> --actually, i don't think [Hitchens] was at all 'in a good mood' or soft
on me.
Trust me, brother, he was. You got the "good cop" side.
> nor do i believe he adequately addressed my main argument, namely that he
is
> spending more time attacking the left than taking apart the weak war
> marketing sell that is being made to the people of the US by the Bush
> administration.
Well, I don't think he really buys into the Bush rhetoric -- he certainly doesn't regarding Iran, as he pointed out to you. He has his own reasons for supporting Saddam's ouster, and he makes a much better case than does Bush, who relies on bluff and bluster.
As for his attacks on the "left," well, I know from my experience here that many lefties don't like to hear about their shortcomings from those on the same side, or at least generally in the same area. We're supposed to "be in this together" and link arms with those who, if they had any power at all, would jail us or simply shoot us, all in the grand quest of progressivism, or some such.
Hitch finally got tired of this, and I'm beginning to see his point.
> That Dennis as someone who once worked for FAIR finds nothing problematic
> about Hitch's trivialization of lies from warmakers is even more prize.
Irrelevant. I'm no more beholden to FAIR than you are to your high school football team. And believe me, I had plenty of criticisms of FAIR when I was there, and still do, to the degree I read their output.
> I didn't "mention Vietnam and Iraq" in the same sentence, I did mention
the
> lies used to justify wars in Vietnam and Iraq...1) and 2) the bogus claims
> made by detractors that the peace movement in both cases was aiding a
> dangerous enemy (in this case the militarily laughable country of Iraq and
> in Vietnam's case the NLF, Soviet Union, and China).
And as he replied, there are half-truths and distortions in both cases, even though the situations are completely different. There were those in the anti-war movement of the '60s who did support Ho and the NLF, waving the flag and chanting "The NLF is gonna win!" So rightwing attacks on those protesters were accurate in that regard, even though the protesters were on the right side. The same holds true here, though this "peace" movement isn't anything like the old, but there are those (and I won't mention their name lest I rile the sensitive among us) who are indeed soft on Saddam. And there are those who, while they don't much care for Saddam personally, consider any lefty critique of the thug as giving in to Bush, or playing cop, or otherwise acting in the interests of Great Satan imperialism. I think you've probably seen this maneuver before, no?
> I didn't get the sense that he enjoyed the exchange with me at all. I
think
> he hoped I would incoherently defend Chomsky or some such thing....but I
> don't think that his ad hominem attacks on Chomsky or the left are that
> interesting. More or less they appear to be his strategy for gaining a
> media platform in this war debate in which no anti-war leftists are
allowed.
> His failure to take on the dreaded abuse of language by the Bush
> administration (and his Democratic Party confreres) is really the point he
> is weakest on as a would be "left" contrarian in the tradition of Orwell
> (!).
You seem to know his hidden motives quite well. I guess his call for Ashcroft's impeachment is a decoy, something for the faithful to chew on while he confers with his masters in the White House.
DP