Hitchens responds to critics

Dennis dperrin13 at mediaone.net
Tue Sep 25 11:22:45 PDT 2001


Seth Ackerman wrote:
> > On the other hand, the attack killed over a hundred Pentagon
> > employees without touching any nearby neighborhoods. Which is more than
> one
> > can say about certain "pinpoint strikes" on "military targets" carried
out
> > by some of the building's occupants in recent years. And I say that as
> > someone whose parents live only a mile or two from the Pentagon.

And Nathan replied:


> Given that this was done as part of the same attack that mass murdered
6000
> people and intended to murder as many as 50,000 +, it is this kind of
> statement that undermines trust or credibility in the left.
>
> And is exactly the kind that Hitchens was highlighting.

Look, recent US strikes and the 9-11 attacks were and remain vile and criminal. But what Hitch is doing now is what he did while NATO bombs fell on Belgrade: justify imperial violence as anti-fascist resistance. I remember exchanging emails with him at the time and asking, "How do you square your belief that Nazi-like terror is being thwarted in Serbia when some of the pilots doing the bombing are Turks taking a break from terror bombing Kurdish villages on a vastly greater scale?" He muttered something about how the European Union would handle matters, and that was it. Then, after the Great Victory over Serbian "national socialism," Hitch praised Clinton for doing what FDR did not do: stopping fascism in its early stages. I never understood how the psycho-liar-war-criminal-rapist was capable of such a feat, much less why the man who wrote "No One Left To Lie To" could suddenly praise his target as now greater than FDR.

Hitch is "with" Bush on this. But if he is to be a Total Warrior as is required, he must then endorse all that goes with his recruitment -- expanded powers of the state at home to guard against further terrorism, and extended US aggression abroad to either bring in line those on the fence, or to eliminate those who stand in our glorious way.

DP



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