Thank you for forwarding this.
It seems like many on this list do not consider a "Third Camp" perspective to be a viable option these days.
Though both would be extremely irritated to hear it, Neo-Conservatives (I include Christopher Hitchens and most of the Anti-Germans in this category) and Anti-Imperialists like our friend Yoshie are both manifestations of the same underlying problem.
In the absence of an independent, secular, mass revolutionary force, a lot of people just seem compelled to choose sides in a conflict. I am really at a loss to understand what the underlying impulse is, perhaps a deeply rooted sense of moralism combined with the feeling that one must at least do something.
Many are just not comfortable with the notion of a "ruthless criticism of the existing." Thinkers as various as Johannes Agnoli and John Holloway (inspired by Adorno) has advocated the important role in negativity as a revolutionary impulse. But negation does not have a wide appeal (how many times has one heard in an activist meeting that only "constructive" critique is desired?).
So the alternative to negation is affirmation. And that's the course of Hitchens/Yoshie. You are either for the forces of liberation through bombing, or the reactionary couter-enlightenment.
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