Is this true?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Sep 13 12:17:39 PDT 2002


Luke Weiger wrote:


> > As far as I can tell from The Nation's website, his last pre-9/11
>> column was about Gary Condit, and the first post-9/11 was the nasty
>> "Against Rationalization" column, with its sneer at the
>> Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein set
> > <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011008&s=hitchens>.
>>
>> Doug
>
>Thanks, Doug. Skimming through the column for the first time in many
>months, I can't seem to find any reference to the C-Z-F set (although I do
>remember seeing it in one of his columns at the time). I wonder if it's
>been excised ex post facto?

It's there:


>I was apprehensive from the first moment about the sort of
>masochistic e-mail traffic that might start circulating from the
>Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein quarter, and I was not to be disappointed.
>With all due thanks to these worthy comrades, I know already that
>the people of Palestine and Iraq are victims of a depraved and
>callous Western statecraft. And I think I can claim to have been
>among the first to point out that Clinton's rocketing of
>Khartoum--supported by most liberals--was a gross war crime, which
>would certainly have entitled the Sudanese government to mount
>reprisals under international law. (Indeed, the sight of Clintonoids
>on TV, applauding the "bounce in the polls" achieved by their man
>that day, was even more repulsive than the sight of destitute
>refugee children making a wretched holiday over the nightmare on
>Chambers Street.) But there is no sense in which the events of
>September 11 can be held to constitute such a reprisal, either
>legally or morally.



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