> Wonder if anyone had the stomach to read this.
> Couldn't do it.
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/09/hitchens.htm
(Sigh). Where to begin... let's take it from the top.
> It isn't unfair to the book [Orientalism], I hope, to say that it also received
> a tremendous charge from the near simultaneous revolution in Iran and the later
> assassination of Anwar Sadat.
It is unfair to tag Said in any way, shape or form with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Then there's this gem:
> But I am willing to bet that I know more about Mesopotamia than Saddam Hussein
> ever knew about England, France, or the United States. I also think that such
> knowledge as I have comes from more disinterested sources ... And I would add
> that Saddam Hussein was better able to force himself on my attention than I
> ever was to force myself on his.
What the hell is Hitchens babbling about? Who gives a damn what Saddam Hussein, that CIA-installed butcher, thinks? And calling Saddam a metaphor for East-West interaction just boggles the mind.
> But for some reason—conceivably connected to his status as an exile—he cannot
> allow that direct Western engagement in the region is legitimate.
> This might be a narrowly defensible position if direct Islamist interference
> in Western life and society had not become such a factor.
*What* Islamist interference? Have Arab countries repeatedly invaded, bombed, blasted, and neocolonized the US/Europe/Japan? Saudia Arabia/the Shah of Iran were props for US oil companies, etc. Hitchens spends lots of time quoting from rare authors, and zero time expounding on the ghastly history of Brit/US imperialism in the region -- a history which he well knows, given his journalism from the first Gulf War.
> Today Iranian mullahs are enriching uranium and harboring fugitive bin
> Ladenists (the slaughterers of their Shia co-religionists in Afghanistan and
> Pakistan) while students in Tehran risk their lives to demonstrate with
> pro-American slogans.
We cross the fine line from the objectionable to the despicable. Iran -- a hugely diverse country of 70 million, with thriving literary and cinematic traditions -- is building a power plant. They're no friends of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. The democracy movement would like to see the mullahs go, not US Marines arrive and B-52s turn Tehran into a blasted wasteland.
> American Orientalism doesn't seem that restless from where I sit; it asks only
> that Afghans leave it alone.
Oh, this is rich -- the CIA armed and financed the Taliban maniacs who gave Osama shelter in the first place. The Empire's own pet goons turned against it. But no -- this, too, is down the memory hole.
To quote someone Hitchens should know, Oceania has always been at war with East Asia...
> The American forces in Baghdad set themselves to annihilate Iraq's cultural
> patrimony. Can Said mean to say this?
They guarded the oil derricks and the Gov't buildings and let the museums and cultural institutions be trashed. Not a word about documentation.
-- DRR