September 27, 2005
Anti-War
When the heroes of the War are enumerated, Christopher Hitchens should be right there in that number. His constant, principled, and eloquent support of the quest for true liberalism against liberals has been stellar.
Andrew Sullivan started out in his league (and his camp) but got too distracted by domestic issues and then lost his gumption when things went poorly.
Hitchens's support has been resolute and indefatigable. I TiVoed his debate with George Galloway on C-SPAN. While I have lost my taste for that fiery, confrontational debate , I have to admit that those two were pretty good.
I was reading "Blood, Class and Empire" in the UK, and one of my associates' wives, a London attorney solicitor, said over the dinner table, in perfect British-chattering-classes pitch: "What's Happened To Christopher Hitchens?" I almost said "9-11" but thought better of it. I replied "Mr. Hitchens has seemed to find that some people on this planet are more evil that the US and UK government." Pretty lame, but I kept my job...
In Slate today, Hitch gives us Anti-War, My Foot - The phony peaceniks who protested in Washington. He knows who's who and where the bodies are buried:
To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.
The media treatment of the antiwar rallies make their Katrina coverage look good.
Hat-tip: Protien Wisdom, who links this to other media failures in covering these rallies. This is becoming one of my favorite blogs, and will be on the blogroll later today.