Monday’s HuffPo contains a mildly enlightening interview with Christopher Hitchens on his new memoir, “Christopher Hitchens on ‘Hitch-22’: Memoir was ‘fantastically difficult’ to write.” One anecdote new to me:
Hitchens [sic] real turn began with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He initially feared an overreaction among conservatives, “an orgiastic flag-waving unanimity,” and instead came to despise the response of the left, the suggestion that Americans deserved the attacks because of sins committed abroad, or the theories – urged by Vidal among others – that the Bush administration itself was behind them.
The camel’s back broke at the Telluride Film Festival in the fall of 2002. Michael Moore, set to release his antigun documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” was interviewed on stage by Hitchens in front of a seemingly like-minded audience. Few minds, however, are like Hitchens’. They discussed the war in Afghanistan, opposed by Moore, supported by Hitchens. When Moore expressed doubts that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, Hitchens asked Moore if he considered bin Laden’s guilt an “open question.”
Moore answered: “Until anyone is convicted of any crime, no matter how horrific the crime, they are innocent until proven guilty.”
“And the whole audience roared into applause,” recalls Hitchens, who soon quit his longtime position as a columnist for the liberal weekly The Nation. “That was the moment I thought, `I’m out of here. I’m not part of this crowd.'”
(Hitchens wrote a Slate piece about this episode and Moore’s movie Farenheit 9/11.)
The interview contains a Freudian typo:
“I think that it (the fatwa) was very important to Christopher in his thinking and in his politics,” Rushdie says. “And so he became very exorcised and therefore very available to me during that time. It certainly brought us much closer together.”
So Hitchens entered his neocon phase on the basis of a false dilemma? I whole-heartedly concur that “I’m not part of this crowd” when it comes to Truthers and those so-called liberals (even though this is about the most illiberal position I can imagine) who have tried to say that we got we deserved in 9/11. No, I am not part of that crowd, and though I enjoy some of Michael Moore’s work (for instance), I mostly can’t stand him.
How the hell should that drive me into the arms of the neocons? I still consider myself unapologetically liberal — I just don’t truck with those “liberals” who hold illiberal or crackpot ideas. Seems like an easier solution than still trying to convince yourself 7 years on that Iraq had usable WMDs.
“How the hell should that drive me into the arms of the neocons?”
It shouldn’t, but you may have been overestimating Hitchens on the assumption his vigorous atheism means his is devoted to reason and evidence as a matter of practice. Hitchens finds his way by gut feeling, not by reasoned analysis. It’s entirely in character for him to be persuaded by a visceral distate for some on one side of an issue to embrace the ideas of folk on the other side of it. Hitchens’ support of the Iraq war was never rational in its basis so your confusion is natural if you’re going to apply reason to the issue.
Not at all, not at all. 🙂 I agree this is not at all out of character, I was just responding to it.
FWIW, I had always assumed Hitchens’ neoconism was a result of his contrarian nature, i.e. he realized that he would be more of provocative and more of an agitator if he argued in favor of the war instead of against it. So in that sense, I was surprised that it was a “I’m not with these guys, so I must be with these guys!” — not because I expected him to be rational about it, but because I had guessed wrongly about his flavor of irrationality 😀
On a side note, maybe it goes without saying, but it is exactly Hitchens’ ambivalence towards accuracy that makes him so awesome on cable news shows.
Unfortunately, while on many thing I disagree with Hitchens, this time he seems to have been right. At least up to a point.
As another example of why I can see where he is coming from: Oliver Stone’s new movie is coming out in praise of president Chavez of Venezuela. Sorry, the guy is not a praiseworthy character. He is closing down opposition TV stations and muzzling dissent.
He was on Bill Maher’s show the other day and they had a friendly disagreement (about the middle east conflict). They are both liberals. But I come down on Maher’s side.
I consider myself a liberal but I don’t always agree with my fellow liberals on matters of foreign policy.
Unfortunately, it has become liberal dogma in some quarters that anyone who supports the State of Israel must be a conservative. Many of us liberals/progressives are staunch supporters of Israel and will refuse to be driven out of the liberal coterie by the Israel bashers.
The entire Israel thing is bizarre. There seems to be no middle ground expressed, ever. Either the Israeli military can do no wrong, and make no mistakes, or they can do nothing but wrong, and commit nothing but evil acts.
I was reading a story on Alternet (yeah, I know) about the flotilla incident that entirely blamed Israel for the loss of life. I was shocked at how much overt antisemitism there was expressed in the comments section, with some actually claiming that Israel has no right to exist.
On the other hand, I once expressed an opinion that I thought the destruction of homes belonging to families of suspected terrorists was a bad idea because it reinforces the idea that the Palestinians are being oppressed by Israel and would only serve to further deepen the conflict. For this great crime, I was called an antisemite who wants to see Israel destroyed.
Am I wrong in believing that this situation is utterly ridiculous?
The Michael Moore anecdote shows a popular fallacy. The presumption of innocence is a legal presumption. Whether OBL was behind the 9/11 attacks is a question of fact and one can quite properly hold the opinion that he was before he has been convicted. So, Moore was full of BS with his line about witholding judgment until OBL was convicted and his audience with him, but saying ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is such a commonplace in media and popular culture it is not surprising to see folk be fooled.
I like much of what Moore does, but he’s no more a thinker than Hitchens.
What is the fallacy?
And how was his line bs about withholding judgment until OBL was convicted? That is his opinion. He was asked to give an opinion.
Does Hitchens actually describe himself as a Neocon?? When I read Hitchens, I don’t exactly get a Bill Kristol or George Will vibe. Even when I went back to read his long screed against MM and F-9/11, I saw defense of a couple of specific things, but not a duck-walking, lock step supporter of GW Bush.
I think it would not be correct to describe George Will as a neocon. As I recall, he was not enthusiastic to say the least about our Iraq adventure.
Fine. I revise my statement to “…I don’t exactly get a Bill Kristol vibe.” Does Hitch think of himself as a neocon??
I don’t see the point of pigeonholing people who don’t want to be pigeonholed. Hence, I don’t see any value in calling Hitchens a neocon.
FWIW, I disagree with him about invading Iraq … and whenever I’ve seen him try to justify it the argument has appeared very weak. When he talks about just war theory, he seems to be basically making stuff up.
On the other hand, I do understand how he felt in the anecdote described. I had a similar experience back in the late months of 2001: a sudden realisation that many people on the Left were (and are) just so blindly anti-American as to make me wonder whether these are my people. I got over it, but I was genuinely shaken and shocked how non-traumatised many people were when I encountered them at a conference in Europe in October that year.
There was room for objective analysis, of course, though not for woo-filled conspiracy theories. I didn’t really encounter the latter, but many people seemed to have no place in their hearts for any compassion for the 9/11 victims or their loved ones. It was all just about what lessons America was supposed to draw from the experience, or whatever.
I got over it, but I was genuinely shaken and shocked how non-traumatised many people were when I encountered them at a conference in Europe in October that year.
I don’t recall being particularly traumatized by 9/11; unless you were a resident of Manhattan, employed at the Pentagon, or were close to someone who died in the attack, traumatization seems like a pretty substantial overreaction to me.
In the grand scheme of things the attack was just not that devastating, except for how people over-reacted to it. Twice as many people died that year in motorcycle accidents, but nobody called for the invasion of Harley-Davidson, because motorcycle accidents weren’t drummed up as an existential threat to America, necessitating two wars of military adventure and a rollback of civil liberties.
I take severe umbrage at your implication that the only reason someone might not be traumatized by 9/11 is that they hate America. That’s a pretty stupid thing to believe. A substantial number of us suspected that the American response to 9/11 would be a lot more harmful to America than the attack itself, and we were proven completely right.
Almost nobody on the American left is actually “anti-American”; if they were they’d hardly be involved in its politics. The vast majority of us simply believe that there’s a lot more to America and the American ideal than reflexive belligerence against the brown people of the month.
Really? For one thing, I happen to have friends who live in Manhattan.
I personally never met any liberal that were blindly Anti-American. I never even read them on liberal websites.
I think it is wrong to conflate the initial military reactions to 911 – the invasion of Afghanistan – with the later Iraq war. In my experience there was widespread public approval (or at least understanding) for the Afghanistan operation. There appeared clear justifications and aims (remove Al Qaeda and the taliban) that were directly connected to the attacks on the USA. The Iraq adventure seemed completely different. Not only that but military invasions in that part of the world have direct effects on Europe that those in the US might not realize, for instance the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis refugees displaced by the US operations and now being supported by European nations. One can speculate how much support Europe would be getting if its military actions resulted in a proportionate number of refugees ended up in the USA – and virtually none ended up in Europe.
I disagree with Moore’s argument but I can respect it – convicted in the court of public opinion does not equal convicted in a court – and I see Moore’s argument as being for the due process of law being followed. That said it was pretty clear Osama did it and a war on Afghanistan was justified.
Iraq, was another matter entirely, there was no really good reason for that war and Hitchens lost a lot of credibility in his arguments for it, especially when it came to his arguments for waterboarding (Which he ultimately retracted.)
If the two figures could get past their differences Moore and Hitchens would have made a could journalistic combo – they both go off the rails in opposite directions.
Robert Mueller, then director of the FBI, told a Senate committee 8 months after the 9/11 attacks that he “believes” the attack plans were hatched in Afghanistan but implemented elsewhere. Nothing OBL had said indicated that he had foreknowledge of the attacks. Trigger happy US translators did initially claim that a transcript of a video prior to 9/11 indicated OBL had foreknowledge, but the claim had to be withdrawn as it was refuted by non-US based Arabic translators. So the real motives of the Afghan invasion are probably not based on OBL.
Since then OBL has claimed responsibility for the attacks. He may be telling the truth. Or he may be boasting. He’d like us to believe he was responsible. It’s been a great recruiting tool for him. The fact is though the evidence is not great. Muslims all over the world are enraged at US military occupation and support for Israel. It could easily have been done by numerous outraged hooligans. We’d all like to think we know who the planners were but we do need to be careful to indict the right people regardless of the fact that it was an outrageous crime.
Also just be aware that the Taliban offered to hand OBL over to a third party, but that offer wasn’t considered by Washington. I think that helps us understand motivations as well.
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=006i5Z