>Which speaks to why Hitchens left the Nation, since even dissenting views
>from long-time columnists are not welcome there.
A guy who says he'd vote for Bush, who's glad Thatcher won, and who said what's quoted below to Adam Shatz <http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020923&s=shatz> is a dissenter?
>Hitchens's enthusiasm for the war on terror has led him to adopt
>some strange positions. You would think that, as a longstanding
>champion of Palestinian rights, he would be disturbed by Rumsfeld's
>cavalier talk of the "so-called occupied territories" and Bush's
>crude ultimatum to the Palestinians to either vote out Arafat or
>continue living under occupation. But Hitchens told me that while he
>objects to "that whole tone of voice," he prefers Bush's "tough
>love" to the "patronization" of Clinton's peace negotiators. Nor is
>he troubled by the mounting civilian toll exacted by America's
>crusade in Afghanistan. "I don't think the war in Afghanistan was
>ruthlessly enough waged," he says. What about the use of cluster
>bombs?
>
><quote>If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a
>concentration of enemy troops...then it's pretty good because those
>steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other
>side and through somebody else. And if they're bearing a Koran over
>their heart, it'll go straight through that, too. So they won't be
>able to say, 'Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess
>what, the missile stopped halfway through.' No way, 'cause it'll go
>straight through that as well. They'll be dead, in other
>words.</quote>
>
>"It pains me to hear that," says Edward Said, a friend of many
>years. "He's gone back to nineteenth-century gunboat diplomacy--go
>hit the wogs."
When does a dissenter join the enemy?
Doug