Christopher Hitchens: A winner, or a ********?

Speaking of Galloway, RESPECT is an absolutely appalling political party, making a pure mockery of its name. It tries to remodel the left into a seething, irrational and anti-intellectual presentation which more resembles a child born at Woodstock than the civil rights movement.

For those of us on the left trying to put the world into a rational framework, it does us no favours.
 
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Undesired Walrus said:
Speaking of Galloway, RESPECT is an absolutely appalling political party, making a pure mockery of its name. It tries to remodel the left into a seething, irrational and anti-intellectual presentation which more resembles a child born at Woodstock than the civil rights movement.

For those of us on the left trying to put the world into a rational framework, it does us no favours.
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The Respect Coalition has (rather ironically) split recently, with Galloway maintaining supporters in "Respect Renewal" and other members forming the Left List. The latter appears to me to have far greater respectability, especially as there's little evidence of Galloway being particularly motivated towards working class issues.

His current bright ideas, incidentally, include the belief that 'the proposals in the Embryo Research Bill before the House imminently blasphemes against the very idea of God'.
 
Much of the problems of the left during the Iraq War have stemmed from media representation of people like Galloway and Brian Haw. Whilst I will defend to the death the latters right to remain outside parliament, he seems to be going senile and exaggerates numbers that need no exaggeration. I yesterday walked opposite his protests and saw he had a banner that declared 2 million had been killed in Iraq. Wherever he got that figure from, I will never know.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Much of the problems of the left during the Iraq War have stemmed from media representation of people like Galloway and Brian Haw. Whilst I will defend to the death the latters right to remain outside parliament, he seems to be going senile and exaggerates numbers that need no exaggeration. I yesterday walked opposite his protests and saw he had a banner that declared 2 million had been killed in Iraq. Wherever he got that figure from, I will never know.
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Hmm..yes, that would give Nick Cohen four hundred words in The Guardian with an Evening Standard column to spare. Brian Haw, however, is at least passionate, sincere and sympathetic. He's no hypocrite.
 
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I'm a fan. Hitchens is an arrogant SOB. But I've rarely known him to be wrong.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
I was struck by statements such as : "I hate our enemies, and I want them to be killed". I'm not in favour of loving those who have commited grave crimes, but as someone who claims he was greatly influenced by MLK, I worry about such aggressive rhetoric such as "Our enemies".
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How would you describe people who would kill you for any of a half dozen reasons, feeling no guilt about it?

Treating people like this with apologetic, kid gloves, if not full-blown Blame America First-ism intertwined with it, is the primary thesis of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, regardless of whether it was wise to go into Iraq or not as a practical matter.
 
Beerina said:
How would you describe people who would kill you for any of a half dozen reasons, feeling no guilt about it?

Treating people like this with apologetic, kid gloves, if not full-blown Blame America First-ism intertwined with it, is the primary thesis of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, regardless of whether it was wise to go into Iraq or not as a practical matter.
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He is also reported as saying (when discussing the merits of cluster bombs):

If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a concentration of enemy troops...then it's pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they're bearing a Koran over their heart, it'll go straight through that, too. So they won't be able to say, 'Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.' No way, 'cause it'll go straight through that as well. They'll be dead, in other words.

I still admire Hitchens - for his oratory and his (now occasionally) startling prose - but his sheer zeal seems to suggest that the people he writes about have somehow become dehumanised.
 
Beerina said:
How would you describe people who would kill you for any of a half dozen reasons, feeling no guilt about it?

Treating people like this with apologetic, kid gloves, if not full-blown Blame America First-ism intertwined with it, is the primary thesis of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, regardless of whether it was wise to go into Iraq or not as a practical matter.
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I just find it not helpful language, that's all. To find legitimacy in hating anyone is quite poisonous, IMO.
 
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Finnegan said:
I still admire Hitchens - for his oratory and his (now occasionally) startling prose - but his sheer zeal seems to suggest that the people he writes about have somehow become dehumanised.
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People who fly jet airplanes into buildings should be dehumanized. Period.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
People who fly jet airplanes into buildings should be dehumanized. Period.
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I'll have to carefully bypass that period to point out that, in conflict, very few terrorists can be discerningly targeted, and with cluster bombs there is practically no discernment at all. Hitchens's statement suggests - among other things - that he views war purely conceptually, and has dehumanised it's willing or unwilling participants.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
I'll have to unplug that period for a second, and suggest that anyone who does such an 'inhuman' thing needs to be understood as the human they absolutely are more than any other.
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If you want to understand them before killing them, that's fine. Personally, I don't have that kind of time to waste.
 
Finnegan said:
I'll have to carefully bypass that period to point out that, in conflict, very few terrorists can be discerningly targeted, and with cluster bombs there is practically no discernment at all. Hitchens's statement suggests - among other things - that he views war purely conceptually, and has dehumanised it's willing or unwilling participants.
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"If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a concentration of enemy troops..."
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
"If you're actually certain that you're hitting only a concentration of enemy troops..."
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Precisely.

One never is with cluster bombs. When the British
dropped 2000 upon 'enemy positions' in Basra, bomblets fell upon schools and homes, while submunitions remain unexploded. The fact that Hitchens did not taken historical and military knowledge into question (at least partially) shows his disconnection from practical conflict.
 
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Finnegan said:
Precisely.

One never is with cluster bombs. When the British
dropped 2000 upon 'enemy positions' in Basra, bomblets fell upon schools and homes, while submunitions remain unexploded. The fact that Hitchens did not taken historical and military knowledge into question (at least partially) shows his disconnection from conflict.
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It's all very well to say that they need to be killed or they need to be removed, but you need to know how, by whom and with what. Hitchens made a convincing (if occasionally fallacious) case against Hussein and the Taliban, but had little consideration for the practical reality of war.

Whoopsie daisy; I meant to add that onto my post, not begin a debate with myself.
 
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The Central Scrutinizer said:
If you want to understand them before killing them, that's fine. Personally, I don't have that kind of time to waste.
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Is it a waste of time for historians who try to understand the mind of Hitler? Was not his status as a human make the terrible deeds he did even more important to understand in the context of his species?

The talk of the need to kill them is superfluous here. You brought up people who have -by their very act- murdered themselves and countless others by flying planes into buildings. The act of understanding them as what they were, humans, was something you are rebelling against. Why you are taking this anti-intellectual stance is something you have not elaborated upon.
 
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I think what's important with Hitler is not Hitler himself, but the people that followed his message. Without them, Hitler himself would have been pretty relatively harmless.
 
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