[lit-ideas] Re: Hitch on his leftist dismay
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2006 22:36:44 -0400
>> how would [Hitchens] know what an honourable man
thinks ?
Hitchens: The realization that we were in a cultural and
political war with Islamic theocracy came to me with force
and certainty not on 11 September 2001 but on 14 February
1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini offered money in his own
name to suborn the murder of my friend Salman Rushdie. On
that occasion, as you may forget, the conservative and
neo-conservative movement was often rather stupid and
neutral, in the case of the Bush establishment because of
its then-recent exposure as a sordid client of Khomeini’s in
the Iran-contra scandal, and in the case of many neo-cons
because they thought Salman was an ally of Third World
rebellions, especially the Palestinian one.
<snip>
As to the “Left” I’ll say briefly why this was the finish
for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies
in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force
in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and
Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able
to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best.
The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to
their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The
moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and
Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a
punishment for our secularism. And the governments of
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our
“national security” calculus, prove to be the most friendly
to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom
house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a
full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute
declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and
humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the
democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And
instead, the near-majority of “Left” intellectuals started
sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem
was Bush’s legitimacy. So I don’t even muster a hollow laugh
when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in
bed with the forces of reaction.
full interview at: http://hnn.us/articles/1881.html
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