Dennis Perrin:
What "liberal masochism" is Hitch talking about? I've seen precious little of it in the corp press; and those (like the fine sturdy folk of LBO-Talk) who have made the obvious link between US policy and the bloody reaction to it are not blind to the pre-modern nature of the perps, nor have they excused the terrorist attack or tried to play it down.
I think Hitch is having a political (personal?) identity crisis. He's not sure how to approach this, and I wager that he doesn't want to be caught on the "wrong side" of history again, as I'm sure he felt he was when he first opposed NATO's bombing of Belgrade, then, after conferring with Gens. Sontag and Reiff, came out fully for it. Will he do the same if the US starts pounding the Muslim world? Will he frame it in faux-radical terms (the Cockburn, "if ever a country deserved rape, it's Afghanistan," stance)? Or will he just toss it all aside and become our Peregrine Worsthorne?
Tick, tock. Tick, tock . . . .
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2001/2001-September/018841.html>