-Caveat Lector- >From www.wsws.org WSWS : Polemics The political depravity of journalist Christopher Hitchens By David Walsh 5 October 2001 Back to screen version| Send this link by email | Email the author A historical turning point has this benefit: it brings out an individual’s true political physiognomy. What has been extraneous or cosmetic falls away, and the essence emerges. Such is the case with journalist Christopher Hitchens (Nation, Vanity Fair), who has in the past been known as a left critic of American society, a dispenser of piquant comments about the foibles of the establishment. Most of those who followed his writing did so for that reason. However, Hitchens’ recent comments on the September 11 World Trade Center attack indicate that he has irretrievably passed over to the extreme right. His permanent and final political identity, which was always the essential one, has now solidified. The British-born Hitchens hitched his wagon to the star of the US political and military establishment during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, as one of the most fervent advocates of American intervention in the Balkans against the Milosevic regime in Serbia. The columnist cultivated a relationship with the ultra-right through his promotion of the anti-Clinton impeachment drive. He served on one occasion as finger-man for the House Republicans, signing an affidavit at their request alleging that Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton aide, had provided him with information disparaging to Monica Lewinsky. This was part of an effort to set Blumenthal up on perjury charges. Similarly, Hitchens lined up with the Bush forces in the aftermath of the theft of the November 2000 election, making “liberal self-pity” and “mobbish Democrats” his chief targets. In two recent articles in the Nation (“Against Rationalization” and “Of Sin, the Left & Islamic Fascism”) and one in the British Spectator (“The Fascist Sympathies of the Soft Left”), Hitchens has taken to task “leftists” whom he asserts are rationalizing the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center as a just, or partially just, payback for US policies in the Middle East. Hitchens singles out the following comment of Sam Husseini of the Institute of Public Accuracy in Washington DC: “The fascists like bin Laden could not get volunteers to stuff envelopes if Israel had withdrawn from Jerusalem like it was supposed to—and the US stopped the sanctions and bombing on Iraq.” Hitchens is outraged by the suggestion that the attack in New York had any connection to US policy in the Middle East. He prefers to attribute the actions of the suicide pilots to the Islamic fanaticism of a sect whose “grievance and animosity predate even the Balfour Declaration, let alone the occupation of the West Bank. The gates of Vienna would have had to fall to the Ottoman jihad before any balm could begin to be applied to these psychic wounds.” This is ahistorical and, at its heart, racist-chauvinist nonsense. There is not a great leap from his position to the Bush administration’s worldwide crusade of “good versus evil,” or the ravings of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s notoriously corrupt right-wing prime minister, who proclaimed the need for a “Western crusade” for “civilized values.” By proclaiming the absence of any socio- historical circumstances that might have played a role in the recent attack, Hitchens evades making any assessment of the Middle Eastern political and economic situation. Any such analysis would have to take into account the responsibility of the US and the other major powers for the denial of Palestinian democratic rights and national aspirations, the mass murder of Iraqis, and the horrible conditions that generally prevail in the region. This does not mean that the Islamic fundamentalist movements are progressive or have any genuine anti-imperialist credentials. They are, in fact, deeply reactionary and hostile to the interests of the working class and oppressed masses. However, it is ludicrous to deny any link between American policies and the ability of such movements to find recruits and even, in some countries, a degree of popular sympathy. In his recent articles Hitchens also attacks Noam Chomsky, the linguist and radical critic of US foreign policy, for comparing the cruise missile attack launched by the Clinton administration on Sudan in August 1998 to the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Hitchens writes: “To mention this banana-republic degradation of the United States in the same breath as a plan, deliberated for months, to inflict maximum horror upon the innocent is to abandon every standard that makes intellectual and moral discrimination possible.” The World Socialist Web Site has clearly defined political differences with Chomsky, but his response to Hitchens is appropriate. He notes that the cruise missile raid on Khartoum “destroyed half the pharmaceutical supplies of a poor African country and the facilities for replenishing them, with an enormous human toll.” He cites an article in the Boston Globe which reported that a year after the attack, “without the lifesaving medicine [the destroyed facilities] produced, Sudan’s death toll from the bombing has continued, quietly, to rise.... Thus, tens of thousands of people—many of them children—have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases...” We part company with those elements on the petty-bourgeois left, including Chomsky, when they suggest that the terrorist attack was in some fashion or another a legitimate act of retribution for past crimes committed by the US government and military. However, we regard with contempt—as “moral eunuchs,” in Trotsky’s words—those who feel sympathy only for innocent Americans who are killed, and turn a blind eye to the victims of US atrocities around the world, whether it be the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet- bombing of North Vietnam, the deliberate killing of hundreds of Iraqi women and children in the Al-Amariya bomb shelter in the Persian Gulf War, or the bombing of bridges and trains in Serbia—and the list could be considerably extended. Hitchens concludes his attack on Husseini and Chomsky in this fashion: “I have no hesitation in describing this mentality, carefully and without heat, as soft on crime and soft on fascism. No political coalition is possible with such people and, I’m thankful to say, no political coalition with them is now necessary. It no longer matters what they think.” This is not political polemic. What is Hitchens hinting at? Either that patriotic vigilantes, with the “innate fortitude” which he elsewhere suggests leftists lack, should deal with his radical opponents, or that they should be rounded up by the FBI. As we noted, Hitchens has already proven himself a finger-man for the Republican right. In his recent articles Hitchens describes the Taliban and bin Laden- type movements as “Islamic fascism.” The term is applied too loosely and without concrete historical analysis. Moreover, his use of “fascism” as an epithet reeks of insincerity, given that (a) Hitchens was prepared to make common cause with American quasi-fascists in the Republican Party during the impeachment scandal and (b) Washington has never broken off relations with a government or party because of its fascistic leanings (whether in Spain under Franco, South Africa, Chile, Central America or elsewhere). Socialist opposition to Islamic fundamentalism is of a principled character. We do not outsource the task of defeating these reactionary movements to the imperialist bourgeoisie. Moreover, when one supports a policy, one assumes responsibility for its consequences. Hitchens has reached the point where he does not demarcate himself in any fashion from the Bush administration and its drive to war. In regard to the “Islamic fascists,” Hitchens takes up the arguments of his leftist opponents in the following manner: “Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed ‘we’ did. Well, does this not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?” And further: “Very well then, comrades. Do not pretend that you wish to make up for America’s past crimes in the region. Here is one such crime that can be admitted and undone—the sponsorship of the Taliban could be redeemed by the demolition of its regime and the liberation of its victims.” And finally: “This [the present situation in Afghanistan] is another but uniquely toxic version of an old story, whereby former clients like Noriega and Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic and the Taliban cease to be our monsters and become monstrous in their own right. At such a point, a moral and political crisis occurs. Do ‘our’ past crimes and sins make it impossible to expiate the offense by determined action?” The logic is unimpeachable. Since the US ruling elite and its political servants have inflicted misery on the population of Afghanistan and the region by their past reckless, blind and predatory policies, they should be given a blank check to intervene once again—and in a far more overwhelming fashion. Any honest or minimally principled individual who acknowledged the consequences of past policy as Hitchens does would surely ask: if the US government and its agencies are chiefly responsible for nurturing these monstrous forces in Afghanistan, why should they be entrusted with the task of resolving the resulting disaster? Hitchens’ argument is reactionary, but it is also absurd and unconvincing. The overthrow of the Taliban is the responsibility of the masses of Afghanistan and the region, in cooperation with the international working class. If the Afghan people are politically disoriented and presently unprepared for the job, that is in large measure due to the role of Soviet Stalinism, whose invasion in 1979 permitted the propaganda of the Islamic-clerical forces to bear fruit. This only underlines the critical importance of the program of socialist internationalism. There is no way out of the crisis in the region on the basis either of welcoming imperialist intervention, or supporting any of the political forces (Islamic, military, nationalist) that currently dominate. US policies in Afghanistan have proven disastrous not only for the people of that region. In the final analysis, some 6,000 people in New York and Washington have lost their lives as the result of criminal and irresponsible policies pursued by various American administrations. The September 11 tragedy was the end product of a political process set in motion in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Washington decided to incite Islamic fanaticism against the former Soviet Union. None of those who initiated that policy—Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger—or their supporters in the media, such as CBS’s Dan Rather, who traveled to Afghanistan and posed before the TV cameras in Mujahaddin robes, have come forward to assume responsibility. The mind-numbing media barrage, the flag- waving and the threats against dissenting voices are all aimed at preventing the historical facts from becoming known to the public. There is a continuity between the wars of the 1990s—chiefly, in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans—and the impending conflict in Central Asia. The US, the self-proclaimed sole superpower, is seeking to reorganize the world in line with its geopolitical agenda, establishing its hegemony over oil-rich regions such as the Middle East and the Caspian basin. A continuity also exists in the conduct of an international layer of former radicals and protesters who—from a combination of opportunism and cynicism—have thrown in their lot with the various ruling elites. Hitchens is merely one of this breed who has traveled farthest and fastest. Copyright 1998-2001
&&&&&& From http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=hitchens20010924 }}}>Begin Printed from http://www.thenation.com © 2001 The Nation Company, L.P. Back to Web View COLUMN | Special Report CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Of Sin, the Left & Islamic Fascism: Minority Report Not all readers liked my attack on the liberal/left tendency to "rationalize" the aggression of September 11, or my use of the term "fascism with an Islamic face," and I'll select a representat ve example of the sort of "thinking" that I continue to receive on my screen, even now. This jewel comes from Sam Husseini, who runs the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington, DC: The fascists like Bid-Laden could not get volunteers to stuff envelopes if Israel had withdrawn from Jerusalem like it was supposed to--and the US stopped the sanctions and the bombing on Iraq. You've heard this "thought" expressed in one way or another, dear reader, have you not? I don't think I took enough time in my last column to point out just what is so utterly rotten at the very core of it. So, just to clean up a corner or two: (1) If Husseini knows what was in the minds of the murderers, it is his solemn responsibility to inform us of the source of his information, and also to share it with the authorities. (2) If he does not know what was in their minds--as seems enormously more probable--then why does he rush to appoint himself the ventriloquist's dummy for such a faction? Who volunteers for such a task at such a time? Not only is it indecent to act as self-appointed interpreter for the killers, but it is rash in the highest degree. The death squads have not favored us with a posthumous manifesto of their grievances, or a statement of claim about Palestine or Iraq, but we are nonetheless able to surmise or deduce or induct a fair amount about the ideological or theological "root" of their act (Husseini doesn't seem to demand "proof" of bin Laden's involvement any more than the Bush Administration is willing to supply it) and if we are correct in this, then we have considerable knowledge of two things: their ideas and their actions. First the actions. The central plan was to maximize civilian casualties in a very dense area of downtown Manhattan. We know that the killers had studied the physics and ecology of the buildings and the neighborhood, and we know that they were limited only by the flight schedules and bookings of civil aviation. They must therefore have been quite prepared to convert fully loaded planes into missiles, instead of the mercifully unpopulated aircraft that were actually commandeered, and they could have hoped by a combination of luck and tactics to have at least doubled the kill-rate on the ground. They spent some time in the company of the families they had kidnapped for the purpose of mass homicide. It was clearly meant to be much, much worse than it was. And it was designed and incubated long before the mutual-masturbation of the Clinton-Arafat-Barak "process." The Talibanis have in any case not distinguished themselves very much by an interest in the Palestinian plight. They have been busier trying to bring their own societies under the reign of the most inflexible and pitiless declension of shari'a law. This is known to anyone with the least acquaintance with the subject. The ancillary plan was to hit the Department of Defense and (on the best evidence we have available) either the Capitol Dome or the White House. The Pentagon, for all its symbolism, is actually more the civil-service bit of the American "war-machine," and is set in a crowded Virginia neighborhood. You could certainly call it a military target if you were that way inclined, though the bin Ladenists did not attempt anything against a guarded airbase or a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania (and even if they had, we would now doubtless be reading that the glow from Three Mile Island was a revenge for globalization). The Capitol is where the voters send their elected representatives--poor things, to be sure, but our own. The White House is where the elected President and his family and staff are to be found. It survived the attempt of British imperialism to burn it down, and the attempt of the Confederacy to take Washington DC, and this has hallowed even its most mediocre occupants. I might, from where I am sitting, be a short walk from a gutted Capitol or a shattered White House. I am quite certain that in such a case Husseini and his rabble of sympathizers would still be telling me that my chickens were coming home to roost. (The image of bin Laden's men "stuffing envelopes" is the perfected essence of such brainless verbiage.) Only the stoicism of men like Jeremy Glick and Thomas Burnett prevented some such outcome; only those who chose who die fighting rather than allow such a profanity, and such a further toll in lives, stood between us and the fourth death squad. One iota of such innate fortitude is worth all the writings of Noam Chomsky, who coldly compared the plan of September 11 to a stupid and cruel and cynical raid by Bill Clinton on Khartoum in August 1998. I speak with some feeling about that latter event, because I wrote three Nation columns about it at the time, pointing out (with evidence that goes unrebutted to this day) that it was a war crime, and a war crime opposed by the majority of the military and intelligence establishment. The crime was directly and sordidly linked to the effort by a crooked President to avoid impeachment (a conclusion sedulously avoided by the Chomskys and Husseinis of the time). The Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant was well-known to be a civilian target, and its "selection" was opposed by most of the Joint Chiefs and many CIA personnel for just this reason. (See, for additional corroboration, Seymour Hersh's New Yorker essay "The Missiles of August"). To mention this banana-republic degradation of the United States in the same breath as a plan, deliberated for months, to inflict maximum horror upon the innocent is to abandon every standard that makes intellectual and moral discrimination possible. To put it at its very lowest, and most elementary, at least the missiles launched by Clinton were not full of passengers. (How are you doing, Sam? Noam, wazzup?) So much for what the methods and targets tell us about the true anti- human and anti-democratic motivation. By their deeds shall we know them. What about the animating ideas? There were perhaps seven hundred observant followers of the Prophet Muhammed burned alive in New York on September 11. Nobody who had studied the target zone could have been in any doubt that some such figure was at the very least a likely one. And, since Islam makes no discrimination between the color and shade of its adherents, there was good reason to think that any planeload of civilians might include some Muslims as well. I don't myself make this point with any more emphasis than I would give to the several hundred of my fellow Englishmen (some of them doubtless Muslims also) who perished. I stress it only because it makes my point about fascism. To the Wahhabi-indoctrinated sectarians of Al Qaeda, only the purest and most fanatical are worthy of consideration. The teachings and published proclamations of this cult have initiated us to the idea that the tolerant, the open-minded, the apostate or the followers of different branches of The Faith are fit only for slaughter and contempt. And that's before Christians and Jews, let alone atheists and secularists, have even been factored in. As before, the deed announces and exposes its "root cause." The grievance and animosity predate even the Balfour Declaration, let alone the occupation of the West Bank. They predate the creation of Iraq as a state. The gates of Vienna would have had to fall to the Ottoman jihad before any balm could begin to be applied to these psychic wounds. And this is precisely, now, our problem. The Taliban and its surrogates are not content to immiserate their own societies in beggary and serfdom. They are condemned, and they deludedly believe that they are commanded, to spread the contagion and to visit hell upon the unrighteous. The very first step that we must take, therefore, is the acquisition of enough self-respect and self- confidence to say that we have met an enemy and that he is not us, but someone else. Someone with whom coexistence is, fortunately I think, not possible. (I say "fortunately" because I am also convinced that such coexistence is not desirable). But straight away, we meet people who complain at once that this enemy is us, really. Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed "we" did. Well, does this not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power? A sudden sheep-like silence, broken by a bleat. Would that not be "over-reaction"? All I want to say for now is that the under-reaction to the Taliban by three successive United States administrations is one of the great resounding disgraces of our time. There is good reason to think that a Taliban defeat would fill the streets of Kabul with joy. But for the moment, the Bush Administration seems a hostage to the Pakistani and Saudi clients who are the sponsors and "harborers" the President claims publicly to be looking for! Yet the mainstream left, ever shuffling its feet, fears only the discomfort that might result from repudiating such an indefensible and humiliating posture. Very well then, comrades. Do not pretend that you wish to make up for America's past crimes in the region. Here is one such crime that can be admitted and undone--the sponsorship of the Taliban could be redeemed by the demolition of its regime and the liberation of its victims. But I detect no stomach for any such project. Better, then--more decent and reticent--not to affect such concern for "our" past offenses. This is not an article about grand strategy, but it seems to me to go without saying that a sincere commitment to the secular or reformist elements in the Muslim world would automatically shift the balance of America's up-to-now very questionable engagement. Every day, the wretched Arafat is told by Washington, as a favor to the Israelis, that he must police and repress the forces of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. When did Washington last demand that Saudi Arabia cease its heavy financing of these primitive and unscrupulous organisations? We let the Algerians fight the Islamic-fascist wave without saying a word or lending a hand. And this is an effort in which civic and social organizations can become involved without official permission. We should be building such internationalism whether it serves the short-term needs of the current Administration or not: I signed an anti-Taliban statement several months ago and was appalled by the eerie silence with which the initiative was greeted in Washington. (It ought to go without saying that the demand for Palestinian self-determination is, as before, a good cause in its own right. Not now more than ever, but now as ever. There are millions of Palestinians who do not want the future that the pious of all three monotheisms have in store for them.) Ultimately, this is another but uniquely toxic version of an old story, whereby former clients like Noriega and Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic and the Taliban cease to be our monsters and become monstrous in their own right. At such a point, a moral and political crisis occurs. Do "our" past crimes and sins make it impossible to expiate the offense by determined action? Those of us who were not consulted about, and are not bound by, the previous covert compromises have a special responsibility to say a decisive "no" to this. The figure of six and a half thousand murders in New York is almost the exact equivalent to the total uncovered in the death-pits of Srebrenica. (Even at Srebrenica, the demented General Ratko Mladic agreed to release all the women, all the children, all the old people and all the males above and below military age before ordering his squads to fall to work.) On that occasion, US satellites flew serenely overhead recording the scene, and Milosevic earned himself an invitation to Dayton, Ohio. But in the end, after appalling false starts and delays, it was found that Mr Milosevic was too much. He wasn't just too nasty. He was also too irrational and dangerous. He didn't even save himself by lyingly claiming, as he several times did, that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Bosnia. It must be said that by this, and by other lies and numberless other atrocities, Milosevic distinguished himself as an enemy of Islam. His national-socialist regime took the line on the towelheads that the Bush Administration is only accused, by fools and knaves, of taking. Yet when a stand was eventually mounted against Milosevic, it was Noam Chomsky and Sam Husseini, among many others, who described the whole business as a bullying persecution of--the Serbs! I have no hesitation in describing this mentality, carefully and without heat, as soft on crime and soft on fascism. No political coalition is possible with such people and, I'm thankful to say, no political coalition with them is now necessary. It no longer matters what they think. 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