It has become very apparent that those who scream hate and hate speech the most, are really the most hateful of all.

No shit.

I’m guessing that sentence was supposed to have “hate” and “hate speech” in quotes so you know they were referring to what other people say about fundamentalists.

But, wait. They put, “Behold the fool, the hypocrite, the hater, the lying heretic – Pastor Falwell!” in quotes. Are they actually quoting someone? Fuck it. I don’t even care.

Luckily for me I’m not a Christian, so it’s no hypocrisy on my part if I fail to love them that hate me and bless them that curse me.

Falwell’s very existence made America a weaker democracy and the world a worse place. And if you haven’t yet watched Chris Hitchens slap down the Falwell fellators, it’s well worth checking out.

Hitch still looks fairly drunkardly, but it sure helps to see why people can be so fond of him…..he pulls no punches.

The money shot comes at the end: “If you gave Falwell an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox”.

‘Scuse me while I swoon…..

Oh Yeah? Well You’re A Playa-Hata-Hata-Hata.

Does this grammatical construct make Falwell the Playa, or the Playa-Hata? Hmm…
Lets turn to Boolean algebra!

let x= Playa, thus not x = Playa-Hata
so… not (not) x = Playa
and not (not) not x = Playa-Hata

So…. assuming you were calling them Playa-Hata’s for hatin’ on theys that’s hatin’ on Falwell, who presumably would be the originating Playas. I guess that would make Falwell the origin Playa-Hata, since he would have to be “not x” so as to be notted by the Playas that themselves is hated on later by the Hatas and you “not” again here.

Four year BS and 2 for MS not wasted afterall!

Chris Hitchens slapping down someone who deserved it?

Pat Buchanan, making sense about his fellow Rethuglicans, and their atrocity in Iraq?

Interesting times. Could Congress grow a spine and impeach the AGAAGG (Attorney General Alberto ‘Abu Ghraib’ Gonzales)?

Hey, a fella can dream, can’t he?

Operation Rescue/Operation Save America has posted Benham’s press release.

The gates of hell are not puny!

We’ve just had the wrought iron arch repainted, and the attached fence extended.

Think – Harvard Yard meets Monty Burn’s estate.

The gates of heaven, on the other hand? Meh, the brick columns need repointing, for starters. They’ve really let the place go, IMHO.

Oh, yeah…….they’re not hate-filled at all. Not even a little.

Telling gay Christians that they belong to “sodomite churches” is just a big fucking compliment.

How do these people look at themselves in the mirror?

It’s a bit like the Hegelian dialectic rendered in crayon.

FUCK Hitchens.
Sorry, but no. He shouldn’t get let back in anyone’s good graces. Him n Dennis Miller gave up that right. Jumping on Richard Dawkins’ coattails doesn’t make him kosher. So he’s a poor man’s John Cleese when it comes to insults, bah. He’s also a bloodthirsty cheerleader of the biggest foreign policy mistake of my lifetime.
Buchanan was, at least, good friends with Hunter. Probably cause Pat at least has the hint of decency not to disguise himself or his beliefs. And he never supported the war, so even Buchanan has that over Hitchens.
Mind you, I’m biased, as Hitch is a faculty member of a different dept at my grad school, and I get to watch him hold court after class with 4-5 always female students in the faculty lounge/bar around the corner. Never seen a guy with ’em, n he hates it when you take attention away from him by talking to his flock.
Also hates it if you yell “KISSINGER” at him whenever his back is turned.

I don’t get this “let back in anyones good graces” thang. Do we, as individuals, any of us, really have that power? What I hear you saying, db, is YOU are never going to read, or even tolerate hitchens due to his position on Iraq. And you sure have every right to do that.

I know LOTS of peeps who thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Most of them, if not all, have changed their minds. I was always opposed. I still am interested in dialog with them. They have opinions on other topics that I find valuable.

See, even when the issue is as important as Iraq, I’m just not one of these single-issue progressives. They always make me think of people who’s entire political world is built on ABORTION!!!!11! I mean, fine, get active on what’s important to you, but there are a lot of issues that need addressing.

Hitchens was wrong on Iraq. He’s right on Falwell. You can skip him if you want, but I’ll continue to see what he has to say. I can’t really marginalize him even if I wanted to, no one has given me that power. And there’s no downside to reading his pieces or watching his clips on the t00bz. So I don’t really get your point, I guess…

mikey

Once all the abortionists, gays, secularists, dark skinned, and so on, are gone, who will these people have to fear and hate? Coffee drinkers vs. Tea? Like vampires, they can’t exist without hating someone. Scary.

Eh, I’m not really a fan of the Hitchmeister…..but I’d love a line about an enema and a matchbox when applied to that fuck Falwell no matter where it came from. If the zombie corpse of Hitler had said it, I’d appreciate it.

It’s not just that Hitchens is wrong, but how he’s wrong. HTML is kind enough to have HitchensWatch in his blogroll, so you can go there to get some idea, but he is the kind of wrong where he questions everything up to the basic humanity of those who disagree with him.
We get the same treatment out of him as Falwell, basically. The same people he’s trying to regain as readers by slagging god n jebus are the people he called morons and suicidal for not wanting a war against Islam. He’s trying to play you, mikey.

Fair enuff, Jillian. Hitch is just a pet peeve of mine, especially since I’d walk by him in person a day or two after, say, he gave the audience of Bill Maher’s show the finger for booing his war views.

You call this celebration of Falwell’s death big?

I wouldn’t trust the judgement of anyone who supported this war ever again, mikey. Period. Doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, doesn’t mean I won’t listen to them, doesn’t mean they won’t say things occasionally that are interesting. It just means if they say the sun rose this morning, I’ll be sure to stick my head out the window before accepting that.

As far as I know, Hitch is still shilling the “kill the brown menace!1111ONE!!!!” line. If true (haven’t checked, and don’t want to unfairly tarnish the guy), this would, in fact, render him beyond redemption in my view. I wouldn’t call for his blood – but his opinion on absolutely anything at all is worth positively nothing. Not that big a deal, really – there’s lots of people whose opinions I find pretty worthless, so I don’t see as it makes much difference in the vast scheme of things.

But hearing him dump all over Falwell is still worth a chuckle.

Here’s a nice, brief example of Hitch’s treatment of those opposed to the war.

I guess it comes down to two points.

First, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been wrong before. Including me. I don’t know why being wrong on one thing makes you wrong on everything. I guess I just don’t accept that.

Second, I only have the power to selectively choose to read/not read or watch/not watch. My opinion of somebody won’t discredit them, won’t marginalize them, won’t keep them off the cable news shows. So to pretend otherwise is kinda silly. Plus I’d deny myself the opportunity of reading or watching something that might have value to me – that would be, as my crazy mom was fond of saying, “cutting off my nose to spite my face”.

Now, that said, there are people I WON’T read. I won’t read coulter. I won’t read malkin. I won’t read little green weenies. I have read them, and determined that they have no value to me, no place in my worldview. I don’t, however, call for their marginalization or pretend I have some kind of authority to “forgive” them their tresspasses against humanity and reason. If the people keep dumping money on them, if the cable shows keep bringing them on, if they continue to find an audience for whom their batshit insanity resonates, then I’m not going to have much of an impact, y’know?

I probably wouldn’t even respond if you guys just said “I hate this idiot, and I won’t read him”. But it’s this supposed capacity for forgiveness (“we can never believe another word they say”) or as keeper of the keys (“we can never let them back in our tribe”) that rubs me the wrong way. So I just gotta say it. But it’s just me. I’ll grant you guys dispensation to have another opinion – I’m just magnanimous that way…

mikey

Argh, that’s not the link I thought it was. Somewhere there’s a truly memorable takedown of Hitch written by a former colleague at the Nation, which I can’t sift out of google at the moment.

It ain’t tribalism, mikey, it’s common sense. I’m not pretending I’ll affect his career, but that doesn’t mean I won’t mention how hard he sucks whenever he comes up in a non-negative light. He’s more than just wrong, he’s a hatemonger, like Rush, and Malkin, and LGF. He just comes from a different background than american conservatives, and thus has a different set of hatreds.

Well, mikey, it’s not an issue of forgiveness, since Hitchens has not asked for it. He hasn’t changed his mind on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and he is still a psychotic, racist hawk.

He hasn’t changed his mind on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and he is still a psychotic, racist hawk.

Y’know, thing is, that’s undeniably true. He’s also a pretty good writer. I enjoy his pieces on religion in general and fallwell in particular. They make me smile. His pieces on iraq? Not so much. So I’m selective, but I’m not going to deny myself the pleasure of punditry I enjoy ’cause I probably would hit the writer if he was in my living room.

A pundit with whom I am NOT in lockstep agreement? Imagine that! I regularly read Buchanan and Paul on Antiwar.com. Sometimes I even agree with them. But I read political pundits for edification and enjoyment, and sometimes come away with a bit of thought-provocation.

Pundits are allowed to be wrong. I just can’t abide them if they are (a) ALWAYS wrong or (b) unskilled writers who fail to entertain. That’s my basis for choosing who to read and who to skip.

I read Rex Morgan but skip that fucking duck, for example…

mikey

Hey, speaking of which, isn’t it time for Gavin to remix another Day by Day atrocity?

mikey

How about when said pundit flirts with Holocaust denial as part of his being an agitator, mikey?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-contrarian-delusion-_b_47295.html

Oy, I can’t copy/paste the right link to save my life today.
This one, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/dance-hitchens-dance_b_1707.html

How about when said pundit flirts with Holocaust denial as part of his being an agitator, mikey?

Pretty simple. I think he’s wrong. I still like his pieces on religion….

mikey

Hitchens is a fanatic. An anti-jihadist jihadist. An atheist fundamentalist.

And like all fundies, he can’t square the circle — he becomes a hypocrite.

Hitchens wants to hate all religions, which is good. But in his zeal, and because he’s a bit nostalgic for the trappings and structures of the British Empire, it makes him side with and excuse religious fanatics like Bush so that he may by proxy persecute or make war on religious fanatics among the Other.

Alexander Cockburn is right. Hitchens hasn’t really changed how he thinks. The sentiments were always there, but the emphases were different. Way back in 92 or so Hitchens wrote a defense of the genocide of the native americans, on the grounds that such a genocide paved the way to (Western) modernity, destroyed the primitive, blah blah blah. This anticipates the similar musings recently uttered by Pope Ratz — just replace Catholicism for extreme secular ethnocentrism. Hitchens basically defended the Conquistadors — religious fanatics in their own way — just like the Pope has.

Hitchens is interesting for a lot of reasons, but one is because his biases are ours, it’s just that he’s a fanatic, a universalist, an absolutist and is willing to defend the measures to which such vehemence always carries (war) and in going to such lengths will contradict his own thesis.

Hitchens claims to be ecumenical — or should I say consistent — in his hatred of religion. But in practice he’s always willing to make an alliance with Christians and Jews against not just Muslims but any other religion, polytheistic, animistic, whatever.

I’ve read a number of Hitchens’ articles, and I wouldn’t characterize his thinking as racist or his skewering of religion as opportunistic. I feel a little uncomfortable defending the man because I also think that he is wrong to support the war in Iraq now or in the past and that his defense of the war involves a good deal of screwy logic. Nevertheless, there is a central charge that he makes that is difficult to counter, and that is that the Left has not done a good job of articulating when or how we would act to stop dreadful people from doing dreadful things. So OK, invading Iraq to stop Hussein in 2003 didn’t make a lot of sense because his real crimes had been committed in the late 80s early 90s — does that mean that an intervention at that earlier time would have been OK? Or, one can point out that there have been worse dictators than Hussein that we have left alone — but what does that mean? Should we or shouldn’t we have done something about them? This is an issue that Clinton had to think long and hard about after he was criticized from many quarters for failing to act on behalf of Rwanda. His failure in that regard obviously helped prompt him to intervene on behalf of Kosovo and it seemed to foretell a general policy of intervening — militarily if necessary — to stop crimes against humanity. However, nothing like a consensus about how or when to act has ever been developed, and our thinking about how to respond to contemporary disasters (e.g., Darfur) remains muddled.

Hitchens is a fanatic. An anti-jihadist jihadist. An atheist fundamentalist.

And like all fundies, he can’t square the circle — he becomes a hypocrite.

Lets suppose that is all true. Its certainly not far off the mark. I’m still confused. What’s the point? How is that knowledge supposed to inform my actions? Am I somehow contributing to the level of evil in the world if I enjoy his writings on religion? Is it somehow punishing HIM if I don’t?

My whole point is that there are people who are wrong on lots of stuff that still have something to contribute to my world, and my worldview. And I guess I make these points because it FEELS like I’m being subtly coerced to not give their opinions on other topics the weight and credence I might give someone more aligned with my political views.

And you can say all these things about Hitchens, or Sullivan for that matter, and they may be correct, but they aren’t Malkin or Coulter or Goldberg. In the sense that they do still have things to say I want to hear…

mikey

Well, mikey, people can be right about things for the wrong reasons. The idea starts to get technical and abstruse after a while, but say for example you are at the ocean with someone. You discuss the salinity of the ocean for a while, and you both agree that the ocean is salty. You are both correct. After further discussion, however, it becomes clear that while you believe the ocean to be salty because of the suspension of minerals from the water cycle and the ocean floor, combined with the evaporation from the oceans which increases the salinity, your friend believes the ocean is salty because there’s a magical salt shaker at the bottom of the ocean that perpetually pours out salt. It got dropped there by a genie ten thousand years ago, and he’s been looking for it ever since.

You have come to a correct answer with correct reasoning. Your friend has come to a correct answer with incorrect reasoning. And there’s no telling when this incorrect reasoning process is going to lead your friend to drawing incorrect conclusions.

People like this are just not trustworthy, even when they’re right. They’re right more by accident than anything else, and it’s important to never forget that. If you do forget, you’ll end up getting screwed over by them.

All this talk of how “puny”, “pathetic”, and “weak” Satan is. So why doesn’t God just go in there and mop it all up?
Problem solved.

Oops. I forgot. ‘Critical thinking’ is the devil’s work.

But say that same person could sing beautifully. Like a bird. Just a gorgeous voice. Should I refuse to listen to them sing because they’re wrong about the physics of the ocean? This is MY pleasure and well being we’re discussing, not theirs, y’know?

I read stuff I like to read because, well, it’s stuff I like to read! I like Houseman and Kipling, and regularly get taken to task for that too. I’ll never understand it. If somebody’s wrong about something, they’re wrong. It doesn’t make every damn thing they do valueless…

mikey

A little off-topic, I thoroughly enjoyed the 90 minute debate about religion that Hitchens had recently with Al Sharpton, which you can watch here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2166143/

@Some Guy: God doesn’t do it Himself because, in the world of Christian Newswire, that seems to be a job suited to a pudgy mortal like Falwell.

Well, mikey, I’ve seen Hitch speak, and he’s a genius at quoting entire poems verbatim from memory, even when drunk and sweating.
But, well, there’s plenty of non-warmonger, bigoted, Holocaust denying writers out there, some of whom are as interesting as Hitch.
I don’t mean this snarkily, but what is it he gives you than no one else can?

No, no, no mikey. I’m not saying don’t read him. not at all. If there’s one pro-war guy to read, it would have to be Hitchens. Of all the arguments for war, his were the best (which is not saying much, but is saying something). I’m just trying to give a decoder on why he is wrong and how he has come to the position at which he currently stands.

Certainly one can learn more and be exposed to a better style of writing by reading Hitchens rather than, let’s say, Yglesias or Beinart. And Hitchens’s stuff on literature is still good in the sense that it makes one think productively.

Hitchens’s catalog — For The Sake of Argument, Prepared For The Worst, Unacknowledged Legislation — one can read these today for pleasure and profit. Even his book on Clinton, which was itself an attack from the Left even though hitchens, in publicizing it, made some awful alliances with Ann Coulter and Freepers and the like, is a decent book.

He always had some nasty biases that he mostly kept under control. He was my favorite pundit by a long shot. But he couldn’t contain his ideological devils forever. It’s really a shame. He’s wicked intelligent — or was.

Where most pro-war pundits are a homogenized mess of liberal hawkery or wingnuttery, Hitchens is sui generis, and that does make him worth some measure of continued attention.

*that no one else can

No, mikey, you shouldn’t necessarily ignore them.

Just remember that if you think your friend is actually agreeing with you about the ocean being salty, you’re in for a sad, sorry surprise when she talks you into going on a boat ride together and you spend the next six weeks cruising around looking for that damn salt shaker, is all.

HTML, I have to disagree. Hitch’s arguments were the worst, because he especially should have been able to see through the bs. At least a fool like Joe Klein coud say he was honestly taken. Hitch was in favor of the war because he hates Islam, and at least that’s honest, but shit he didn’t limit himself to that. I remember a column in Slate that was no better than a Debbie Schussel post, where Hitch used a story by an Iraqi scientist from the early 90s of burying a single centrifuge as proof that Saddam had buried the WMDs.
Basically I think Hitch should be put out to pasture because he’s become outright incoherent. It’s not just the war or Holocaust, it’s that it no longer feels like Hitchens has any kind of coherent underpinnings to his beliefs, let alone a consistent philosophy. He says things as much for the reaction he thinks it’ll get as any belief on his part, and while that’s a failing of every pundit, in his case it’s just a further sign he’s drunk himself into oblivion.
I hate to harp on the comparison, but I keep thinking of Dennis Miller. Once he’s not on your side you realize the guy is just an asshole who likes to bask in feeling clever or contrarian.

The difference between Hitchens and Jillian’s sweetly singing saltine siren is presumably no one goes to her as an expert opinion on oceanography, while Hitchypoo is held out as an expert in foreign affairs. His warmongering in the context of foreign policy strikes at the heart of why were are supposed to listen to him, while her belief in Teh Giant Saltshaker says nothing about her singing one way or the other.

Just for the purposes of clarity:

Although I’m not as well versed on the details, I agree he is wrong on iraq.

I’m just saying I’m not going to eliminate him from my reading list because of it (thanks HTML!)

And brad. C’mon. “What does he give me that no one else does?” Huh? I enjoyed his piece on falwell. It gave me pleasure. Can no other writer give me pleasure? That’s just silly. But should I deny the pleasure of reading his falwell takedown because I disagree with his Iraq policy? Dood, you’re a smart, very well educated guy. I cannot believe you do not ever read folks you disagree with.

That’s the whole point…

mikey

Screw Hitchens.

Love, Christopher’s liver.

Mikey: of course you’re right about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But I also understand why abd is perfectly willing to pitch Hitchens overboard: its not just that he was wrong about Iraq, its that he was a real fucking asshole about it and questioned the reason and character of everyone who disagreed with him on the subject.

Its easy to understand why adb and others wouldn’t rush to say “well, I know he called me a fucking coward and a traitor and all, but let’s see what else he has to say.”

brad, you’re right wrt specifics. but wrt generalities, is how I meant it. Hitchens alone argued that because we have propped up regimes around the world, and specifically that Saddam was our son of a bitch, our client and a monster we had created, that it was our responsibility to destroy him. that alone was better than the wingnuts, because it admitted the history that they had tried to put into the memory hole or, if cornered, would excuse on the grounds of cold war necessity. And his Kurd fetish comes from a good reason. Hitchens hates Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger and the Shah used the Kurds as a diversion to harass Saddam, lied to them and told them aid would come, then let Saddam crush them. There is a moral logic here qualitatively different from that of wingnuts. It’s just the next step for Hitchens was stupid and ultimately why I opposed the war — how on Earth can you trust GW Bush to undo what Reagan and Nixon did when he is their moral clone (adjusted for entropy)? How can you trust Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Cheney to undo what Kissinger and Baker and Schultz did when the former group is way more radically imperialist and ruthless yet not as intelligent? You can’t. But he was right about the responsibility part.

It’s not that I don’t agree with him, mikey, it’s that I don’t think he’s genuine. Either he’s nothing but a hack at this point, casting about for contrarian positions he thinks will sell his writing, or he’s caught rabies and should be put down as an act of mercy. Hitch wouldn’t even question his support of the war when it came out Kissinger has been advising the White House on Iraq from the very beginning.
Of course I read plenty by folk I don’t agree with. Hell, I think Plato’s metaphysics are completely imaginary, as are all metaphysics, but I’ve made him half my focus in study. But I learn things from doing so. Hell, I learn a little something from reading Mark Noonan. I learn what the latest in batshit insanity is.
Hitchens speaks solely for himself. How many radically atheistic Iraq occupation supporting Holocaust deniers do you think are out there? Not enough for it to be a significant group.
Like I said to Jillian, if you liked him snarking at Jerry I have no problem with that, I just don’t think he deserves any credit beyond that. He’s well spoken and well educated, and horribly, viciously, wrong. And that he still has remnants of a rep with good folk like you is why I rail on him. To paraphrase Jillian, if Hitch tells you that you have a penis, doublecheck. I honestly think that to find him worth reading is to give him too much credit. I’d never try and make that choice for you, but I’ll sure as hell take any chance to make it as hard as possible for anyone who’s tempted to take him seriously to do so.

Not that I’m an incompetence dodger. I wouldn’t have been in favor of a Democratic President’s invasion of Iraq. The only people who could or can clean up our mess are the Iraqis themselves.

My problem with that argument by Hitch is I don’t know how much he meant it, HTML. It’s sure not a gun he’s stuck to. Listen to him today and it’s all existential threat and they’re gonna eat our babies.
Also, as you hint at, expecting religious radicals, who he’s supposed to be in opposition to in principle, to right the wrongs of the West was either naive or disingenuous. I don’t remember anything specific such as whether he wanted to wait for the UN, so I can’t say which, but I, out of a belief he is scum, question whether he ever meant it or just found pretty words to adorn his hate.

The gates of hell are not puny!
We’ve just had the wrought iron arch repainted, and the attached fence extended.
And all those good intentions for paving the driveway, they didn’t come cheap.

Here’s how I see it: If a guy is an idiot on an issue, I will take his views on other issues with a grain of salt. The more issues on which he is a moron, the larger the quantity of salt I use when reading him on other issues. Note that by “idiot,” I mean factually wrong, obnoxious for other reasons or both.

I suspect you are the same way, mikey, and that’s why, for instance, you don’t read Coulter. (That may be a bad example, because I can’t think of any issue on which she has not been, publicly and grossly, an idiot.)

Finally, I believe different people have different “tipping points,” a number of issues (perhaps weighted by importance to the person) beyond which, they just won’t bother with someone who has been an idiot. Mikey has not reached his tipping point with Hitchens, ADB has. Q.E.D.

By the way, I am an idiot, so take everything I write with a grain of salt.

I can’t take Hitchens’ writing seriously because of his streak of sentimental romanticism. I mean, he wrote this opinion piece as an angry response to smoking bans… the most amusing part was that the story that aroused his wrath was an April Fool hoax.

Bugger me if it doesn’t contain every sentimental WWII cliché except the one about plucky Londoners standing shoulder-to-shoulder during the Blitz to defy the Jerry bombers. You can practically hear the medley of Vera Lynn and Churchill’s “Fight them on the beaches” speech playing in the background while he was writing it.

And his fetish about the Kurdish Peshmerga… It is as if he is reliving the Spanish Civil war, but since he never got to hang out with the International Brigade and shout out No Pasarans! and stand below balconies strumming guitar ballads to serenade La Passionaria, he projects it all onto the Fight for Freedom in Kurdistan instead.

Bugger me if it doesn’t contain every sentimental WWII cliché except the one about plucky Londoners standing shoulder-to-shoulder during the Blitz to defy the Jerry bombers. You can practically hear the medley of Vera Lynn and Churchill’s “Fight them on the beaches� speech playing in the background while he was writing it.

And his fetish about the Kurdish Peshmerga… It is as if he is reliving the Spanish Civil war, but since he never got to hang out with the International Brigade and shout out No Pasarans! and stand below balconies strumming guitar ballads to serenade La Passionaria, he projects it all onto the Fight for Freedom in Kurdistan instead.

Dammit. See? I missed the GOOD wars. Groveling in the Southeast Asian mud, slogging in rubble strewn desert towns or humping in the afghani mountains where the top cash crops are poppies and dirt, there’s nothing the slightest bit romantic about that.

Ahh, but the Spanish civil war, with the strumming guitars and the Hemmingway presence, the hard men with the courage and the beard and the booze – That’s for me! Let’s have one of THOSE wars right away!! Sign me up!

mikey

Mikey Ssaid,

“Dammit. See? I missed the GOOD wars. Groveling in the Southeast Asian mud, slogging in rubble strewn desert towns or humping in the afghani mountains where the top cash crops are poppies and dirt, there’s nothing the slightest bit romantic about that.”

Yup.

I’ve said it before, a large part of this issues with pro-war hawks is that many of they are pissed that Daddy was a hero, and they are not. And we have to start shit to create that same feeling of Heroic Victory for ourselves, then by god, that’s what we have to do.

The US really, REALLY, missed out on the point of WWII, simply because we were never bombed. The war was always “over there”. Sure, the homefront was busying themselves with industrialism and war rations and bonds, but, really, when the GI’s came home, there were cities left to have ticker tape parades in.

For the last hundred years, war has always been an abstract concept for America. We send troops off somewhere, read about it in the paper, then they come back. Yay. Life at home goes on, nothing changes, no one has to worry about their workplace being hit today when the enemy bombers come in for their morning raid. Is it any wonder that warfare has once again resumed it’s pre-WWI status of glamor and heroism?

A question for Dakota Blue. Does the world have the responsibilty to initiate a “regime change” in the US and bomb it to smithereens for its war of agression against Iran and for the fomenting of mayhem in Somalia and Palestine and who knows where else? If so I can see your point. If not, then what exactly is your point?

Does the world have the responsibility to initiate a “regime change� in the US

I don’t pretend to speak for Dakota, but your question is both easily answered and utterly specious. Of course the world has that responsibility. The US is currently a rogue nation, and a threat to peace and stability.

There is also nothing the world can do. The US is highly militarized. America’s ability to project force and destroy foreign militaries is unquestioned. There is nothing the high-tech, cutting edge American armed forces can do against a local insurgency with extensive support, but there is nothing the world can do militarily against the US. They should start thinking seriously about this.

mikey

I’ve said it before, a large part of this issues with pro-war hawks is that many of they are pissed that Daddy was a hero, and they are not. And we have to start shit to create that same feeling of Heroic Victory for ourselves, then by god, that’s what we have to do.

Mikey & Some Guy –

You’d be tickled, I think, to see all the Russian WWII movies that have been playing nonstop on Channel First and KRB for the last couple of weeks. It’s fascinating to reverse-engineer what was going on in Russia politically by observing the propaganda movies. In the old 50s-era Stalinist movies, the hero is always a heroically bearded partisanski clutching his MP-40 in one hand whilst inspiring the clean-faced young Red Army soldier who is staring up at him, enraptured. The bearded partisan even appears at the Metro stop dedicated to the heroes that turned back the Wehrmacht at what was then the Moscow city limits in ’41: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hardnewsinc/464399897/

In Russia, they paid the price and then some. And down on their southern border, hell in Moscow city center, they are still paying the price of empire … the Chetniks are serious badasses and they are not giving up. Yeltsin, viewed here in the U.S. as a lovable red-faced drunk buffoon, screwed up the war in Chechnya at least as bad, if not worse, than Duh!bya has screwed up Iraq. And they are still dealing with the fallout from that.

The current crop of war-related movies has none of the uncritical adoration of the heroism of the military that gets foisted on us in crapaganda like J.A.G. or Blackhawk Down or in the fantasies of the chickenhawk bloggers. Because they know better. The one benefit of compulsory military service is that at least every person gets some kind of contact with military, and if they’re at all paying attention, figures out that it’s not all spit-shined boots standing at attention while Old Glory waves overhead… maybe if we gave Noonan and Pammy and Magalapagan (or whatever) a really really intense paintball training exercise and then pinned big shiny medals on them at the end and gave them pats on the head, they’d be satisfied with all the praise and attention they got, and they’d fucking shut up for a while.

Then again, the downside of compulsory military service is that the cretins, morons and petty mini-tyrants are given uniforms, weapons and theoretically at least, some authority by which to work out their raging penis envy/inferiority complexes on the rest of the citizenry. Which is why fragmentation grenades were invented, dear hearts.

It was the prospect of health-nazi puritans clamping down on his nicotine addiction that gave Hitchens his excuse to open his Commando-Comics collection and channel WW-II nostalgia all over the page.

I don’t know about your lot, but a lot of Commonwealth WW-II soldiers were introduced to tobacco by the army cigarette rations [I wouldn’t be surprised if more veterans died of lung cancer than were killed during the actual war]. Hence the propaganda images of troops puffing away in the sands of North Africa or the jungles of Burma or on the North Atlantic convoys. From Hitchens’ perspective, these can all be recruited to his cause: iconic examples of the “British stoicism and enduranceâ€? heritage which the puritans are disowning when they ban cigarettes. Feel free, at this point, to imagine him pulling his dad’s old mothball-reeking uniform out of the cupboard and trying to squeeze into it.

What I like about his rhetoric is that along with the ciggies, the allied and axis armies were also handing out bucketloads of amphetamine pills. So when the health nazis take away my crystal-meth pipe, they are spitting in the faces of the greatest generation!

Up until a few years ago I would have agreed with mikey on this; Hitchens is a jerk but at least he’s an interesting jerk (sort of how I feel about Michael Crichton). But I quit reading Hitch when Ann Coulter publicly declared her admiration for him. I know, not terribly “fair” or even very rational, but hey, it’s enough. The only place I read him these days is Free Inquiry, because he’s there and, well, I pay for it.

The only negative statement here I’d take issue with is the idea that Hitchens rode Dawkin’s coattails into atheist celebrity. Hitch was writing for Free Inquiry long before Dawkins showed up and he took far more crap for his own atheist tract (about Mother Teresa) than Dawkins did his (although this probably has to do with Dawkins being an urbane, erudite scholar who advances his thesis with eloquence, and Hitch being a drunken asshole who blusters, but I digress).

In other words, Hitchens was a celebrity atheist before it was cool. The only thing I ever have/do now/ever will admire about the man. BTW, you might poke through Dennis Perrin’s old blog “Red State Son” for some amusing anecdotes about Hitchens. The one about Hitch the macho man was pretty funny.

There is also nothing the world can do. The US is highly militarized. America’s ability to project force and destroy foreign militaries is unquestioned. There is nothing the high-tech, cutting edge American armed forces can do against a local insurgency with extensive support, but there is nothing the world can do militarily against the US. They should start thinking seriously about this.

You know, I wonder about this. I’m not about to argue that the U.S. military isn’t supreme in the world, it’s the “unquestioned” part I wonder about. It seems to me that the world has been thinking about the U.S. threat, witness, e.g. the Chinese quietly financing our debt and encouraging the erosion of our industrial base, the oil-profit fueled military buildup by the Iranians, etc. The U.S. won WWII because we were able to out produce everyone else by a large margin, and we were the world’s leading oil producer; neither of these conditions obtains today. I’m not sure we’re in a position to prevail in a world conflict, at least not with the ease we won WWII (and yeah, it was easy, largely because the Russians whipped Hitler and experienced most of the sacrifice that required, and there was no way in hell the Japanese were going to match our industrial output).

Even at the tactical/hardware/War Nerd level at which we are supposed to excel, I have my doubts. There’s a lot of scary stuff floating around out there, like the new Russian cruise missiles designed to destroy American aircraft carriers. You can throw in the Russian and Chinese research on EMP weapons and the Ukrainian developments in anti-aircraft radar, and it seems the world has not been idle. I’m not saying you’re wrong in the short term, as the U.S. will always prevail in these conflicts where we, as the man said, “take a little country and throw it against the wall to show the world we mean business.” But the unquestioned assumption of wingnut militarism, i.e. that the U.S. military is invincible, is probably incorrect over the long haul. Unfortunately, the only way we’ll find out is when we get an administration that is both ballsy and stupid enough to test the proposition.

or humping in the afghani mountains where the top cash crops are poppies and dirt,

Dirt’s a cash crop? Whuh-hey, I’m in the money!

Herr Doktor, Hitch probably listened to a little too much of The Clash. Get all sorts of romantic civil war notions from that, a young lad would…

Moxie, I think it’s pretty well established by now that the US possesses way more Stuff That Goes Bang than everybody else put together, spends more on Stuff That Goes Bang than everybody else put together, and has more bases for Stuff That Goes Bang than everybody else put together. More than 700 foreign bases, fer jeebus’s sake! And more than likely more than 1000, just that the US is rather coy about its homes away from home for the sojer boys.

Spanish bombs in Andalucia…
Bugger, you’ve got me started now. Time for the dried frog pills.

I was just about to say that Hitchens was good at spotting the romantic sentimentalism in other people’s behaviour. After the death of an over-privileged clotheshorse called Diana, when Blair and the Murdoch press decided to anoint her as the “people’s princess”, Hitchen’s response was — well, not exactly spot-on, but at least in the appropriately scornful direction.
However, as for recognising the black kettle in his own eye —
pills are kicjlinge in noer

I know, I read Chalmers Johnson too. But the the thing I was wondering about was how long just spending a lot of money will avail us of military superiority. I don’t really know, and would contend that it’s an open question.

Moxie, I think the fact of having enough firepower to turn the entire planet into smoking glass has at least some deterrent effect. And the US does spend squillions on research into weapons, which is also more than anyone (or everyone) else.

But you’re right in that that’s not the whole story. The way the US government has been squandering the military, for example, weakens them considerably. It’s not a good idea to send soldiers out without proper equipment: depletes the numbers and discourages recruits.

Also, it’s probably not a good idea to give the military command the distinct impression that the CinC is a nutcase, along with most of his advisors. That way military coup lies.

There’s also the fact that the continued policy of attacking weaker countries is infuriating people across the globe, and sooner or later this fury will be greater than the fear of reprisals. Particularly since the most likely attackers will be non-state actors, who don’t have a home base that can be bombed. It’s like trying to kill a wasp when the only weapon you’ve got is a rocket launcher.

And finally, there’s the fact that the US armed forces have something of a reputation around the world, at least amongst army types. The more the US displays its astonishing military prowess, the more people will realise that, despite all that expensive hardware, the US military is known for being dangerous to all around, including allies, and is also renowned for a certain confident incompetence.

And that’s not the kind of thing that helps build an effective deterrent.

Hitchens is, barely, at his best, Brian May playing for Skrewdriver

Well, there’s the question of whether the next big war will be nuclear, conventional, or some combination of the two. My comments were mostly predicated on the idea of a “conventional” war, the one our generals and admirals have planned for. And I think that they might be in for an unpleasant surprise if they try it with Iran, our next most likely victim. The antiwar crowd has been praising Admiral Fallon for his opposition to further Navy buildup in the Gulf, but I think that he probably was being prudent less for diplomatic reasons, and more because he has some idea of what the current Iranian order of battle could do to Navy ships in the Gulf.

You’re right, though, in terms of nuclear firecrackers nobody can touch us. Whether that will be a consideration in the next war depends entirely on the amount of loopiness present in the White house, and makes the next election a nail-biter even though most of the candidates are pretty lackluster (I mean, just imagine if we got McCain! Jesus…). Even there, though, the Russians can match us for world-ending potential.

From time to time I make a point of reading the last chapter of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, where he describes the state of affairs circa 1980, and marvel at how little has changed. In fact, next to nothing has changed beyond the identity of the political entity that controls the former USSR’s nuclear arsenal (except that India and Pakistan now both have nukes). You might give that a read, particularly the part about the “Richardson Curve,” if you want some idea of how much trouble we’re in. LW Richardson gave us about 300 years before the “world-ending” conflict, but Sagan seemed less optimistic.

Christopher Hitchens is Hunter S. Thompson, only without any of the redeeming qualities like humor, insight, or the more imaginative use of drugs and alcohol; but with extra octane misanthopy.

Just to be clear, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Hitchens’ atheism.
However, to put a book out about it now is clearly an attempt to use the opening created by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins to try and get back in the good graces of the further edges of the left which used to be his fan base.
Fuck
Hitchens

[…] tell you, it’s always been that way with the neocons. Christopher Hitchens was a hot topic in comments here the other day; I’ll recycle something I’ve cribbed before from his old journalism […]

However, to put a book out about it now is clearly an attempt to use the opening created by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins to try and get back in the good graces of the further edges of the left which used to be his fan base.

I don’t see it that way. Yes, there’s an opening in the market, and Hitch can churn out books on demand, but he’s long been an equal-opportunities religion-hater.

It is as if he is reliving the Spanish Civil war, but since he never got to hang out with the International Brigade and shout out No Pasarans! and stand below balconies strumming guitar ballads to serenade La Passionaria, he projects it all onto the Fight for Freedom in Kurdistan instead.

Well, sorta. And the irony is that he’s apparently forgotten Homage to Catalonia and Orwell’s description of how the various anti-fascist orgs hated one another, to the bemusement of the foreigners who’d come along to join the fight. Hitch is like a Stalinist in May 1937, trying to mow down the fucking Anarchists and POUM.

But yes, he’s been waiting his entire life for a Spanish Civil War to support, and when he does it, he signs up with the bastards’ brigade.

[…] apparently accusing liberals of being Christ-haters. Standard issue conservative rot, that. (Hat tip, the fine folks at Sadly, […]