system he clings to as if his beliefs were well-researched facts. His pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth.
What gets lost in this process is growth—the George W. Bush of 2007 is exactly the same as the one of 2001. Helen Thomas has said that of all the presidents she has covered over the years, Bush is the least changed by his job, by his experience. This is why there is no possibility of dialogue or reasoning with him.
Sadistic
His certitude that he is right gives him carte blanche for destructive behavior. He has always had a sadistic streak: from blowing up frogs, to shooting his siblings with a b-b-gun, to branding fraternity pledges with white-hot coat hangers.
His comfort with cruelty is one reason he can be so jocular with reporters when talking about American casualties in Iraq. Instead of seeing a president in anguish, we watch him publicly joking about the absence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, in the vain search for which so many young Americans died.
Break It!
Bush likes to break things, needs to break things. And this is most shockingly seen in how he is systematically destroying our armed forces.
In the early days of the Iraq invasion he refused to approve the large number of troop the generals said were needed in order to try to invade and pacify Iraq and acquiesced in the firing of any general who disagreed.
He turned a blind eye to giving the troops proper equipment and cut funding for needed health care. Health care and other social programs have one thing in common: they are paid for by public funds.
It may well be that, unconsciously, the government represents his neglectful parents, and those helped by the government represent the siblings he resents. If George W. Bush wanted to destroy his own family, he could scarcely have done better. Thanks to him, no Bush is likely to be elected to high office for generations to come.
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US Contractors Using Slave Labor to Build Baghdad Embassy?
This seems authentic, and I can't say I'm totally shocked. After all, torture's no big deal in Bush's Empire. Why should kidnapping people to provide forced labor for construction without proper tools or safety equipment be any different? And if these people will do this, is there anything at all they won't do? Are there any limits at all to the freedom of this sort of free enterprise?
On July 26, testifying before the House Oversight Committee, Rory Mayberry, a former subcontract employee of First Kuwaiti, the firm handling construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said he believes at least 52 Filipino nationals had been kidnapped to work on the embassy project. He testified:
Mr. Chairman, when the airplane took off and the captain announced that we were heading to Baghdad, all you-know-what broke out on the airplane. The men started shouting, it wasn’t until the security guy working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP5 in the air that the men settled down. They realized that they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad. Let me spell it out clearly: I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the US Embassy… I’ve read the State Department Inspector General’s report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. This is a cover-up and I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to set the record straight.
Wow! This is a video we can't affford not to watch. FGFM posted the link in the comments, but I think it merits a spot on the front page. Max Blumenthal gets to know some of those nice folks down at the Christians United for Israel's annual Washington-Israel Summit. It's an absolute rapture.
As Max himeslf says, "I have covered the Christian right intensely for over four years. During this time, I attended dozens of Christian right conferences, regularly monitored movement publications and radio shows, and interviewed scores of its key leaders. I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington. See for yourself."
Dan Hind, who has written an excellent book entitled The Threat to Reason, has brought up succinctly a point that I have been trying to make in my usual clumsy fashion.
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
This is one of those bold assertions for which Hitchens is famous. It is billed by him as an ‘elementary rule of logic’, but if he seriously believes it, he is committed to a very exotic philosophy. For there is a class of assertions for which we cannot provide evidence, but which would be reluctant to dismiss lightly. Moral statements (‘It is wrong to murder’, ‘You should tell the truth’, you know the kind of thing) cannot be supported by anything like evidence. Of course you might tell a story about how we have evolved to be moral, or you could point out the prudential advantages of a moral life. But this very far from being evidence that you must be moral now.
If moral statements are in some sense true and at the same time cannot rely on evidence, we have to be very meticulous as to how exactly they differ from religious claims. Now there might be a case for treating religious and moral claims differently; but it is a case that must be made. Assertions that lack evidence cannot be dismissed by fiat, by the power of a well turned aphorism.
Thanks for that Dan, but be assured there is ample reason to doubt the seriousness of Hitch's beliefs. Nobody as intelligent as he is could possibly be serious about the Niger yellowcake shopping trip, let alone the idea that mamalian evolution provides a rational explanation for WHY one particular set of moral imperatives should be better than any other.
For those of you who fancy listening to Hitch reading god is not Great, the book is now available as a download from Audible.com.
According to one satisfied listener: "Wow, I’m totally impressed and have been enjoying it completely. The book is funny, insightful, articulate, and searing. He reads it himself, also, and is an excellent reader. He reads as if he is talking to someone, rather than droning along in a monotone the way so many authors read, requiring them to hire professional readers to record their audio books. So you get the intonation and emphasis that the author intended, and more of a feeling of their personality, which is exactly right for this type of book."
Slightly old news, but The Brad Blog captured Christopher on video at a booksigning in Santa Monica in June and got his opinion on exercising the franchise. E-voting, said the man, is a "racket and fraud" which "should never have been allowed to happen." He also added that without reforms to the system Americans will continue to be "treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise."
Hitch either knows a lot more about the Galloway case than he's saying, or he's gone off the deep end again. As things stand, those Galloway prison diaries may be a long time coming, the famous "Don't F*** with Hitch" curse notwithstanding.
17/07/2007 "Once more and yet again I have been cleared of taking a single penny or in any way personally benefiting from the former Iraqi regime through the Oil for Food programme or any other means.
The Commissioner's report states that unequivocally no less than six times. The Commissioner further states that it would be a "travesty" to describe me as a "paid mouth-piece" and that my actions on Iraq stemmed from "deep conviction."
This is therefore an argument about the funding of a political campaign to lift non-military sanctions on Iraq, which killed one million people, and to stop the rush to a war which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands more.
The Committee appear utterly oblivious to the grotesque irony of a pro-sanctions and pro-war Committee of a pro-sanctions and pro-war Parliament passing judgment on the work of their opponents, especially in the light of the bloody march of events in Iraq since this inquiry began four years ago.
They describe that as questioning their integrity and bringing Parliament into disrepute. The House would do well to honestly calibrate exactly how its reputation on all matters concerning the war in Iraq stands with the public before deciding who precisely has brought it into disrepute.
After a four year inquiry - costing a fortune in public funds - the report asks me to apologise for not registering consistently the Mariam Appeal I established (the Commissioner concedes that I did so, but randomly) and for using House of Commons resources allocated to me to campaign against the policies of those now sitting in judgment on me.
The Committee of MPs acknowledges that "had these been the only matters before us, we would have confined ourselves to seeking an apology to the House."
However, in a surprisingly thin-skinned rejoinder, the MPs complain that because I questioned their impartiality and made trenchant criticisms of evidence and witnesses (which, incidentally, they don’t attempt to refute in most cases) I am to be suspended for 18 days.
I reiterate that the Commissioner is right to state that he found no evidence that I benefited personally in any way from any Iraqi monies and moreover I never asked any of the Mariam Appeal's donors - the King of Saudi Arabia, the Emir of UAE, or Fawaz Zureikat, the chairman of the Appeal - from where they earned the wealth from which they made donations to a campaign to end sanctions and war."
Given the hell distaster this is modern day Iraq, we can only thank Christopher his his latest hard hitting, take no prisoners Slate Bit that exposes those really responsible for the worst military disaster since the German general staff decided to speed up the occupation of Stalingrad to get it all over with before Christmas 1942...
The guilty men?
The people who were against the war in the first place!
Yup folks, who else could we blame for the 600,000+ and counting dead, except those who never wanted it to happen in the first place, and as our hero shows, what a rum bunch they are.
Some might argue that it would be best for Christopher to stay away from the whole subject, after all he is making a nice living out of his new "why religion is really, really bad" routine, and even getting a bit of credibilty back from the gullible so why remind us all of his own role in advocating the war?
I'm reminded of an old saying, a dog always returns to it's own vomit, an anology tha never seemed more fitting. For all his command of the Enlish language, and occasional low cunning, Christopher has all the common sense of a slug on LSD.
Of which we can only say
Thanks mate.
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"The US and UK don't care about Iraqis - they've been killing them for years"
While we're on the subject of intellectual opposition to the Iraq adventure, here's an article from The Guardian published in February 2003, with comments from Hitch's old mate Julian Barnes, Harold Pinter, Terry Eagleton, Noam Chomsky, J.G. Ballard, and a few others.
Here's what Terry Eagleton said, and I agree with it:
"We must take seriously the idea that for humanitarian issues we must do this, and the left needs to take into account the fact that if the second UN resolution goes through they will lose a lot of support. However, those on the other side must face questions from us about why we didn't do this five years ago? Why are we clinging to the coat tails of the States when they have never made the humanitarian reasons a priority for war.
Questions such as these assume that there is an answer, that there is black and there is white but there is sometimes a balance of evils. I believe that there are some moral situations that do not have a straightforward answer and I don't have a pat answer for this or any other moral issue.
I am against war because, while the humanitarian argument is strong, the long-term backlash is not a price I am prepared to pay.
I believe the process of containment has worked fine for 12 years and while the things we can do might be inadequate there are options. Giving the weapons inspectors more time and more power is a start; contain and supervise him while we wait for a bullet to get rid of him."
Being as we're a Hitch Watch site, it's only fair to recall what Hitch said around the same time:
"If there has been a "drumbeat," then, it has been pounding itself out and rat-a-tat-tatting away for a very considerable time. Those who now call for "more time"—for inspections or what have you—are acting as if the confrontation with Saddam Hussein began only a few months ago, as if he did not seek such a confrontation, and as if it were avoidable. These are all different versions of the same elementary mistake.
Saddam Hussein could have bought his regime a fresh lease on its ghastly life if he had been even slightly willing to "make nice," and the United States could have lowered its muzzle deep into Iraqi oil-wells on the same unspoken understanding. It is even possible that at the last moment Saddam will try the options of "self-preservation" that his fans believe he both possesses and understands. There would be those, some of them in high positions in Washington, who would be willing to dump the Iraqi opposition and the Kurds on just this wager. However, those who believe that the only way for America to get access to oil is to take the chances of conflict and perhaps occupation have not even bothered to study the history of the region and can't be expected to start now."
And we shouldn't forget how chirpy Hitch was in the euphoria of victory in April of that year.
"So it turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their demands were just. "No War on Iraq," they said—and there wasn't a war on Iraq. Indeed, there was barely a "war" at all. "No Blood for Oil," they cried, and the oil wealth of Iraq has been duly rescued from attempted sabotage with scarcely a drop spilled....
Oh yes, the Arab street did finally detonate, just as the peace movement said it would. You can see the Baghdad and Basra and Karbala streets filling up like anything, just by snapping on your television. And the confrontation with Saddam Hussein did lead to a surge in terrorism, with suicide bombers and a black-shirted youth movement answering his call. As could also have been predicted, those determined to die are now dead. We were told that Baghdad would become another Stalingrad—which it has. Just as in Stalingrad in 1953, all the statues and portraits of the heroic leader have been torn down."
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"Most of the Angry Young Men of the 50s metamorphosed into Dyspeptic Old Buffers."
Terry Eagleton has stirred up a hornets' nest of antipathy with a piece entitled Only Pinter Remains in The Guardian on July 7.
"For almost the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life. One might make an honourable exception of Harold Pinter, who has wisely decided that being a champagne socialist is better than being no socialist at all; but his most explicitly political work is also his most artistically dreary.
The knighting of Salman Rushdie is the establishment's reward for a man who moved from being a remorseless satirist of the west to cheering on its criminal adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. David Hare caved in to the blandishments of Buckingham Palace some years ago, moving from radical to reformist. Christopher Hitchens, who looked set to become the George Orwell de nos jours, is likely to be remembered as our Evelyn Waugh, having thrown in his lot with Washington's neocons. Martin Amis has written of the need to prevent Muslims travelling and to strip-search people "who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan". Deportation, he considers, may be essential further down the road."
Salman Rusdie himself replied on July 9 with a letter to the Guardian entitled No Fondness for the Pentagon's politcs, which I quote in full. I think Salman has been dumped on quite enough of late and that his clarification of his stance deserves to be heard and absorbed. His opinions on the Iraq Invasion and occupation, for example, are in refreshingly stark contrast to Hitch's.
"In the past weeks I have had to endure an astonishing quantity of vitriolic attacks. It has been quite like old times. I find myself quite unable to respond to the many attacks on my character, my integrity, the quality of my writing, my courage or lack of it, my alleged weaknesses as a husband and even my choice of home address. I have learned the hard way that public opinion, once formed, simply exists, and even if it is utterly detached from the truth it acquires, by repetition and credulity, a truth of its own. So be it. I am grateful to those who have spoken up on my behalf, at a time when I have felt too shocked and hurt to do so myself.
But allow me, rashly, perhaps, to take issue with Terry Eagleton's description of me as someone who has been "cheering on [the west's] criminal adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan" (Comment, July 7). As to Afghanistan, it is true that I, in common with many others, not all of them on the right, and many of them in the Muslim world, believed that the hold of al-Qaida and the Taliban over Afghanistan needed to be broken. Eagleton may be the kind of "radical" who would prefer those fascist, terrorist gangsters to have retained their hold over a nation state, but that is his problem, not mine.
As to Iraq, it is true that I wrote, before the beginning of the Iraq war, that there was a case to be made for the removal of Saddam Hussain. In the same article, however, I also wrote that the American plans for regime change, unsupported as they were by a broad international coalition, were not justifiable.
Since that time, anyone with the slightest knowledge of my activities in the US must know that, as president of PEN American Center, I led that organisation in a number of campaigns against the Bush administration's policies, that I participated in any number of anti-war events and that in my public lectures all over America I have for years been a vocal critic of the Iraq war. It is bizarre and untruthful to say that I have a "fondness for the Pentagon's politics"."
One of the most thoughtful attempts at rebutting Terry's arguments and sticking up for Salman has come from a blogger known as WorldbyStorm at The Cedar Lounge Revolution (for Lefties to stubborn to quit), posted on July 13.
"I see nothing in what Rushdie wrote in response to Eagleton that would make me believe that ‘he might have supported an invasion under different circumstances’. But even if he did, and how on earth is one to know what is inside the mind of another, this smacks of an almost Orwellian approach to the inner self (although considering that Eagleton is a champion of Slavoj Žižek - who I like too, but would regard the veracity of his propositions with some caution - that perhaps goes with the territory, after all, if you believe there is a methodology for interpreting the complexity of human thoughts and feelings it is hardly more than a further step to believing that you can predict them even when the person says otherwise!) . How can Rushdie - someone who is in a much more exposed position - defend himself against the charge that what ‘he really really means, no really’ is some course of action he didn’t, and couldn’t take?"
Josh Strawn also chimed in with a rather harsher critique, entitled Terry Eagleton's Pro-Fascist Zealotry atJewcy.com (also July 9). But we mustn't mind his language too much; after all, he is a signatury to the Euston Manifesto.
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Atheist thinks we ought to behave morally but is unable to explain why
In May, Hitch had a fairly extended email debate with Theologian Douglas Wilson on the theme of Is Christianity Good for the World? I know!—Don't all yawn at once! The main meat of the argument consisted largely of Wilson's patient efforts to get Hitch to admit that without God there is no basis for establishing what morality SHOULD be, and Hitch deftly avoiding giving an answer while pretending to have done exactly that. For instance:
Wilson: In your concluding paragraph you make a great deal out of your individualism and your right to be left alone with the "most intimate details of [your] life and mind." Given your atheism, what account are you able to give that would require us to respect the individual? How does this individualism of yours flow from the premises of atheism? Why should anyone in the outside world respect the details of your thought life any more than they respect the internal churnings of any other given chemical reaction? That's all our thoughts are, isn't that right? Or, if there is a distinction, could you show how the premises of your atheism might produce such a distinction?
Hitch: This is mildly amusing casuistry which—aside from its recommendation of Wodehouse—contains nothing that distinguishes it from Islam or Hinduism or indeed humanism. Were I a Christian, I would be highly unsettled by the huge number of concessions that Wilson makes. Since I am not a Christian, I mutter a mild "thank you" for his admission that morality has nothing at all to do with the supernatural. My book argues that religious belief has now become purely optional and cannot be mandated by anything revealed or anything divine. It is one among an infinite number of private "faiths," which do not disturb me in the least as long as its adherents agree to leave me alone.
This exchange continued through a succession of multi-paragraph messages in which Wilson, out of common decency, addressed Hitch directly as "you" while Hitch, playing to the gallery as usual, addressed nobody in particular and referred to Wilson in the third person particular. This eventually led to a culmination in the final section, where Wilson charged:
On the question of morality, you again attempt an answer: "My answer is the same as it was all along: Our morality evolved." There are two points to be made about this reply. The first concerns evolved morality and the future, and is a variation on my previous questions. If our morality evolved, then that means our morality changes. If evolution isn't done yet (and why should it be?), then that means our morality is involved in this on-going flux as well. And that means that everything we consider to be "moral" is really up for grabs. Our "vague yet grand conception of human rights" might flat disappear just like our gills did.
Our current "morals" are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense getting really attached to them, right? When I am traveling, I don't get attached to motel rooms. I don't weep when I have to part from them. So, in the future, after every ferocious moral denunciation you choose to offer your reading public, you really need to add something like, "But this is just a provisional judgment. Our perspective may evolve to an entirely different one some years hence," or "Provisional opinions only. Morality changes over time"—POOMCOT for short. It would look like this: "The Rev. Snoutworthy is an odious little toad, not to mention a waste of skin, and his proposal that we prosecute the brassiere editors of the Sears catalog on pornography and racketeering charges is an outrage against civilized humanity. But … POOMCOT."
This relates to the second point, which concerns evolved morality and the past. When dealing with people whose moral judgments have differed from yours, do you regard them as "immoral" or as "less evolved?" The rhetoric of your book, your tone in these exchanges, and your recent dancing on the grave of the late Jerry Falwell would all seem to indicate the former. In your choice of words, the people you denounce are to be blamed. The word fulminations comes to mind. You write like a witty but acerbic tenth-century archbishop with a bad case of the gout. But this is truly an odd thing to do if "morality" is a simple derivative of evolution. Are you filled with fierce indignation that the koala bear hasn't evolved ears that stick flat to the side of his head like they are supposed to? Are you wroth over the fact that clams don't have legs yet? When you notice that the bears at the zoo continue to suck on their paws, do you stop to remonstrate with them?
Your notion of morality, and the evolution it rode in on, can only concern itself with what is. But morality as Christians understand it, and the kind you surreptitiously draw upon, is concerned with ought. David Hume showed us that we cannot successfully derive ought from is. Have you discovered the error in his reasoning? It is clear from how you defend your ideas of "morality" that you have not done so. You are a gifted writer, and you have a flair for polemical voltage. But strip it all away, and what do you have underneath? You believe yourself to live in a universe where there is no such thing as any fixed ought or ought not. But God has gifted you with a remarkable ability to denounce what ought not to be. And so, because you reject him, you have great sermons but no way of ever coming up with a text. When people start to notice the absence of texts, the absence of warrant, the absence of reasons, you adjust and compensate with rhetorical embellishment and empurpled prose. You are like the minister in the story who wrote in the margin of his notes, "Argument weak. Shout here."
Back at the end of April, Max, son of Sydney, decided to launch a fresh broadside against his father's nemesis. Sadly we missed this article at the time, but it is certainly worth a ponder. This time Max's accusation was of inexcusible hypocrisy—How can someone who has written a book denouncing God and all who sail in him also accept an invitation to speak at the Family Research Council?
""God Is Not Great" represents little more than the disingenous posturings of a certified fraudmeister who has openly cavorted with the most reactionary elements of the Christian right. If Hitchens had any principles at all -- if he truly feared the cultural and political consequences of the encroachment of religion into public life -- he would have used his still-considerable influence to support organizations and causes that shore up the wall between church and state and which defend the rights of non-believers. Instead, Hitchens has done exactly the opposite.
"In the Fall of 2005, Hitchens gladly accepted the invitation of the Family Research Council to speak before its Witherspoon Fellows. Hitchens subsequently regaled an audience of young Christian right cadres with excerpts from his book, "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America." For attending Hitchens' lecture and participating in several similar events, the FRC's Witherspoon Fellows received academic credit for study at Pat Robertson's Regent University, a school that has placed 150 of its graduates in Bush administration posts.
Presumably Hitchens was aware of the mission of the James Dobson-founded Family Research Council. How could such an intellectual giant be unaware of the FRC's charge to "promote[] the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society?" How could Hitchens have missed the FRC's many "Justice Sunday" rallies staged at mega-churches and telecast across America to advance the confirmation of George W. Bush's most theocracy-minded judicial picks? (To my knowledge, these rallies occured well after happy hour). And how could Hitchens have been ignorant to the FRC's vitriolic crusade to ban abortion and undermine gay rights?"
So it's no surprise that, that he spending more time with Very rich people
After all the rich are the new oppressed masses yearning to be free, or the other way round, or something, but they are certainly "the only game in town."
One of the bright sides of this change of audience is of course that the food is better. No game unfortunately, however a lovely dinner of tri-tip, halibut and peach pie was served, and a humble bottle or two of Clos Du Bois Pinot quaffed. However the most interesting part of the piece comes in the host's recollections of our hero's comments.
"During dinner, Hitch (as his beautiful wife endearingly calls him) offered an additional rebuke: faith and church aligned the German and Russian populations behind Hitler and Stalin, while a skeptical , evidence-oriented population would have likely resisted the quasi-religions of their atrocious leaders."
An evidence-orientated sceptical population eh? I wonder how a group like that would react to Hitchens' laughable attempts to convince us that Iraq did indeed posess weapons of mass destruction?
One is reminded of St Augustine's famous quip, "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet"
Shadowy feminist gang OBJECT hosts a Lady Party at the Echoplex, featuring music by girl-fronted Journey cover band Infinity, MC'ing by Jill Soloway, and the all-star tribute Fuck Christopher Hitchens, in which 10 female comics (Mindy Kaling, Jessi Klein, Dana & Julia) flip off the VF columnist through the magic of comedy.
This week in Slate, Christopher has a laugh at the fate of his old nemesis Conrad Black. Not wanting to rub it in too much it seems (after all, it's not as if they merely discovered Black's carcass on the ground), Hitch takes a decidedly light, if mocking tone. In the first sentence, he announces that he's about to gloat, and Lordy, don't we all know how Hitch loves to gloat.
So we get a nice nod to Wodehouse in the first paragraph about how, after Black crazily tried to use his power to destroy Christopher's career, they were all wondering if Black's next move might be to announce that he was a poached egg and demand a large piece of toast to lie down on. (It's like the one about the guy who suddenly takes his pants off and offers them to the nearest passerby saying he doesn't need them anymore because the world is going to end at 3 o'clock.)
Hitch then taunts his adversaries by claiming to possess an effective "evil-eye" Don't F*** with Hitch" curse that spelled the end for Saddam Hussein, and now, for Conrad Black. (He's just kidding, of course.) The cracks are pretty good and come mainly at Lady Black's expense, rather than at Conrad's. He describes Lady Black's insistence on installing a separate $250,000 bathroom just for her on what was already *her* private jet as a "tumbrel remark" - or something said or done that prompts class war, comparing it to what the British socialite Lady Diana Cooper is said to have once said:
Lady Diana Cooper, when approached by a ragged man who said he hadn't eaten for three days, upbraided him roundly and said: "But my dear man, you must try. If necessary, you must force yourself."
It's a finely crafted piece packed with cinematic and pet literary references, and I don't think any of us are sad to see Conrad Black getting what he deserves, even if Hitch gets to brag about it. It's nice to see him in a good mood for a change.
(P.S. I didn't get the joke in the last sentence of the Postscript. Anyone care to explain?)
From the archives, let's relish the journalism of Jeff Koopersmith at the American Politics Journal.
First from 1999, here's Stunned Inarticulate, a look at the wanderings of Kenneth Starr that has the following observations on our Hitch:
"Starr's modus operandi became crystal clear this week with the latest absurdity: the investigation of Sidney Blumenthal for "lying under oath" about Monica Lewinsky's reputation at the White House as a "stalker." It now seems a given that Starr knew about the so-called "affidavit" that was going to be offered by ultra-left-wing writer Christopher Hitchens -- a British citizen who makes his living largely by attacking the United States.
"When Hitchens realized that the trap had backfired, he was quick to announce, on national television, that he would not testify to Congress that Blumenthal had spread negative gossip about Lewinsky and that he would "go to jail" rather than nail Blumenthal as a perjurer. The fact that Blumenthal never perjured himself in the first place
