The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Michael Maiello's picture

    Was Christopher Hitchens An Overrated White Dude?

    Amanda Marcotte's quick reaction to Christopher Hitchens' passing was to post a pretty good headshot of him up at the Overrated White Dudes tumblr, a decision she explains in more detail here at Pandagon.  Elsewhere, she has argued (rightly, I think) that people who react to this by angrily crying "too soon" are taking the ridiculous position that Hitchens, a career bomb thrower who spoke ill of the dead whenever it suited him, should somehow be off limits for a blogger.

    Also, I realize that Hitchens is a divisive figure within what we're calling the left these days.  Hitchens was too boisterous, opinionated and stubborn to fit in with the newly emerging polite lefty society that has sadly developed aspects of social conservatism by the adoption of (well intentioned) speech and behavior codes.

    He also supported the Iraq war and never repented or recanted, a crime that many feel is unforgivable.  It's true that after 9/11, Hitchens looked at the dictatorships that collectively make up the Middle East and, as an atheist, saw that these societies were also in thrall to a mysticism that some extremists used to justify violence on the scale of mass murder and he took the illiberal position that the West had to defend itself aggressively against what he thought was a powerful threat.

    I have always disagreed with him about that.  And, once upon a time, polite lefty society disagreed with George Orwell about the very real evil and threat of Stalin and had I lived back then with the mentality I have today, I probably would have disagreed with Orwell, too.

    Hitchens got Iraq wrong but perhaps for the right reasons.  It really is a problem that so much of the world is lorded over by dysfunctional and erratic dictatorships.  It really is a problem that people kill each other over fairy tale beliefs.  It's really impolite to say such things, but Hitchens was never afraid to be impolite.  That's a good thing.

    So, I don't think Hitchens qualifies as a overrated white dude.  If anything, it would have been better if he had been more highly rated.  If his work in helping to expose the atrocities of the Viet Nam war had been part of the military's training regimen, maybe Abu Ghraib would not have happened.  If people took Hitchens' work on the hypocrisies of Mother Theresa more seriously, much human suffering could have been avoided.  If more people in places of influence read and took seriously Hitchens' brilliant criminal indictment of Henry Kissinger, maybe the former Secretary of State would actually have to stand trial in his lifetime.  The very best of Hitchens was underrated, to society's detriment.

    Speaking of overrated white guys, I'm guessing that Marcotte and I disagree about the relative merits of Woody Allen (I think he's America's Shakespeare in terms of both output and quality) but in Manhattan one of the best recurring jokes is that Woody Allen's character is friends with a couple who make lists of overrated people for fun.  Among them are Vincent Van Gogh, Miles Davis, and Mozart.  "They're wonderful," is Allen's reply.  "Every single one of them is magnificent."

    I can't quite say the same for everybody on Marcotte's overrated white dude list (and I do find it funny) but come on... She's got Jim Morrison on there and not Bono.  And Ben Stiller?  Really?  For shame.  If she ever puts David Foster Wallace up there, my head might explode like in Infinite Jest.  Mmmm.  Chili.

     

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    If anything I now know about Elevatorgate. 


    Christopher who?  

    Okay, that is an exaggeration but not much of one.  What little I knew of him was that he was very well educated and an accomplished word smith on interesting topics but there was too much of the snark about him for my tastes although I can see how well suited that was to  the milieu he found himself in.

    There has been so much posted online by and about him in the past few days that I find myself feeling surprising sympathetic to him.  His career as a successful polemicist seems to have marred him.  Maybe polemicists should not be paid for their polemics, certainly not by the word or article. That can make them strained and at times less than sincere.

    His article in the upcoming January Vanity Fair makes me think he was a better man than his previous work had led me to think.  Still it is hard to feel sad for him just when he found what had been looking for all those years: death by dissolution.  He seemed to welcome it.

    Another non-fan blog for the record:

    The Other Christopher Hitchens | Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones

     


    Christopher who? Well certainly not this Christopher.

    http://www.chris-floyd.com/


    I'm sorry but... Kevin Drum and his self proclaimed "mind of an engineer" wants to say there's no "there there" in the body of work by Hitchens?  This is part of what's bothering me about the Hitchens blowback -- there's so little respect for aesthetics involved.


    Maybe this pointer from KD will redeem him in your eyes.  It is just loaded with aesthetics.from a woman who knew him personally.

    Regarding Christopher | Katha Pollitt @ The Nation 


    I did love the Politt piece.


    The Pollitt piece resonates with what I got from Hitchens' writing. And she knew him personally. I see a man hungering for black-and-white certainty, which he couldn't find in religion. So he finally found it in aggressive irreligion, and in hooking up with others who saw the world in black-and-white, good-vs-evil terms. His mistake was in thinking such certainty was attainable or even desirable. I suspect he drank to mask his doubts that he'd made the right choice.


    Let's cut to the credits here - Americans are suckers for English accents. Especially ones that have a broad and literary education, and can debate Oxford-style. 

    As a thought experiment, take pretty much any Hitchens speech or riff, and transplant it into a Texan's mouth. If you do, you'll find he often says stuff so awful you'll want to stab him in the face with a fork.

    He wasn't just pro insanities like Iraq, his love of war went back to rpecious little crusades like the Falklands. His political extremism wasn't just of the late-in-life Right-Wing variety, earlier in life he was a Trot. He stabbed and double-crossed people who personally lifted him up, as violently as those he opposed in hiw work. His attacks on religion were rabid. 

    He ranted, frothed and drooled his entire life, stem to stern, soup to nuts.

    But, yes, he was literate, articulate, and English. Which gives him a leg up in sounding intelligent. 

    Just so long as ignored the froth.


    I love ya, Q.  But what you're saying just makes no sense to me in light of this:

    http://harpers.org/archive/2001/02/0070211


    No.... Hitchens makes no sense in light of that.

    I regard Kissinger as a war criminal myself, but to lurch from that to backing the Iraq War strikes me as a slight in consistency, to say the least.

    Hitchens just seemed to love furious attacks - in general. Sometimes I enjoyed who he was chewing on, but there was never much mistaking the fact that he was rabid. 

     


    Nietszche was like that too.  Another dude I like.


    See, I adore Nietzsche - but don't find him rabid. 

    I guess what I'm after is that there is now a whole class of commentator who aims to simply create controversy, uproar. They know where the limits are on what can be said, and then... they deliberately crash through them.

    Sometimes, it's useful when people do that. Especially if they've thought about an issue deeply, or have particular experiences that are relevant. 

    Sometimes, it's just people crashing through it for the sheer joy of it, snubbing the powerful, chasing thoughts down new paths. Great.

    But for some, it's just a habit. And it's usually pursued because it gives them cash, and cachet. A name, really.

    That was Hitchens. 

    Seems to me that people are doing it more and more. And that includes from "the Left." I can't read George Monbiot or Naomi Klein or a raft of others much anymore. Shame, really.

    But Hitchens? He never knew what he was for, other than... Hitchens.


    Hitchens just seemed to love furious attacks - in general. Sometimes I enjoyed who he was chewing on, but there was never much mistaking the fact that he was rabid. 


    I don't get it.  Q is the coffee calling the tea coffee?


    Always a relief to hear from you, Donal.


    I'm stealing this comment from somewhere else because it is funny and...because it is right.

    "So fucking what if Hitchens was right about Kissinger? Pinning a medal on Hitchens for calling a kettle black is pathetic."


    Let's cut to the credits here - Americans are suckers for English accents.


    Nonsensical. Christopher Hitchens was never a Tory. Did you bother to read about him before ranting madly? Christopher Hitchens was a Marxist from a young age to the age he died. He did reduce his affiliation with that title as time went on, admitting late in life to being a conservative Marxist. Never once did he even step within several hundred miles of Center, let alone right of center. His support for both the Falkland Islands and Iraq came from a solely Left perspective, that the far right, consisting of Totalitarianism and Fascism, should be utterly destroyed. To paint him as anything but Left is to leave a rude and amateur canvas behind. Or were you unaware that the spectrum went further than Sky News?


      I don't think support for the Iraq war can come from a Left perspective. He ceased to be a leftist.


    I didn't like him.   I don't know whether he was overrated or not, because I don't what his rating was.  But I didn't like his attitude or his sensibility, and never heard him say anything that was either original or notably thoughtful or reflective.

    Snark and sneering strike me as cowardly.   I prefer serious people.  And I'm not a big fan of the tradition in letters that is often called "wit".  People who have received the blessing of brains and the opportunity for an education have an obligation to use those gifts for something more constructive than devising clever barrages of pugnacious insults.

    I also dislike drunks.  I saw him speak on some televised panel of chit-chatters about a decade ago, and he was obviously hammered.  Apparently he made a habit of that kind of thing.   I have trouble respecting people who show so little respect for others.


    John Knowles wrote in A Separate Peace that "sarcasm is the tool of the weak."  I say it's the tool of the week.  I love snark and sneering.  And here's the truth -- there's no such thing as victimless humor.  That's a good thing.

    I dislike your characterization of being drunk as "having little respect for others."  F. Scott Fitzgerald pissed a lot of people off when he had imbibed too many, but what he gave us in exchange was worth the inconvenience.  I'm appalled by this recent, schoolmarm expectation of sobriety in public.

    As Oscar Wilde said, "work is the curse of the drinking class."


    Being drunk is stupid.

    Back in the day, I used to coach one of my son's soccer teams.  One of our best players had the irritating habit of sometimes showing up for the games high.  When he was high, he wasn't as good and we didn't do as well.   It was disrespectful to his teammates and the work and effort they had expended in making an honest effort to succeed.  They got pissed off about it, and with good reason.  He was letting them down, shirking his responsibilities and commitments.

    If you go on a public affairs program to discuss some issue of moment, and a number of people have put in an honest day's work to produce that program, and you are appearing with fellow-guests who are also willing to conduct themselves like adults and professionals to have a civil and probing discussion, and presumably put their best efforts forward for the audience that has itself taken some time out of their all-too-finite lives to either deposit themselves in a seat or in front of their television to learn something, the least you could do is not show up plastered.

    I generally like schoolmarms - at least better than mouthy drunks and attention-seeking railers like Christopher Hitchens.


    I love ya, Dan.  But we're going to have to disagree on this. 

    I get what you're saying about responsibility and all but there is great value to be found in engaging with society, from time to time, with an altered perspective, as has been proven by the best of the Jazz Age writers (Fitzgerald and Hemingway) as well as the beats, as well as Jim Carroll, as well as Jay McInerney, as well as Snoop Dogg.

    You know that I'm a libertine.  Destor23 is connected to my real name here on this site, so I won't go into details.  But I do not believe that we always owe the rest of the world our sober selves.


    My guess is that for every great writer you can name whose drinking or drug use was a sometimes-constructive part of their creative process, you can name ten others who ruined their promise, or never got any promise going, because of some form of substance abuse or self-destructive indulgence.


    I'm mostly (if not completely) in agreement with Dan here. If you want to be drunk or high on your own time, that's your choice (although I still don't think it's a wise one). When other people are depending on you, then you're being a jerk.



    Our school instituted a no-pizza-delivery policy because of this movie - all pizza places in the vicinity were notified that they could not deliver to our school. It was horrible. I had to have them deliver the pizza to the bank next door instead. devil


    “I do not believe that we always owe the rest of the world our sober selves.” I’m not a drinker, but I found this line extremely profound. Then again, I’m a writer who frequently uses snark, satire and parody to get my point across… so what the hell do I know. Great line Destor.

    I have been listening to Chris (he hated that moniker) for two days now.

    And, yes my head is about to explode.

    It is so very easy to make a list of quotes by a man and a list of his behaviors and prove that he was a putz or a prick or a traitor or....

    In the end Joyce was just a prick. I mean he constantly begged money from his mumsy while he sucked down ale and whiskey and absolutely refused to appear at her funeral.

    However, Ulysses is a (or is it an) hilarious romp and people spend their lives breaking down the tale of an Irish Jew (with panties in his pocket) into a code that explains the universe.

    If there is a target of the tea partiers, it would have to be Chris who is really the picture of an elitist member of the most despised intelligentsia that is destroying this country....

    All of which endears me to him.

    Take his friend Chris Buckley (who wishes to be called Chris). This son of an elite right political sect has this falsetto voice that makes me shriek in pain every single time I hear him speak. This voice to me depicts the pretensions of an elite class that could not possibly understand the loves and the hates and the pains experienced by the man on the street.

    Q is right of course. The English accent takes away a bunch of sins or at least covers them up a bit.

    And it is so much fun to listen to Hitch when he is arguing my side of things even though he could never possibly under the loves and the hates and the pains experienced by the man on the street.

    On the Anglican Church:

    What do you get if you cross an Anglican with a Jehova's Witness?

    Well you end up with someone knocking on your door for no particular reason.

    On Sarah Palin:

    Everything she does is for effect, she’s, and is always deniable. She could switch back in a minute. At the moment she thinks her tea party crowd wants to hear this kind of thing so she’ll say that. She’s been out to say, ‘well, I don’t know but I think the President ought to produce his birth certificate. I’m not saying it isn’t a good question.

    Then later, cause she’s got to go to the Gridiron dinner in Washington, and learn how to use a knife and fork and be taught by Fred Malek. She takes it back. She’s a disgraceful opportunist and a real moral coward.”

    “…. At least Richard Nixon had the ill fortune to look like what he was: a haunted scoundrel and repressed psychopath. Whereas the usefulness of Sarah Palin to the right-wing party managers is that she combines a certain knowingness with a feigned innocence and a still-palpable blush of sex.

    But she should take care to read her Alexander Pope: That bloom will soon enough fade, and it will fade really quickly if she uses it to prostitute herself to the Nixonites on one day and then to cock-tease the rabble on the next.

      I have some pc problems so that is all I have right now except to say that Hitch's views morphed over the years just as much as his countenance. The pretty boy of English schooling finally morphed into Lex Luther.

    The man was interesting.

     

     


    One star review sampler of Hitchens book "A Long Short War", from 2003, in which he supports the war in Iraq and derides those who didn't support the glorious invasion of Iraq as 'reactionaries':

    Z. Alani:  ...How can anyone in their sound mind call this a liberation? When in history has an occupation liberated its occupied? What has this invasion brought? Nothing but the very same terror that the US is supposed to wage war against. It is sad that no one realizes that WAR is the biggest TERROR that any people can experience.

    A. Ceasar: Christopher Hitchens is one of a new and insidious breed of political pundit. Like his fellow chickenhawk and laptop liberator, Andrew Sullivan, Hitchens is a transplanted Englishman who came to the US to tell us what our foreign policy should be, what constitutes American patriotism, and where our soldiers should be sent to die...

    Odd coincidence that Hitchens death was so close to the official end of this long, long war, and a conflict not considered over by any means.  A war which prematurely ended the lives of tens of thousands, and permanently damaged the minds, bodies and lives of many more.


    I don't get the big deal here, about a non-American coming here to live and telling us what our foreign policy should be.  That is, in fact, the goal of America.  Come.  Join us.  Criticize us.  We hope it makes us better!

    Hitchens was no chickenhawk, either.  Though he didn't serve in the military, he had the guts to put himself into harm's way for a story.  This is the man who broke the My Lai massacre.  He is no chicken.

    Hate his writing, if you must, but I can give you a list of bad, bad, places he's gone that most of the rest of us wouldn't.


    My Lai = Hersh, not Hitchens, I believe.

    Hitchens liked to talk about My Lai, though, as a way to make Haditha sound more pleasant. 

    Engaging chap, Hitchens.

    See also: My Lai and Colin Powell. Job well done.


    You're right, I'm a dumbass regarding My Lai.  Though Hitchens did do a lot of useful work documenting Vietnam atrocities.


    As I noted below, he was a Troskyite, which makes his concern about American atrocities in Vietnam very parochial.


    it should also be noted Hitchens was far from reporting the Vietnam war at the time of the Vietnam war, aside from writing for socialists in London in 1970 from the safe confines of his college as the war was winding down.  (Calley was arrested in 1969 for the 1968 My Lai massacre)

    Chickenhawk likely fits him well.


    I wasn't a fan. If Hitchens was trying to replicate George Orwell's life, he failed. Orwell took a bullet in his war. At least Hitchens seems to have faced death with courage, so that's one thing he got right.


    I always viewed Hitchens sort of like a Penn Jillette without the sense of humor. But I really only know of him over the last several years ... don't know much about his early stuff on Viet Nam and such.

    I suspect it's more common to view Woody Allen as America's Shakespeare for those who live in New York. But hey ... count blessings; in LA, they'd 'prolly vote Aaron Spelling for Shakespeare. ;-)

    Bono needs on that list ASAP. Yes.


    [first off, any "overrated white dude that has Robert Plant & Paul Simon? George Lucas? We're in the Valley of the Who Cares here. And discovering Sid Vicious was overrated? Like there was any other point from the beginning? Perhaps someone needs a dictionary to explain "Punk", which is kind of the antithesis of punk itself. Define nihilism and crap exploitation  and sensationalism, and furiously anti-talent and effort? oh well, the clue train left a long time ago]

    I view Hitchens as a male Maureen Dowd with a Brit accent and a self-glorifying drink problem who could occasionally write a useful or entertaining article if it weren't about politics.

    For someone who started out a Trotskyite and ended up a racist, unapologetic imperialist, it's hard to take him seriously. All evil comes from religion, he contends, ignoring gulags, slaughter of millions of Georgians & Ukrainians, the millions killed from Mao's famines with his ill-conceived Great Leap Forward, Pol Pot's back to the rice paddies, and all those little petty killings from Shining Path and others who from my vantage point appear a lot like little inspired Al Qaedas running around. What's not to like?

    He could have actually plotted out a middle way for Iraq that could have brought something new and different - say a precursor to the Arab Spring that he now contends his beloved Iraq invasion inspired. But for him, from his comfy office chair or place at the bar, peaceful revolution is better pushed from the barrel of a gun. Orwell dreamed 

    But his Iraq invasion was just another British deja vu - after Britain overthrew the Ottoman empire, they installed their very own religious dictator to keep afternoon tea on schedule (pronounced 'shedule', mind you), and when that didn't quite work out, they invaded and put the boot in, as old Winny documents during his early career (when he was shedding the infamy of his cockup at Gallipoli). But not to worry - the Brits had a good unique plan - "Britain granted independence to Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retainedmilitary bases and transit rights for their forces." Effing brilliant - I hope they built a huge armored embassy and arranged amnesty for any remaining troops.

    Gitmo is just a natural bit of machinery in Hitch's world. Even 8 years after the Iraq invasion, he was still preaching endless war and "the Muslims are coming, the Muslims are coming", unaware that most of the Arab world is much like him, just wanting to get the work off their desk and head to the local gathering spot to chat and be entertained, only they didn't have getting sloshed as an obligatory ingredient.

    My guess is Hitchens hated the tee-totaling aspect of religion more than relition. After all, he's a grand lover of superstition, that a US/British invasion would uphold the rights of the poor and downtrodden than local dictators, despite the evidence of hundreds of years with the Raj (think Mountbatten would wipe the poor's asses like Mother Teresa did? Did she steal more money than the East India Tea Company or then the occupying forces in Iraq making off with billions in cash loaded on pallets?). And is Hitchens going from cocktail party to cocktail party somehow coming up with a better solution for the folks who have to suffer army units breaking down their doors or flattening their houses looking for "terrorists", as if that menace would be worse?

    While there is certainly hypocrisy in the Catholic position on poverty and abortion, who is he attacking? The church, the idea that a religious group would wash the dying, or just the idea that Mother Teresa might not have spent all those donations well? I remember chuckling over his comments, for a short bit, but it's not like there's an end to poverty in India, and if she did embezzle donations, for what purpose? She wasn't driving in limos like Baghwan or Sai Baba or our American preachers. 

    Mostly, Hitchens just liked to say rude remarks and take contrarian opinions, though not as nicely as the rudepundit. Still, occasionally he had a funny line, such as:

    "The thing about mine fields is that they're very easy to lay, but they're very difficult and dangerous, and even expensive to get rid of' - the perfect description of Prince Charles's first wife."

    But when you've built that humor around a horrid illegal but worst, bungled invasion that simply spread more imperialism and suffering than finding a solution for what you think is a huge problem - well, you're an asshole. Certainly Hitchens was in no danger of having his apartment flattened in the name of stopping terror, and he's unapologetic about... anything. He couldn't even define a legacy aside from obnoxious contrarian, though prolific should at least be ascribed. Oh well, Andrew Sullivan will probably heap praises on him long after he's been made lunch. Sorry, no drinks to follow.

     


    Obviously, I disagree with you Peracles, but damn.  That was a well written comment.  You've got some serious talents, pal.


    Glad to entertain.

    I read an interview from the leader of The Fall, who managed to get me much more suspicious of all The Clash types who wore their class sensitivities on their sleeve, to great monetary success. Unfortunately or not it made me more aware of everybody's schtick that we keep running into the ground. Hitchens' has just left the building, but there will be others to follow.


    Mostly, Hitchens just liked to say rude remarks and take contrarian opinions, [...] Still, occasionally he had a funny line

    That's the essence behind saying he's a lot like Penn ... with the exception that Penn can choose to be funny as hell about it at will. Hitchens seemed to strike upon the good one-liner occasionally ... after far too much work.

    IMO, it's a craving attention thing ... a tendency to exclaim "Fuck GOD! He's just an imaginary friend for people with weak minds!" at high decibels in a busy line at Starbucks *guarantees* a bit of attention (heh, in exactly the same way as "Fuck the low B!" in certain circumstances, it turns out). I could totally see Hitchens doing something like that.


    The "craving attention thing" is something that could be leveled at just about everybody on the blogosphere, even if one is hiding behind an anonymous avatar, at one point or another. To this extent, one may posit that ill feelings toward the Hitchens, Kardashians and Snookies of the world is fueled by some jealousy that they found a way to cash in on the thing.


    jealousy that they found a way to cash in on the thing.


    I know just what you mean...I myself am steady hating on Ron Jeremy.


    That guy should *not* participate in anything that involves a video camera and his own nudity ... for the sake of future humanity, if nothing else.


    Hell, I suppose that could be "leveled" at anyone you want to level it at for any trait you decided to discuss ... particularly if your purpose was to engage in personal attacks. Of course, that doesn't implicitly make a decision to randomly do so into an observation based on measured thought or relevance in context.


    Comparing Hitchens to Maureen Dowd is interesting. As the discussion of his passing has developed, I have come to think of him as an alternate version of David Brooks.

    They both have made considerable efforts to establish themselves as "independent" observers willing to speak truth against power and the status quo but both have carried water for that power in the moments when their voices mattered the most.

    They both exude the unexpressed question; Why can't other people be more like me? The same rhetorical device used on different groups.


    This country is full of "truthtellers," ranting heads who claim to expose media lies, defy political correctness, challenge the corporate power structure, whatever. They fancy themselves brave freethinkers, but they're mostly conformists who articulate the standard talking points of their particular herd, sheep who stand up and defiantly shout, "BAH!"

    Hitchens was the real thing. He managed to poke the world in it's eye over and over his whole life, defying received wisdom from the left, the right, and everywhere in between right up until the end. In my view, Hitchens gave us a gift of genuine irreverence wrapped in exquisite wit. Whether he was egotistical or inconsistent or chauvinistic or dickish or drunk or just plain wrong is beside the point.


    Yes!  It actually took the guy dying for me to start to see this.  We're so caught up in being right and defending our positions and, sometimes sadly, developing opinions that will win us the approval of others... and Hitchens didn't care about that.  He honestly expressed his thoughts, consequences be damned.  Wrong sometimes?  Sure.  But I'm going to think about this the next time I think, "Obama disagreed with me, I'm not going to vote for him."  I'm going to think about this the next time I have the impulse to judge anybody by their conformity to my own opinions.  Because, like Hitchens, they're probably making other, major contributions to the world.


    I'm going to think about this the next time I have the impulse to judge anybody by their conformity to my own opinions.

    But, but ... that's exactly how Hitchens operated, demanding conformity to his idiosyncratic world view. For all his avowed contrarianness, he was a rigid, rigid man. He managed to ignore how so many of his opinions were inconsistent over time and with each other; if you didn't agree with his position du jour, you were an ignorant slut.

    He started out professing to be a Marxist, but couldn't even admit he had switched sides for at least the past decade. While sucking at the teat of the rich and powerful, he claimed he was simply what he'd always been: a "conservative" Marxist. Marx's mistake was not realizing how "revolutionary" capitalism really was. What bollocks! The essence of revolution is people people seizing power over their own lives from those who have usurped it. Not on Hitchens' agenda.

    What he opposed about totalitarianism was views other than his own being imposed on people. George Bush conquering and americaforming Iraq? All good -- and the wishes of those unenlightened Iraqis be damned! I keep coming back to the comparison with Orwell, who remained a consistent democratic socialist, despite his disillusionment with the Soviet system. He and Hitchens both got educated above their class, but Orwell's sympathies always remained with the downtrodden. Sorry to say, Hitchens sold out.


    Conformity is not the same as rigidity


    Well I know lots of conservatives who'll say "it's my right to guzzle as much gas as I want let's bomb the middle east back to the stone age, the only thing government should do is defense" and sit back smugly in their conceited opinion. I don't see exactly what Hitchens accomplished aside from doing this in a British accent.


    Kim Jong-il and Hitchens.

    God laughs.


    Dagblog can be better than this.  Maybe you should examine why, if someone disagrees with you, you cheer their death.  It's not politics all the time, dude. 


    Very well put.  RE: Iraq, I didn't know much about Hitch prior to 9/11, so I mostly came to know of him as he parted ways with the Nation and began appearing increasingly on TV.  At first, I found his hawkishness to be completely repugnant, but over time I began to try to understand why in the hell he had taken that stance.  I think that after all he was right about theocracy and totalitarianism.  That's bad stuff everywhere and people of good conscience should oppose it everywhere.  He honestly believed in the greater good of deposing Saddam Hussein.  Though I still don't think it was the right thing to do, especially for the official reasons, it's hard to argue that the world isn't a better place without him around.

    FWIW, I found reconsidering his views on the war to bring a lot of clarity to exactly why I still believe the  war was such a mistake.  We never really had the debate about the war that Hitchens wanted to have.  He got conflated with a lot of the neocons who supported the war because they had similar ends, but Hitchens was in large part saying in public what they would only say in private.  In public, they deceived.  They inflated threats.  Hitchens, on the other hand, was making the argument that Saddam had to go because he was objectively rotten, not that he was an imminent threat to the US.

    Though it's long, I really enjoyed this debate between Hitchens and former UN inspector Scott Ritter.  I think that debate ultimately goes to Ritter, but this, to me, is much closer to the debate we should have had in public.


    "He honestly believed in the greater good of deposing Saddam Hussein.  Though I still don't think it was the right thing to do, especially for the official reasons, it's hard to argue that the world isn't a better place without him around."

    ​Well, I knew a Playboy playmate once who wanted to help children around the world. I had to give her credit, she was right.

    There were a dozen ways to deal with Hussein - it's not a binary question. We'd contained Hussein for 12 years, and once inspectors went into Iraq in Jan 2003, it became obvious that containment was a success. 

    ​You can do regime change as a single bullet - perhaps a bit cleaner way than an $800 billion 8 year occupation based on the false presumption that terrorists from another state that had trained in a 3rd state and attacked a 4th state were all going to hide there and threaten us.

    ​What's even more bullshit is that a band of ragtag Arabs with a grudge were going to be more dangerous than a guy who once had one of the world's major armies and had created his own biochemical weapons and attacked his neighbors. 


    You can do regime change as a single bullet - perhaps a bit cleaner way than an $800 billion 8 year occupation based on the false presumption that terrorists from another state that had trained in a 3rd state and attacked a 4th state were all going to hide there and threaten us.

    And that single bullet would create a power vacuum in Iraq.  It would have saved a lot of American lives and American dollars.  But if one is including the suffering and death of the people of Iraq into the equation, that single bullet would probably created more suffering and more death than the US invasion.  Or required an US invasion to avoid at the very least the ensuing chaos spilling into the larger region (with its subsequent negative impact on the global economy and all the suffering that would ensue from that, to name just one outcome). 


    Huh? Hussein's kids would have taken over, and they just would have been more careful.

    See any big chaos between Assad I & Assad II?  The Shah I and the Shah II?

    How do you think Mubarak filled the power vacuum after Sadat's assassination?

    It's foolish to think the only way to effect change is this full invasion. And I'm certainly not arguing that targeted assassinations is the best way. I.e. we could have promoted democracy in several ways, as an unlikely path.

    But your response, "that single bullet would probably created more suffering and more death than the US invasion.  Or required an US invasion to avoid at the very least the ensuing chaos spilling into the larger region (with its subsequent negative impact on the global economy and all the suffering that would ensue from that, to name just one outcome).

    That's pretty hysterical, no? why would Hussein's assassination spill out more chaos? He wasn't able to invade Saudi to begin with, his army had been weakened too much to invade Iran, there were lots of aerial methods to keep him hemmed in, and he'd never shown himself good at terrorism or secret attacks.

    ​What you're really saying is the invasion had to happen, because all the alternatives would have eventually led to worse, which puts you in some rather strange company, Hitchens being one of the lesser known of these advocates.

     

     

     


    Not hysterical.  At the very least, I have just one word: Kurds.  The single bullet solution is just another way of saying assassination.  Once that happened it is unlikely his sons would have been able to switch into the roles of authority, which is problem with governments who operate on a cult of personality. 

    The Kurds would have most likely taken the opportunity to carve themselves out their Republic, especially since they would believe the US would support them in such a move, and even more so if it was suspected the US was behind the assassination.

    But so much of the chaos violence and death from the invasion and occupation was a result of the various sects cleansing their neighborhoods.  It is very unlikely that this would have been avoided as the various sects vied to take power within the new vacuum. 

    And let's not forget Iran.

    And it is the Sunni and Shiite battle that would spill out into the region, not some military invasion of one state on another. 

    Where did I say the invasion had to happen, because all the alternatives would have eventually led to worse?  I was and always have been against the invasion.  Since we broke it, I have been on the side that we had some obligation to help Iraq to get back on its feet.  You're the one that brought up the single bullet - and then seem appalled that I would respond to it.  And looking at the dynamics of Iraq that removing Hussein revealed shows that it would most likely be the most costly of attempts, even more so than Hitchens' approach. It would seem that you want to live with the notion that invasion was the worst option of all options available, probably because this allows for sense of entitlement to rage against the machine. 

    What is usually not taken into consideration is that the occupation was severely bungled allowing for those dynamics of Iraq society to reveal itself, the same ones you believe just eliminating the head of state and saying "there you go folks, move on with your life" would not reveal.

    But your comment "there were lots of aerial methods to keep him hemmed in" implies that  he had to be dealt with in some fashion.  Hitchens had his pov on what fashion, you had yours, and I had mine.  And so it goes. 

     


    The Sunni Shiite battle happened because we destroyed the centralized government.

    Hussein had a set up central government that would have existed past his death. I gave you several instances where kids took over with no problem.

    The Kurds would have been bludgeoned if they'd tried to leave.

    Iran couldn't have done anything against a standing Iraqi army, nor has Iran shown any signs of invading its neighbors.

    I'm not appalled you responded to single bullet - you just imagine some great tragedy greater than what actually happened - mass chaos, a civil war combined with a small terrorist introduction, huge corruption based on $800 billion of our money, and a blow to our reputation and standing in the world. 

    In general I don't think we have any obligation to put it back together (whatever Colin Powell says), especially if we take moderate commensurate action, rather than an invasion. 

    The only real concern was whether Iraq had WMDs. Other than that, screw it.


    While I think a military threat was necessary to get Hussein to open, that doesn't mean the invasion itself was worthwhile, nor would we play repeated threats if that failed.

    In general, I still think terrorism is a policing action for 90%. We've militarized it by playing their game.


    We are in agreement on these matters. 

    Hussein (as well as his sons) created a lot of enemies including within his inner circle due to his paranoia (and he is probably a poster child for just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you).  While it is within the realm of possibility that his sons could have in the moments right after the assassination taken control, it is also highly likely there would be those within the government and the military who would have attempted to go for a power grab.  And then there was the seething anger of the Shiites who Saddam had oppressed for so long.

    Iran was mentioned not as an invasionary force, military vs. military, but as supplier of supplies to the Iraqis inside like al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which was able to be taking on the US within a month and giving them a hell of a time.


    As far as the Kurds were concerned, they were nicely armed already, and had the sons not been able to immediately establish control over Iraq, they would have moved to establish an independent state.  And would the West stand by (after assassinating the head of state) and let the sons roll in to retake control without intervening?  I don't think so.  It would have been seen as a chance to not only weaken the sons, but also protect the oil supplies.


    Thanks. And your Iraq War example makes the point well. You don't have to agree with him to value his point of view (which many still simply equate with the neo-con argument).


    I suspect that like a lot of people that should have known better, Hitchens was much too influenced by Chalabi telling him what he wanted to believe.


    Interesting observation.  I wonder how I'd have handled a source like Chalabi during my journalism days.  He was a private investigator who worked for hedge funds and claimed to me, quite emphatically and credibly, that a major public company was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.  I spent weeks going through his material.  Happy to say I never wrote on it, as the company continues to thrive, five years later.  But sometimes when you really want a story and you have an emphatic and well placed source, it's easy to fall into thrall.  I imagine Chalabi did that to a great many journalists and policy types.


    Well, of course he was overrated and that would have suited him just fine.  He chewed up the public's hatred of him and spit it out, word by word.  The very notion of being underrated would have been an insult and a sign he wasn't doing his job.

    I remember when he dissed Mother Theresa and put into words the uncomfortable feelings I'd been having about her for a long time.  Even while she was administering to starving children and to mothers who had given birth to so many babies they could no longer produce milk, she would not denounce the Catholic church's stubborn, misogynistic stance on birth control.  It was that acceptance of life as it was and not as it should be and could be that bothered me most about her, and I never understood the hero status she was given.

    I could agree with much of what Hitchens wrote in his earlier days, when he wasn't so much going for the jugular as going for the truth.  He lost me in Iraq, but I had to admire his showmanship when he allowed himself to be waterboarded.  That was his tour de force.

    But in order to keep himself out there, he took up the Ann Coulter shock-'em-till-they-drop guise and gave up integrity for celebrity.  And, yes, that silky British accent is a huge come-on for American commoners.  We cut him some slack when he clearly didn't deserve it.

    I never thought I'd say I'll miss him, but I think I will.


    Coulter?  I think he was too smart to have ever been a Coulter.  Unless, of course, she's some form of performance art, in which case she's brilliant.  I've kind of always suspected that.  Coulter is potentially performance art.  Malkin is the real, dumb thing.


    Following the debate over Hitch, I have to say: "Hitch, I hardly knew thee."  Which kind of a point in and of itself.  I suspect most people have little or no clue about who he is, his thoughts and opinions, the nature of his wit (or lack of it) and writings.  That is not necessarily a knock on him.  An individual's greatest should not be tied necessarily to a fame quotient. Kim Kardashian proves that point.  His influence on society would have depend on six degrees of separation dynamic - he influences the inner circle, who then pass on that influence outward and so (eventually arriving at Kevin Bacon's door step).  But at some level, his influence was based on fame within the inner circle.  Bill Maher brings him on his show, Hitch pontificates, and then Bill goes to the new rules segment.  What was it that Hitch said?  Something about religion I think.

    Part of the swirling debate is that there seems to be a multitude of different threads:

    Was he good observer of society and the world?

    Was he a good socio-political thinker of deep thoughts?

    Was he a good articulator of thoughts through various means, be it sarcasm, wit or something else?

    Was he a good writer regardless of what the value of the content of that writing?

    Was he a good gadfly of various individuals and institutions?

    Was he a good person when he observing, thinking, articulating, writing, gadflying, or doing something else?

    And I don't think there is much agreement about what it means if one answers one or more those questions in the affirmative while answering one or more of the other questions in the negative.

    Which is all a long way of saying that for me personally I can't say he changed how I saw the world or really made me pause and reflect on something from a different angle, or at least not one not already out there.  Had I read more of his writing, watched him in more settings, that might not be the case.  Someone like Orwell (who seems to be brought up a lot in these discussions) did have a huge influence on me because I devoured everything he wrote at certain point in my life.  Had I just scanned a few articles by him, seen him on some tv show a couple of times in passing, I would probably feel the same about Orwell as I do about Hitch.


    This is what's great about books, as opposed to other mediums. We have personal relationships with books. One of my favorite authors these days in Ron Currie Jr. He has two books out. Almost nobody knows who he is. But he's great. Judging writers is intensely personal.


    I was pondering whether to blog about this, but instead, I'll put here:

    Not to go into much personal detail, but for the past few years (say like six), I just have been in a "place" to engage books.  Demanding to much concentration and commitment is one way to put it.  The web on the other hand is like a big huge magazine in the doctor's waiting room.  Nothing too long.  Maybe some days I would find the patience to read one of those nine or ten page essays or investigation reports.  I was trying to remember how many actual books I have read in the past six years (not including books I have previously read) and I came to big number of 1.  The Girl with Dragon Tattoo.  I had bought a few more than that over this time period, but I got through maybe the first chapter or so before putting it aside.  Really pathetic and quite embarrassing.

    I used to read constantly.  Moving from place to place was generally an exercise in moving my boxes of books from one place to another.   Giving them up was out of the question.  Like you said - there is a personal relationship with them.  (I still resist getting a Kindle). 

    In part I bring this up because I now find myself back in a place to engage books.  I went to the local chain store - unfortunately not much in a way of bookstores where I live (a major shift having once been within a hop skip and jump from Powell's in Portland) and picked up the first one that seemed to resonante.

    I picked up I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter.  I sort of knew of his Godel, Esher, Bach but never read it.  And now I wonder why not because it was totally up my alley in terms of interesting reads.  How could this has gotten past me?  In this case a bestseller.  Oh well.  I kind of feeling like I making up for some lost time.  Old friend I have ignored and so many new friends to meet.

    Everything Matters! looks intriguing  This ending statement alone makes me want to pick it up: The excitement that drives the reader from page to page is not about the characters. It’s about seeing what Mr. Currie will try next."

    Maybe that is why Hitch held/holds the fascination with so many people (see, I got it back on topic - looping around).  It was so much exactly what he was saying, but the path that seemed to be unfolding was in some way captivating.  This is why he isn't like someone like Coulter, whose mind appears to be just banging itself against a brick wall - no fun in watching that after the first paragraph. 


    I cant say he changed how I saw the world

    There is a way that Hitchens has influenced my perception of the world. He is part of the evidence to me that we humans are not a very advanced species. In that way he could be characterized as one straw in a mountain of hay but right now the light is shining on him and his life.
     When Hitchens called the Dixie Chicks "skank slags" he did not influence my feelings about the Dixie Chicks. When he advocated for war with Iraq he did not move my thinking towards his position, but he tried to. The way he advocated for the war, though, made me despise him at a time I was coming to despise many people in positions of leadership and influence in this country.  Nothing I have heard in the past or recently can make me feel any admiration at all for him as a person or for his skills and it is because of the way he used those skills. Some combination of influences convinced a hell of a lot of people to support a horrible action, and lying hate filled rhetoric of which Hitchens was good at was a major one of those influences.  
     The thing to me is that, to whatever extent that he was affective, he was affective in selling an abomination and I believe he saw it that way and didn't care. He is being celebrated by some for skills that were a part of the whole that led our country to accept doing something horrible.  
     The first military shots of the war he supported until his end were intense bombing and missile strikes on the population and the life supporting infrastructure of Iraq. "Shock and Awe" was intended to be the equivalent of the atomic bomb strikes on Japan. The carnage experience by the population of Iraq, a population that was less responsible for the Iraqi government than you and I are responsible for the actions of our government, was intended to be horrible. "Shock and Awe" was intended to physically paralyze the country and psychically paralyze the population so that they would capitulate. It was intended to do this by indiscriminately killing men, women, and children and making the world look like after Armageddon to the survivors. That was just the beginning.
    Hitchen's death just provides a temporary focal point for thoughts about how some things come to be as they are. To in any way honor his skills that were used to that end seems the equivalent of admiring a clever serial killer. I have not watched "Dexter" but fans of the show have described it and it seems people really can admire a skilled serial killer so I acknowledge that it may be me who is all screwed up. Can millions of 'right thinking' Americans be wrong?
     


    To acknowledge an individual's skills does not mean one is honoring those skills.  Some may be honoring, in some cases reluctantly or with excessive qualifications, while others are merely pointing out the contours of the phenomenon which was known as Hitchens.  Another phenomenon I tend pull out from time to time, in situations like this, is the artist Andres Serrano and more specifically his photograph Piss Christ, including my first blog here. This photograph not only does not appeal to me, but also seems to me to be an example of art that harms. The world would be a better place had he not produced it. Yet I would be completely off the mark to ignore Serrano as having some influence on society and myself.  He made think - made delve into what I meant when I said "art," what I thought its role in society was, the role of the artist, the role of viewer, and on and on. 

    Influencing someone is not the same as persuading someone to some point of view.  If in engaging Hitchens, you had a deeper resistance to the war in Iraq, he influenced you in a way he did not influence me since I didn't read or hear any of his take on the matter at the time.  Maybe indirectly through others one could show the six degrees of separation between him and me.  And that is important, but different.

    Of course Piss Christ did not result in the death, misery and destruction that accompanied the invasion and subsequent bungled occupation.  Hitchens "couldn't support any policy that involved the continuation of Saddam Hussein in power -- the private ownership of Iraq, in other words, by him and his crime family. I thought you couldn't give your support to any policy that supported that. So to that extent, I'm not apologetic."  You disagree with that, with a lot of passion.  From your view point there is no argument where the side of the angels is.  I'm not looking to argue the merits or lack thereof. The content of what he wrote about is at this particular moment is of little interest to me, in the same way that George Will's support of the Iraq would be if I was pondering the contours of his phenomenon.

    And about Dexter:  On one hand, I find it disturbing that people identify with a serial killer and tune in to watch him do his thing.  But one caveat is that he only kills people who "deserve" to be killed - the bad guys.  He fulfills his impulses by eliminating from society the people from society that hold a similar place in people's minds as someone like Saddam.  This little twist allows people to indulge in what is otherwise a creepy sense of what is entertainment without feeling it is creepy.


    I've never seen Dexter, but there are more and more shows that purport to instruct us in who deserves to be tortured and killed - the new Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods, for example. Even NCIS, which I usually enjoy, has fallen into the habit of reinforcing the vigilante mindset.


    The re-emergence of the vigilante mindset (it never went away but for a time with Death Wish and Dirty Harry and such, it had a nice run at the forefront of people's minds) has to do I believe with the desire for a black-and-white world.  In a chaotic world people are seeking a world that orderly and clear, such as a world where there is a clear cut division between the good and the bad, and it is clear who is who.  A lot of this goes back to 9/11 of course.  But the unsettledness from an bad economy and a government unable to do anything, economically or otherwise, play just as much a role in people's entertainment choices here. 

    Vigilante mindset not only gives a clear-cut view of the world, it more importantly offers a quick and clear resolution or closure to the matter. Dead is dead is dead.  And that is justice and a job well done.  And if the authorities can bring it, there are at a least a few Dirty Harrys out there to save us and give us the closure we seek

    Some of the Dexter fans might argue that the fact it is serial killer who is the "good guy" means the show is offering something more complex than the Blue Bloods, Hawaii Five-O, or 24.  I would argue* that it merely plays on the God-works-in-mysterious-ways framework, or works-through-the-most-usual-souls.  That this justice is dished out by a serial killer is just a wrinkle that doesn't offer any complexity to the story line.

    *for transparency's sake I have to say I have actually only watched one and half episodes.


    Ta-Nehisi Coates looks at Hitchens' flaws, is reminded of Jefferson:

    Virtues don't excuse sins; they cohabit with them. Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder. Perhaps worse he was a slaveholder who comprehended, more than any other, the moral failing of slavery, and it's [sic] potential to bring the country to war, and yet at the end of his life he argued for slavery's expansion, and on his death many of his slaves were sent to the auction block.

    At his end, Jefferson sided with those who would eventually bring about the deaths of 600,000 Americans. He argued that the antebellum South would have either "justice" versus "self-preservation." To paraphrase Churchill, it chose the latter and consequently got neither. But Jefferson was a beautiful writer, and a great intellect, whose thinking and prose I consistently find stunning. This admiration does not negate his moral cowardice. Both are true at the same time.


    No way.  

    Hamilton and Hitchens maybe.  Both were good writers with pugnacious temperaments.  Don't you think if duelling were still legal, Hitchens would likely have been dead already.

    As much as I admire Jefferson's wordsmithing, scientific curiosity and aesthetic sense, temperamentally he was more like that writer who got caught sockpuppeting his own posts a couple of years ago.  Cannot recall his name right now; just remember how he tried to explain it.  It reminds me of Jefferson when he was Governor of Virginia.  So young, so idealistic, so naive.

    Jefferson happened to take office in the worst possible circumstance for trying out novel political ideas: the middle of a war. When Jefferson assumed the governorship, the American colonists were several years deep into their revolutionary conflict with Britain, and things were not going well. Virginia hadn't yet been attacked by Redcoat soldiers, but it was a prime target and one almost completely undefended. Any other governor might have raised an army, but not Thomas Jefferson; his ideals forbade him. It was part of his understanding of a democratic people that they would spontaneously act in their own defense in times of danger. This was their country; if they loved it enough to get together in times of peace, why wouldn't they get together in times of war?

    Unfortunately Jefferson's vision of democratic self-defense worked better in the abstract than in reality. In the winter of 1781, a British army under the command of turncoat general Benedict Arnold invaded Virginia, forcing the government to flee from the new capital of Richmond. In the Spring, Lord Charles Cornwallislaunched a repeat of Arnold's assault, forcing Jefferson to fleeagain. Jefferson was bewildered, unable to understand why the people hadn't risen to their own defense. Exhausted and confused, he declined to seek reelection after his second one-year term ended. He went home the very day his tenure expired, on 4 June 1781, even before a replacement had been elected, leaving Virginia with no executive in wartime for more than a week.


    Yes. He was.


    I always enjoyed Hitchens, though didn't read that much of him.

    His recent piece on Jackie Kennedy was a masterful take on Jackie's role in creating and protecting the image of Camelot that had never seen before. On the other hand, the subject matter was of trifling importance.

    Humor and wit are potent tools in debate, but as Dan says (I think), they need to be in service of the truth. If the piece isn't revelatory of a truth, if it isn't at its core humanizing, it isn't very funny or memorable. I don't know how much of Hitchens fell into this category.

    Snark and sarcasm are sort of like punning--low down on the totem pole of humor. They tend to be put downs and not very revelatory. Watching my own behavior when I've snarked or sarcasted, it tends to grow out of a frustration with the person I'm speaking or writing to.

    After multiple attempts to "get through," the person just seems dense and unable to play the ball where it lays. He just isn't addressing the points or evidence I've brought up. So I become frustrated and this leads to snark or sarcasm.

    After the frustration builds enough, it turns into a lack of respect for the other person. Snark then turns into meanness, a desire to hurt the other person, perhaps as a way of having some impact on him, of getting him to realize he's been a dolt. At this point, things have dramatically deteriorated.

    If I have so little respect for the other person, why am I talking to him?

    Humor needs to enhance our humanity, not be used as a tool for tearing it down.


    Hitchens and Iraq...

    I don't know much about his position except that he was in favor of the invasion. I was disappointed when I heard that.

    That said, the left has been so busy (rightfully) confronting the neocon project in foreign affairs, we haven't articulated our own strong stance against dictators like Saddam or Assad or even Al Qaeda and our own approach to getting rid of them.

    This leaves us vulnerable to the (incorrect) charge that we don't care much about the horrors these nasty folks wreak on their own people or the vulnerable unlucky enough to find themselves at their mercy.


    Oh come on, that's been a conservative red herring.

    We drove Bin Laden out of Sudan - rather gracelessly, but we did.

    We protected Kosovo from the air and got Milosevic to trial in the Hague - a fact the Bush administration downplayed because they didn't like the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

    Our efforts in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine got a pro-democracy government in place, and our efforts supporting nascent democracy efforts in Iran were relatively successful, with a reformer in office (Bush playing hardball later helped put the hard-line Ahmadinejad in place). We had a good agreement in place with N. Korea - bribery, for sure, but it worked.

    We contained Hussein's progress for 10 years at minimal cost - maintaining overflight zones - and the only real issue was not having inspectors on the ground to make sure it was successful. Once we got that, even the skeptical Hans Blix realized there was nothing there.

    Much of tracking Al Qaeda remains a police & intelligence issue, not military action.

    We helped get N. Ireland settled down, and get the ETA situation stabilized. Qaddaffi was pretty tame by inauguration 2001. 

    As for Assad, Bush Sr. did nothing to push out Assad's father after massacres in 1990 & others. Clinton helped a number of talks between Syria & Israel during the 1990's, and the last US-Syria talk was under Clinton. The Damascus Spring was going on when Clinton left office, and died out under Bush.

    Bush came in and screwed almost any positive effort to contain dictators that was going on - his push for more military engagement, and less diplomacy, the  "speak tough and refuse to get anywhere" policy.

    Yes, Democrats have a foreign policy that addresses foreign despots. Without spending trillions, causing huge numbers of deaths in "liberating", and making us slash our basic services at home.

     


    PS - 9/11 happened well into the watch of Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld.

    There was much better intel about this than there was about the Cole or African embassy bombings (i.e. outside the US)

    All this floundering around with enraged, spastic military actions is a johnny-come-lately approach to put a bandaid on a problem they seem to have deliberately ignored.

    And we do all understand that Iraq was not part of 9/11, its military had been defanged for attacks to its neighbors, so the only real concern for this paper tiger was the possibility of bio-chemical weapons. (the charge of a nuclear program was always BS). And no, Hussein didn't get along with Al Qaeda - he had girl volleyball players in shorts, for example - so there would have been no alignment


    Okay, I accept some of what you say--some not quite so much--but don't want to end up having to defend Bush, either one.

    As you can see, I don't support the neocon agenda and DO think it's right to combat it and claim alternatives to it. So some of what you say sort of assumes I'm on that side of the fence.

    To some degree, I think it's easier to carve out a pro-democracy, or anti-totalitarian, agenda when the people themselves are rising up. Then our actions can be more clearly seen in defense of their actions and goals.

    Part of the difficulty may be that it's hard to project a clear image of a highly nuanced policy that is customized for the situation. So the impression of an anti-totalitarian foreign policy, even though it is, doesn't stick.

    In fact, our foreign policy is so nuanced, it tends to draw conflicting responses from our own side. Libya strikes me as a job well done, but while it was being done, it raised all kinds of objections from the left...from Obama was too late to Obama has no exit strategy to Obama hasn't consulted a hostile Congress to Obama is bombing innocent people to Obama is getting us into a third war with no end in sight.

    With all of that cross fire, it's a little hard to project a clear image of what "we stand for."

    I'm a little too tired to get into all the ins and outs you lay out. But thanks for your response. Maybe later...


    Agree on Libya - we never came out and said what the precedent we were trying to set was. Why are we letting protesters die in Syria if we'd come up with something new? Why did we let them die in Sierra Leone over months? 

    Under Clinton we did have a discernible policy - a bit haphazard and arbitrary and messy, but it was a combination of rigorous diplomacy and backup military action as needed.

    I'm not sure if we lost it post-9/11, or if it was the futzing about where we killed our own candidate, Al Gore, and all the pragmatic choices we had with him.

    Note that a good part of taking down Hillary was she was too war-like. Her "Iraq vote" was about getting inspectors on the ground, with a stick if not - not a declaration of war. But this was seen as war-mongering vs. Candidate Obama's pure approach to "no dumb wars" (ha ha). Even saying the obvious, that we would respond if Iran attacked Israel, was war mongering (remember all the "war with Iran is imminent, and Hillary's responsible" talk?)

    So instead we've ceded all rhetorical ground to the No War faction of the party - rather than a healthy half-way -  while we continue to wage war in bizarre new forms at unprecedented rate. And we have little discussion about whether these wars are a good thing - we're just supporting the candidate. (Rahm warned us not to talk about the war in 2004, and even though that killed lots of candidacies while ones who did rail against the war won, the prevailing wisdom has been to go with the nanny security state - even Howard Dean was a victim of that wisdom - Joe Lieberman won - Michael Moore got labeled a loony we can't talk about).

     


    Ah, don't remind me about Al Gore's loss. He was my dream candidate: both educated in technology and environmentally aware. (We all have different emphases, those are some of mine.)


    It doesn't seem accurate to say that Christopher Hitchens got Iraq wrong. The United States military got Iraq wrong and Christopher Hitchens was among the first to perceive and admit the debacle. Your description of his view seems to be based on nothing. Christopher Hitchens took the view consistent with his deeply held, far left view that totalitarianism should be destroyed wherever it can, which is also what led to his career as a critic of Islam, as the nature of the religion is highly totalitarian. On the same basis he supported retaking the Falkland Islands from a totalitarian government and that went well, so nobody said he got it wrong that time.


    Hitchens admitted that there had been mistakes in Iraq, but he remained a strong supporter of the war, so he didn't see it as a "debacle". Actually, a lot of people said Hitchens got the Falklands wrong; most of his fellow radicals opposed that war.