[Peace-discuss] Christopher Hitchens

[Matt Reichel]

Hitchens, in fact, was not the only popular commentator on the Left who 
supported the American-led invasion of Iraq.
Not much discussed in the United States was the support for the war given by 
Bernard Kouchner...... -co-founder of Medecins sans frontieres, and active 
member in the Paris 1968 student radical movement. His views are 
exceptionally interesting to dissect, because they are those of someone who 
has been entering war zones to provide aid to victims of war for over 30 
years, often against the wishes of the governing elite and rebel forces 
involved (sonething the red cross would never do...)
He shares with Hitchens, I think, an overarching belief in liberal 
institutions.Their thinking goes that one can be both a Leftist and believe 
in the religion of liberal positivism.

At the same time, Kouchner has also always been a member of the pompous 
Leftist class: a sort of 16th Arrondissement Communist, or la gauche caviar, 
to use popular phraseology.

Interview of Kouchner:
http://www.iht.com/articles/87645.html

>From: "jencart" <jencart at mycidco.com>
>To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] Christopher Hitchens
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 10:03:59 EDT
>
>He's got some weird thinking going on, for sure, Carl.  I kinda remember a 
>panel on C-SPAN where he was supporting Congressional support for attacking 
>Iraq, maybe supporting the attack itself, can't remember for sure and hope 
>I'm wrong.....  Jenifer
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Hitchens was regarded as a writer on the Left (a notoriously elastic term) 
>up to his support for the invasion of Afghanistan, in spite of his support 
>for the Falklands War and the attack on Kosovo.  Twenty years ago, for 
>example, he wrote a detailed defense of Chomsky against some of the 
>standard slanders of Noam (re Faurisson, Cambodia, Israel), which is still 
>worth reading ("The Chorus and Cassandra").  For the record, Hitchens 
>claims (fantastically) that it's Chomsky who's changed, not he -- even 
>though in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq he went so far as contending 
>that Saddam Hussein must have known about 9/11 before the fact.
>
>I've argued that Hitchens' politics are formed by theology, not economics: 
>he considers theism, not capitalism, to be the problem of the age.  9/11 
>was an intellectual gift to him: the enemy was revealed, he thought, as 
>what he calls it in this article -- "theocratic fascism" (in fact a rather 
>inaccurate term for the people who staged the 9/11 attacks).  I once 
>started a piece I called "Little Christopher and Big God," but I never 
>finished it...  --CGE
>
>
>On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, jencart wrote:
>
> > I loved this article, Carl.  Yeah, I'm a Chomsky fan, too....
> >
> > Since when is the ever-irritating Christopher Hitchens -- he's
> > annoying even when he happens to say something I agree with -- a
> > "colleague on the left?
> >
> > Jenifer C.
> > -------------------------------------------------------------- Dealing
> > with terror, Chomsky believes, requires a "dual programme" along the
> > lines of "what the British did in Northern Ireland". He says: "The
> > terrorist acts are criminal acts so you apprehend the guilty, use
> > force if necessary and bring them to a fair trial. They want to appeal
> > to the reservoir of understanding for what they're doing, even from
> > people who hate and fear them. If they can mobilise that reservoir
> > they win. We can help them mobilise that reservoir by violence or we
> > can reduce it by dealing with legitimate grievances."
> >
> > "Every resort to violence has been a gift to the jihadists.  Respond
> > with violence which hits civilians and you're giving a gift to Osama
> > bin Laden; you're giving him the propaganda weapon he wants so he can
> > say, 'We have to defend Islam against the Western infidels trying to
> > destroy it. We're fighting a war of defence'."
> >
> > "If you want to mobilise that constituency that is the way to
> > intervene. But there is another way and that is to pay attention to
> > the legitimate grievance. That's intervention too."
> >
> > THE CV
> >
> > Born: 7 December, 1928 in Philadelphia, son of William Chomsky, a
> > Hebrew scholar
> >
> > 1949: Marries linguist Carol Schatz. Three children
> >
> > 1955: Doctorate in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.
> >
> > 1957: His book Syntactic Structures revolutionises the field of
> > linguistics. Begins teaching at MIT
> >
> > 1964: Active against the Vietnam War, including organising tax strikes
> >
> > 1969: Lectures at MIT on "Government in the Future" and deeply
> > impresses the young and impressionable C. G. Estabrook, who sees no
> > reason to change his opinion 35 years later
> >
> > 1980-92: Cited as a source more than any other living scholar, Arts
> > and Humanities Citation Index shows
> >
> > 2001: Likens the 9/11 attacks to US bombing of al-Shifa pharmaceutical
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