dagblog - Comments for "Was Christopher Hitchens An Overrated White Dude?"

Hitchens admitted that there

Aaron Carine — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:30:43 +0000

In reply to It doesn't seem accurate to

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.

I don't think support for

Aaron Carine — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:27:41 +0000

In reply to Nonsensical. Christopher

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

Nonsensical. Christopher

Steven — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:46:58 +0000

In reply to Let's cut to the credits here

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?

It doesn't seem accurate to

Steven Amendola — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:43:26 +0000

In reply to Was Christopher Hitchens An Overrated White Dude?

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.

Ah, don't remind me about Al

Verified Atheist — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:00:48 +0000

In reply to Agree on Libya - we never

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.)

Agree on Libya - we never

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:26:41 +0000

In reply to Okay, I accept some of what

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).

Okay, I accept some of what

Peter Schwartz — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:08:47 +0000

In reply to PS - 9/11 happened well into

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...

PS - 9/11 happened well into

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:36:32 +0000

In reply to Oh come on, that's been a

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

Oh come on, that's been a

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:32:12 +0000

In reply to Hitchens and Iraq... I don't

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.

Hitchens and Iraq... I don't

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:14:54 +0000

In reply to Was Christopher Hitchens An Overrated White Dude?

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.