----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 1:34 PM Subject: Re: Hitchens: kill 'em before they start
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 at attbi.com>
>
>
> > The bulk of the above is good though familiar (still, I doubt Hitch
> > supplied the title), but there is one line that sticks out:
> > "In confronting such people, the crucial thing is to be willing and able,
> > if not in fact eager, to kill them without pity before they can get
> > started."
> -ObL has already gotten started. Is Hitch suggesting we should assassinate
> all
> -the ObL wannabe's older than 4 years in age?
>
> A young woman is about to be killed in Nigeria for the "crime" of having a
> baby out of wedlock. That is the context of Hitchens comments. If Alabama
> Christian fundamentalists began summary execution of welfare moms having
> kids, I would suggest that most lefties might be engaging in similar
> rhetoric.
>
> This version of Islam, like literalist primitive interpretations of
> Christianity (something Hitchens emphasizes), is a murderous ideology that
> deserves complete and total opposition by progressives. And Hitchens is
> under no illusion that the US regime is clearly in that opposition:
>
> "The two regimes that did most to incubate and protect al Qaeda and the
> Taliban - the Saudi feudalists and the Pakistani military - were and still
> are on the official "friends and allies" list of the American establishment.
> The obscurantists and fanatics were nurtured in the bosom of the same
> "national security" apparatus that so grotesquely, if not criminally, failed
> to protect our civil society a year ago."
>
> I wouldn't use the specific bloodthirsty language Hitchens uses, but I still
> have great sympathy for his demands that progressives deal with the
> complexity of this threat.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
================
Should we demand that President Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz target Nigeria? Just what the hell, beyond rhetorically excessive condemnation, are progressives supposed to do?
Ian