Hitchens At War

Ted Winslow egwinslow at home.com
Thu Sep 27 09:04:06 PDT 2001


Doug wrote:


>
> The "liberals with a bomb" observation follows this:
>
>> It is pressure politics of the sort, which deliberately excludes any
>> attempt to mobilize mass support. Someone once referred to them as
>> 'liberals with a bomb'.
>
> It's an elitist/individualist view of politics in other words.
>
> Doug

Is it the word "liberal" that means "elitist/individualist" or the words "with a bomb"? I take the word "liberal" to be elaborated by the things pointed to in the second paragraph.


> The question is how he recruits middle-class graduates in Saudi Arabia and
> Egypt to his cause. For it is they and not the illiterate bearded fanatics in
> Afghanistan who carried out these monstrous actions. Here a quick viewing of
> Bin Laden's video messages to his followers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt makes
> his appeal obvious. What he says (and I've seen one of them) is that the Gulf
> War was a crime against the people of Iraq. He and Hitchens agree on that.
> Secondly he denounces the continued occupation of Palestine and Western
> complicity with the suffering of the Palestinians. Hitchens would agree with
> that as well. Thirdly he denounces the corrupt and hypocritical Arab regimes
> and venal political leaders who refuse to re-distribute wealth.

Ted



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list