Burch Goes Hitch

[Stephen E Philion]

I'll say this for Burchill, she makes a much better argument than
c.h
c.h has used the occasion to engage in a nasty attack on fellow critics of
US foreign policy and in the process thrown out a host of false
accusations and/or distortions of serious writers' positions. Churchill,
though I'm not nuts at all about the article, deserves credit for waiting
and thinking before writing.  She appears to be less interested in
attention  on can draw from careless attack that seemed to drive c.h's
articles.  I think it's fair to say that  the  beef of her argument is as
follows:
"Of all the acres of newsprint, only the words of Christopher Hitchens
seem to resonate above the mire of mediocre opinion and received wisdom;
that the bottom line about the men who did this is that they committed the
act not so that innocents may have the right to live freely on the West
Bank, but so that they might have the right to throw acid in the faces of
innocent unveiled women in Baghdad and Bradford."

This argument is not at all incorrect and points to the need to proceed
with a careful analysis of the  social class basis/class politics of the
Taliban, Bin Laden, etc. even during this period. However, it is also
something that  one can find in recent writings/interviews/lectures by
Chomsky, Pilger et al., though there remains a good deal more of it to be
done.  That doesn't, however, change the reality that T/BL most certainly
do believe they are acting in response to what's happening  on the  West
Bank, Saudi Arabia, etc.  And that  does matter, especially if US Foreign
Policy is designed in such a way that more and more persons in the Middle
East, Afghanistan, etc. believe that T/BL speak to and  have a solution to
the suffering of Palestinians, large numbers of  Muslims in the  Arab
world, etc. What Burchill, critically, doesn't offer in her argument is an
alternative between supporting T/BL (which, sorry c.h, most in the
anti-war movement do *not* identify with) and the bombing of civilians in
Afghanistan being  orchestrated by  c.h's new war buddies in
the shrub administration, which will almost surely create even more who
identify with  T/BL.  Must our only choices be TBL or  Shrub/Blair's "war
on terrorism"?

Stephen Philion
Lecturer/PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
2424 Maile Way
Social Sciences Bldg. # 247
Honolulu, HI 96822