Herman on Hitchens

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>                                          
>			Dec. 4, 2001
>
>Dear David Schweickart:
>
>     I didn't hear Hitchens recent talk at the University of
>Chicago, but from what you summarize of his remarks there, and from
>my close familiarity with his rapid movement to the right and
>serial apologetics for U.S. and NATO interventions everywhere
>(including East Timor), I think you are far too charitable toward
>him in your "Is Bush's War Our War" (Nov. 20). When he says Bush's
>war is "our war," speaking to the "left," this is now a sick joke,
>as would be David Horowitz or Paul Johnson saying the same.
>
>     As you state at the end of your note, the principal aim of the
>U.S. state is to find an enemy to replace the Soviet Threat--and
>you might have added, specifically, to allow this now uncontained
>superpower to go after any enemy it chooses to attack, to carve out
>a position for itself in the Caspian Sea region, and to help the
>leadership use fright to pacify and better exploit its own
>population. Anybody on the left recognizes that the real and
>frightening "expansionism," now in an accelerating and violent
>phase, is centered in Washington, and Bush's war is an ugly facet
>of it. In the British press there are steady reports that even Tony
>Blair and his gang are worried about the Bush administration's
>plans to extend the war beyond Afghanistan while they have
>"momentum," but not Hitchens. Even the New York Times editors are
>now upset over the feedback of Bush's war on U.S. civil liberties
>and domestic issues, but not Hitchens. Bush is attacking the
>"Islamic fascists," just as Clinton was getting the "Serb
>fascists," and that is all that counts for the new Hitchens.
>
>    Can't you see the humor of Hitchens speaking about "Taliban
>expansionism" and proving it with nonsense about the Taliban trying
>to infiltrate and take over Pakistan, when the United States is
>spreading over the globe, has itself penetrated Pakistan and
>entered into closer alliances with other regional goons of
>convenience, and has always felt it to be its right to infiltrate
>and subvert on a global basis?
>
>    I don't agree with you that overthrowing the Taliban is a "good
>thing"--if done by the Godfather. Sure it would be nice for it to
>be ousted, but you are ignoring your own understanding that the
>United States is on a rampage, and successfully overthrowing the
>Taliban will encourage it to enlarge its rampages (it is already
>talking about keeping up that momentum). Note how the Bush
>administration is now throwing its weight behind Ariel Sharon's
>little "war on terrorism," clearly part of the overall war that we
>can expect to spread widely. This doesn't bother Hitchens, but it
>must deeply concern everybody on the left. Also, there is a
>question of how the Taliban is overthrown--the costs in starvation,
>"collateral damage," and the likely imposition of a new set of
>goons of convenience. The Godfather is getting more ruthless by the
>day, now "taking out" entire villages in Afghanistan, and getting
>away with it because the U.S. media are keeping it--and the
>murderous behavior of the goons supported by the U.S. on the
>ground--in the black hole, and they are helped immeasurably by
>people like Hitchens.
>
>    The idea that the Taliban is a fascist and expansionist threat,
>and that Islamic fundamentalism more broadly speaking is the same,
>doesn't hold water (Louis Proyect's note to you deals with this
>quite well). Hitchens has come to use "fascist" as an epithet to
>apply to any enemy of the moment.
>
>    The Taliban is a nasty local authoritarian group with very
>modest power and capabilities--before the U.S. attack, barely able
>to cope with controlling its own terrain. As I noted, proof of its
>"transnational designs" by reference to its infiltration of the
>Pakistan military is laughable--as if every country does not mess
>around with its neighbors; and no transnational designs are seen by
>Hitchens in the case of the United States as it buys up Pakistan
>generals, because its imperial and "humanitarian" service he now
>applauds, and as an apologist for imperialism he takes its
>transnational designs as an internalized given. The general
>ideology of the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalists are no more
>proof of expansionism than any other ideology, like the Christian,
>Jewish, or communism. The new Hitchens, transplanted back into the
>1960s and 1970s, would have claimed that communist ideology proved
>"transnational designs" and he would have supporting the "war
>against communism" and the "Red fascists."
>
>    How about the ideology of the "free market" and the need to
>bring "liberal democracy" and "human rights" everywhere--except
>where inconvenient to transnational corporate interests--as
>demonstrating transnational designs? Here we are dealing with
>something real and important, because this is the ideology of a
>transnational system with the military muscle to implement those
>designs. Bush is fighting "their war," and Christopher Hitchens'
>war.
>
>                          Sincerely,
>                          Ed Herman

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