The Nation, to its credit, put this on its web page. It also linked to an interview with Chomsky on the Z web page!
More importantly, about three-quarters of the people the Nation has writing about the crisis are taking positions Hitchens would call "rationalization" - trying to understand why Bin Laden had any base to begin with, looking at US Middle East policy as a whole, etc.
I wonder how happy Hitchens is about this "humanitarian" bombing.
Mark
>Chomsky's Second Reply to Hitchens...
>
>It is unfortunate that with such serious issues to attend to,
>Christopher Hitchens insists on wasting time on irrelevant and fanciful
>diatribes
>against assorted enemies, the latest being his REJOINDER TO NOAM
>CHOMSKY. He begins by placing his question "before the house":
>"Can the attacks of September 11 be compared to an earlier outrage
>committed by Americans? And should they be so compared?" NB: HIS
>question. If he wants to consider that question, fine, but I didn't
>raise it or discuss it, nor will I now. Recall that his series of
>denunciations
>takes off from a single sentence in a composite response to journalists
>in which I said, accurately, that the toll of the "horrendous
>atrocities" of
>Sept. 11 might be comparable to the toll of the destruction of half the
>pharmaceutical supplies of the Sudan. The rest is the product of his
>imagination.
>
>Hitchens fulminates about my failure to refer to his publications on the
>bombing of the plant -- or, he might have added, to the many articles in
>the mainstream press that considered the validity of the justifications
>offered for the bombing. The reasons are straightforward, and were
>stated clearly and explicitly. I kept to prominent articles from
>credible sources in the mainstream press, which were therefore widely
>available;
>and to the topic with which I was concerned, namely, consequences.
>
>Hitchens claims that I accused him of "propensity for racist contempt."
>I explicitly and unambiguously said the opposite.
>
>Hitchens condemns the claim of `facile "moral equivalence" between the
>two crimes.' Fair enough, but since he fabricated the claim out of thin
>air, I feel no need to comment.
>
>Hitchens is also outraged at my statement that we should condemn
>Milosevic for the crimes that are "plausibly attributed" to him.
>According
>to Hitchens, then, we must also charge him with those that are not
>plausibly attributed to him, and it is, furthermore, utterly outrageous
>to
>suggest otherwise. Of course, he does not mean what he is saying, once
>again. Having carried irrationality to new limits, he then seeks to
>evade the accurate argument that he quotes. Perhaps he does not like the
>way its conclusion applies to him. If so, that's his problem. The
>argument remains valid, and elementary, nonetheless.
>
>I will not sink to Hitchens's level of referring to personal
>correspondence, which -- it is now no surprise -- he utterly distorts.
>The remainder has
>not even a remote connection to what I wrote, and I will therefore
>ignore it. And furthermore wish to waste no more time on these shameful
>meanderings.
>
>
>--
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