> Simon Huxtable wrote:
>
>> Any idea when the new VT
>> is out?
>
>
> Imminently. There's a story in today's NYT citing an article in the
> new VF ("out on Thursday") on how the Bush admin let the Saudis out of
> the country just after 9/11 without so much as an exit interview.
I recall Hitchens mentioning that back when he was with the _Nation_.
I might as well vent about what I can't understand about Hitchens these days. I can understand his intense dislike for the Clintons, and I can certainly agree with his concerns about the rise of religious mania and terror. And I don't blame him for breaking with _The Nation_, either: I think his account of _l'affair Blumenthal_ has been believable, and I'd be pretty resentful if the editorial staff hauled _me_ in for some kind of demented tribunal over the matter.
I can even understand his willingness to desire a swift victory over Saddam Hussein, even at the hands of Bush Jr. For one thing, he's always been concerned with Kurdish rights, far more so than most Americans. And for another-- if the war had gone well, if Saddam had been deposed and a new Iraq built swiftly and responsibly, it would've afforded the spectacle of liberals sputtering over the whole matter. (Given the crap I got from former friends because I'd voted for Nader, I can _easily_ sympathize with _that_ as well. And please recall the uglier attempts to smear Hitchens over the Blumenthal business-- like Edward Epstein's reprehensible attempt to smear Hitchens as a Holocaust revisionist, a claim echoed by the fuckheads at mediawhoresonline.com. With garbage like that coming from liberals, no wonder David Horowitz must seem like a civilized human being.)
But I can't understand why he has been so uncritical of the Bush administration. He's usually had a sharp eye for incompetence, the fantasies of control and empire, and even the pornography of power. Yet here he is, enraptured over the fact that the Cheyneys and Wolfowitzes can work up a massive military invasion, and considerably less concerned over the deformation of the American republic. If Clinton had committed the same blunders of the Bush administration, Hitchens'd be on him like white on rice. (Remember when Hitchens would cite the flyover zones which protected the Kurds? It was a good point, but shouldn't credit have gone to both Bush _and_ Clinton for those?) If Hitchens had been as hard on Bush for his failings as he had been on Clinton, then I'd certainly respect him for principle and consistency. But he's been treating this bunch with far too much deference.
I don't know the man beyond what he's written, so I can't make any decent guess at his reasons beyond what I've mentioned above. I'll continue to read him, too, because he is one of the finest essayists working today. But I'm hoping this new myopia isn't a harbinger of something worse.