> >http://slate.msn.com/id/2083643/
>
> Wow. That's not a very coherent piece of writing. He's no longer making
> much sense. What's his brand identity now that he's no longer a renegade
> leftist?
I think the clue is in that first and last paragraph, where he seems to be saying if Americans won't hand over power, then they should leave now because chaos would be better than being under their control.
In his Reason interview, Hitchens said he saw himself as always having been for revolution. And what he meant by revolution was turning the established order upside down. He said the reason he switched from left to right was because that was were the revolution went, if you defined revolution as shaking things up. It's as if, in the course of the 80s, and especially after the end of the cold war, as leftists gradually lost their faith in third world revolution, and started talking about multilateralism and networks, Hitchens got bored with them. And now he seems to see exciting revolutionary upside-down-turning possibilities in agents like the Northern Alliance and the Kurds.
I think he sees himself as one step ahead of the neocons -- that they want to set off crises so that that can expand into those countries and increase American control. And he thinks they won't be able to control it -- that instead they'll set off a cascading series of crises beyond their control. But that somehow this will be a good thing, or at least be exciting, so long as it keeps staying revolutionary in the sense of turning things upside down.
Although perhaps your view is kinder, that he's inconsistent. Under this view, he's consistent, but he's mad.
Although arguably no madder than the people in power.
Michael