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Split from: Hitchen's Signature Behavior

pomeroo

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Glenn, I'm astonished by your evident lack of familiarity with Christopher Hitchens's work. A bi-partisan Senate investigating committee determined that Joe Wilson did indeed lie when he claimed that his wife did not suggest him for the assignment to Niger. That same committee concluded that Wilson's visit did not refute the findings of British intelligence but, rather, lent support to them. Here are links to several pieces Hitchens has published on Slate.com that deal with Iraq's attempts to purchase yellowcake from Niger:

"Wowie Zahawie"--www.slate.com/id/2139609/

"Clueless Joe Wilson"--www.slate.com/id/2140058/

"Case Closed"--www.slate.com/id/2146475/

"Into the Fray"--www.slate.com/id/2144017/

"Hello. Zahawie, My Old Friend"--www.slate.com/id/2148995/

"Christopher Hitchens Responds"--www.slate.com/id/2150433


If you want to pretend that MoveOn hasn't made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler, you run into a brick wall of reality. Among the dozens of articles castigating MoveOn.org for its despicable ads, Tammy Bruce's "Move On Freudian Nazi Ad" remains one of my favorites:

www.Frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11604

Following a storm of protests from the Republican Party, Move On agreed to discontinue the ads.


Stephen Hayes has published in the Weekly Standard a series of articles detailing the operational contacts between the Mukhabbarat and al Qaeda. If you want to argue that he doesn't know what he's talking about, you must acknowledge the existence of those articles and demonstrate that you are in possession of information that contradicts them.



The Wall Street Journal's editorial yesterday provides perspective on a travesty that consumed the mainstream media for far too long.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110009555

Sandy Berger's theft of sensitive national security documents was a serious crime for which he received a slap on the wrist. A Republican guilty of a comparable felony would surely have gone directly to jail. I have no desire to exonerate the Republican Party for the corrupt practices it has allowed to flourish in the dozen years it has controlled Congress. I am no mindless water-boy, a la Perry Logan, for incoherent organizations of pathologically ambitious, comprehensively mediocre people. I contend, however, that the uncritical acceptance of one side's spin, promoted by a highly partisan national media, serves the country poorly. Liberal myths are still myths.

Hitchens is not the one whose views are shallow and uninformed here.
 
Glenn said:
Unfortunately, Hitchens' own argument largely missed the point. The question was not about what the Koran says, because like all religious texts, it has many contradictory statements and is interpreted and cherry picked differently by different people of that faith. The question was about what Muslims actually do.
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On top of that point, I think his argument was factually incorrect about his claims that the Koran and/or Islam were unique in those regards.

Didn't he claim the the Koran was uniquely intolerant in claiming the completeness of the Koran? Many Christians would cite Rev 22:18 to the same effect.

Didn't he claim Islam was unique in proclaiming a holy language? Hebrew was at a time and Christianity had Latin at a time. Even today some small cult of Christians insist that the Bible didn't become inspired until it was translated in to the English of King James. (And to bolster the point that it's more about what Muslims actually do here is a link to a Muslim who translated the Koran in to English)

What other claims did he make? I remember being annoyed the whole time that his "facts" were questionable.
 
In praise of Hitchens!

IMHO Christopher Hitchens displayed true courage by challenging the fatuous liberal cliches spouted by Scott Dikkers. Dikkers point was quite clear that the reason the Islamists hate the United States is because of all of the real and imagined immoral things that the bad bad bad United States of America has done to the world since 1945--i.e. that the Islamists hate us because of what we have done to them. Dikkers was clear as glass that this was how he viewed the world.

Christopher Hitchens had the guts to call a spade a spade and point out that the Islamists don't hate us for what we have done but for who we are--i.e. infidels. He correctly pointed out that the Koran (or Quran or Q'uran or whatever other fashionable transliteration you want to use) and the Hadith seperate the world into Muslims and Infidels and that Infidels are not deserving of life and freedom. Mr. Hitchens was also quite correct in pointing out the deafening silence from the Umma on atrocities carried out by Muslims, including the almost daily bombing of Mosques in Iraq by Muslims. Dikkers' statment that Hitchens had misunderstood what he said seemed more like an embarrased retraction than a truthful clarification.

I will repeat what I said to Hitchens when I shook his hand at the forum party: "Thank you for having the courage to stand up to Dikkers' idiotic remarks."

We need more clear thinking, plain talking people like Christopher Hitchens.
 
The current US "war on terrorism" as presently run by the Bush administration is killing both Americans and Iraqi's many times faster than al Qaeda ever did. Hard to label Dikker idiotic in the face of that. We'd have literally been safer had we simply ignored 9/11.

(Given Hitchen's misunderstanding of a similar point, I feel obliged to say that I'm not faulting the war in Afghanistan with this post)
 
The current US "war on terrorism" as presently run by the Bush administration is killing both Americans and Iraqi's many times faster than al Qaeda ever did. Hard to label Dikker idiotic in the face of that. We'd have literally been safer had we simply ignored 9/11.

(Given Hitchen's misunderstanding of a similar point, I feel obliged to say that I'm not faulting the war in Afghanistan with this post)
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You seem to forget that Islamic terrorism did not start upon the invasion of Iraq at the start of the Second Gulf War (or the First Gulf War for that matter). As Mr. Hitchens eloquently pointed out, the Barbary states kidnapped American sailors and sold them into slavery. When President Jefferson asked them why they were attacking American shipping, their reply was that the American sailors were American sailors were infidels and that the Koran was very clear that capture and enslavement were not only legal under Sharia, but moral and proper.

Americans and other "infidels" have been victims of Islamic terrorism for many years now. Just to name a few: Munich, Entebbe, New York (first bombing of the WTC), Jersualem (100 plus times over), London, Madrid, Russia, and the list goes on and on. In one sense Dikker is right that our actions have brought these actions upon us--in that our very existence as "infidels" is an "action" of some type.

The fact remains that the Islamists the entire world under Islamic control. If and when that happens we will have the choices of: (1) forced conversion; (2) Dhimmitude for religious Christians and Jews; (3) Slavery for everyone else--if they are very very very lucky, death is more likely. Anyone that thinks that this is not the case is ignoring the facts.

Based on what he said, it seems that Dikker would rather us appease the Islamists by stopping all of the bad bad bad things that our evil evil evil country does (and I will stipulate that this is my description of what he said, not a quote). I don't think that he limited what he said to the current Iraq war. It seemed to me that he would have included our support for Israel, our support for the Saudis, and every other thing that we have ever done in the Islamic war. While I might disagree with many actions of American foreign policy over the years, to blame the existence of the Islamist threat on America's actions is contrary to history and reality.
 
No, I don't forget that Islamic terrorism goes back a long way. Why do you think I forgot that? Do you think that if I add them in to the total that will change the fact that the current war on terrorism is more dangerous than terror itself?

And what is your point in repeating Hitchen's point that someone once said that Islam justifies slavery? That's yet another dubious claim that Hitchen's made. He was attempting to claim some innate immorality in Islam. How he could overlook the similar claims of the Bible is beyond me. Slavery is no more "innate" to Islam than it is/was to Christianity or Judaism. How long has it been since a Muslim claimed we should be enslaved? That seems to me a point that's already been rationalized out of Islam as it's been rationalized out of Judaism and Christianity. It would seem to me that Hitchen's claim was an anachronism for nearly two centuries before he made the claim.

While I might disagree with many actions of American foreign policy over the years, to blame the existence of the Islamist threat on America's actions is contrary to history and reality.
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I don't think that was Dikker's point. If it was I'd agree it was wrong. But his being wrong about something won't make Hitchen's any more correct.

I think the point is that we shouldn't be more dangerous to the world than al Qeada is. And right now we are. We've made an extremly big mistake.
 
I agree with Hitchens point, though I'm sorry he targetted Dikkers so hard. On the other hand, I have no problem with someone playing hardball, as I do it myself when I think someone is presenting a facile position. Dikkers stumbled into a rather simplistic fallacy, which is that the West has all the power and is responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world. This was not his intent, and Hitchens should have given him the benefit of the doubt, and prefaced his objection with "If you are claiming that..."

I will grant some leeway on the idea of Western responsibility--the installation of the Shah in Iran in 1953 to counter the Marxists was a tactical blunder which we are still paying for over half a century later. Yes, there was a time when the CIA could actually get things done, and a lot of those things were short-sighted and disastrous in the long term. My chief objection to this strategy was that the American intelligence community seemed to lose faith in the strength of democracy and played the Soviet game too much. They should have backed the people, who will always be there, rather than individual despots, who are a dime a dozen.

Nevertheless, the view that the West is responsible for everything is even worse than what Hitchens claimed: it's a thinly veiled twist on White-Man's Burden, in which we refuse to hold the people of the third world in any way responsible for their misfortunes because we regard them as some sort of children who are incapable of managing their own affairs. In essence, we believe that nothing that they do matters--the ideological cornerstone of colonial imperialism. It turns my stomach to realize that this patronizing attitude comes in the velvet cloak of political correctness. We've found yet another way to make our own bigotry palatable. Those who hold this attitude are poisoning the very people they claim to be helping.

Look at the record for the Muslim world. Only 9 Nobel prizes, only 2 for science, with 1.2 billion people. Spain translates more books into Spanish in a year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand years. Scott Atran, at the Beyond Belief conference, insisted that Islamic terrorists do what they do because they are marginalized and want respect--but he ignored the elephant in the room. The reason that there are so few Muslim Nobel Prize winners, the reason that the infrastructure in Muslim countries is kept running by imported western labour, the reason that the Middle East served as a chew toy for every world power that took an interest in it, and the reason that they are marginalized and that no one respects them, is that they are saddled with a religious ideology which makes them culturally, scientifically, politically, and economically sterile. Muslims are oppressed by Islam. And they are oppressed by Islam because they choose to be, which means that they have the option to choose not to be oppressed. It's not up to us at all. They have the power to help themselves. They've been wearing the Ruby Slippers all along.

I'm afraid that Hitchens was right on the mark in talking about the core principles of Islam. Christianity has been used for every conceivable attrocity, but its founder, at least, never drew blood, and discouraged his immediate followers from doing so. Islam is absolutely triumphalist, and its founder was a violent brigand who pursued a long career of conquest and conversion, and advocated the same to his followers. That moderate Muslims exist does not alter the content of the religion; this content will always be there, waiting to reassert itself, like an old mine waiting to be stepped on.

More troubling to us as skeptics and rationalists is Islam's utter contempt for science. Yes, there was a period of Ijtihad, in which open enquiry was permitted, but this ended with the fall of the Caliphate. In the 11th century the Imam Al-Ghazali wrote a book entitled The Incoherence of the Philosophers. One of the chief claims of this book was that God maintains the world from moment to moment, and therefore no solid principles of nature can be established, because God can change his mind at any moment. In other words, science is impossible. This idea is now so deeply entrenched in the minds of many Muslims that the very idea of skepticism is a non-starter. I had a discussion with a Muslim on Slashdot, and this belief was an absolute fortress against rationality. There was simply no point of access.

Where I do disagree with Hitchens is not on principle, but on strategy. I believe we're right and they're wrong, but I don't think that we can use soldiers to make the point. Like all terrorists, Bin Laden wanted to provoke an overreaction, an aggressive response that would solidify the tribal identity of Muslims against a common enemy. This is exactly what Bush gave him. We need to recognize again that Muslims are not an existential threat. Rather than play up the fear of terrorism, we need to play it down, to reward their threats with laughter and disdain. As John McCain put it, we need to suck it up, go back to life before 9/11, put pressure on the leaders to keep them in disarray, but laugh at the juvenile amateur would-be terrorists. Let's face it, radical Islam is just the new punk, a way for marginalized losers to look scary and important. That whole thing with mixing explosives on a plane never would have worked--apparently the intelligence community never bothered to ask a chemist, who would have told them that you need a lab to make those explosives, not just a couple of bottles of reagents. We need to arm the pilots, stop taking our shoes off in security at airports, ease up on the paranoia, and even if a plane does go down, we need to shrug it off. You don't reward these people with two-hour prime-time specials. You make them the butt of a fifteen second joke on the Daily Show. What Bin Laden really wants to be is famous in America.

You can't live in the home of the free unless your also the land of the brave. Suck it up.
 
From Salon.com on Moveon.org:

"In fact, as those who've followed the story know, MoveOn didn't sponsor or create, let alone televise, ads comparing Bush to Hitler. MoveOn's issue-advertising arm, the MoveOn Voter Fund, ran an innovative contest, "Bush in 30 Seconds," challenging its members to make their own political ads illustrating the shortcomings of the Bush administration in a humorous, creative way. (The contest winner will have his or her ad nationally televised by the Voter Fund.) The online advocacy group got more than 1,000 ad submissions, and posted the vast majority on its Web site. Its network of more than 2 million activists was eligible to vote to narrow the field to 15 finalists, and selected them this week; a celebrity panel will pick a winner, to be announced Jan. 12. Both Hitler ad submissions scored poorly with MoveOn supporters, and would have been consigned to history without the publicity boost from the RNC. (Now, ironically, the only place you can find them is on the RNC's Web site.)"

dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/01/07/moveon_ads/index.html

pomeroo said:
If you want to pretend that MoveOn hasn't made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler, you run into a brick wall of reality. Among the dozens of articles castigating MoveOn.org for its despicable ads, Tammy Bruce's "Move On Freudian Nazi Ad" remains one of my favorites:

Following a storm of protests from the Republican Party, Move On agreed to discontinue the ads.
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Not Buyin'

Salon's explanation of those notorious ads is more than a little disingenuous. George Soros, the organization's principal backer, has made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler. The claim that the two ads scored poorly with MoveOn supporters rings very, very untrue.
 
Quote:

My original post:
While I might disagree with many actions of American foreign policy over the years, to blame the existence of the Islamist threat on America's actions is contrary to history and reality.

Recovering Yuppy's response:

I don't think that was Dikker's point. If it was I'd agree it was wrong. But his being wrong about something won't make Hitchen's any more correct.
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I guess that we will have to agree to disagree on that, because when I heard him speak I thought that it was exactly his point--I would go so far as to say it was the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point.

At the risk of getting philosophical and completely off topic, perhaps this demonstrates what some would describe as the inherent unreliability of eyewitness testimony. We were both there. We both heard what the man had to say, and we both came away with completely different versions of what his point was. From a skeptical point of view, maybe this shows that truth and observation are in the eye of the beholder.
 
pomeroo said:
The claim that the two ads scored poorly with MoveOn supporters rings very, very untrue.
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What does that mean? "Rings untrue"? If you've got some data to refute the claim, by all means put it on the table. If it just means you don't believe it, so what?
 
JamesDillon: Very eloquently put.

AZAtheist: Thanks. And I completely agree with you: TAM5 was terrific. I've been to all 5 and each gets better. I'd call this the one tiny hiccup in an amazing Amazing Meeting. (Which is the only reason I mentioned it, it stood out.)

Pomeroo: Thanks for taking the time to make those points. You're incorrect to gather I am unfamiliar with Hitchens' work, I've read all of his Salon columns and followed up on them. He has yet to provide hard evidence, he is basing it all on speculation. And his speculation is highly implausible.

You claimed that MoveOn has made a "practice of comparing Bush to Hitler," but that is a patently false claim. Even the article you referenced points out the solitary incident that has ever vaguely come up, which was not even MoveOn's doing -- as noted in Drapier's post.

I've read a great deal about the supposed Hussein-al Qaeda links, and all have fallen through the cracks. I don't recall if I've read Hayes, but I will double check and see if what you say holds water.

I wish folks would stop misrepresenting Dikkers. His point was very simple and not thorough, which is why I said Hitchens was right to amend it. But he missed the point too.
 
pomeroo said:
If you want to pretend that MoveOn hasn't made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler, you run into a brick wall of reality.
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It may be the case that Moveon makes such a practice -- I don't know because I don't read them. (And if true, I would condemn them.) I do know about the incident though.

Moveon ran a contest and someone submitted a Bush/Hitler ad. It was on Moveon's site along with all the other submissions. Then there was a stink and the ad was removed. To pin this ad onto Moveon is bogus in the extreme.

Among the dozens of articles castigating MoveOn.org for its despicable ads, Tammy Bruce's "Move On Freudian Nazi Ad" remains one of my favorites:
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This article shamelessly distorts the facts by falsely pinning the ad onto Moveon.

If it is true that Moveon plays the Bush=Hitler card, backing it up with bogus evidence is counter-productive to making your point.
 
Implausible?

We are kidding, aren't we? I said that GEORGE SOROS, MoveOn's principal backer, has made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler. That much is incontrovertible.

The articles by Hitchens that I linked to are "implausible"? Why, pray tell? I understand that they are highly inconvenient to the Big Lies of the left, but they are manifestly accurate. British intelligence, incidentally, stands by its findings?

The bi-partisan Senate investigating committee that determined that Joe Wilson lied when he claimed that his wife didn't recommend him for the assignment to Niger--how do its conclusions square with the myth of Wilson as Fearless Whistleblower?
 
No Distortion

varwoche said:
It may be the case that Moveon makes such a practice -- I don't know because I don't read them. (And if true, I would condemn them.) I do know about the incident though.

Moveon ran a contest and someone submitted a Bush/Hitler ad. It was on Moveon's site along with all the other submissions. Then there was a stink and the ad was removed. To pin this ad onto Moveon is bogus in the extreme.

This article shamelessly distorts the facts by falsely pinning the ad onto Moveon.

If it is true that Moveon plays the Bush=Hitler card, backing it up with bogus evidence is counter-productive to making your point.
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Tammy Bruce states very clearly that Moveon did not produce the ads and repudiated them. I see no shameless distortion of facts. That leftists have compared Bush to Hitler countless times is shameful.
 
pomeroo said:
If you want to pretend that MoveOn hasn't made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler, you run into a brick wall of reality. Among the dozens of articles castigating MoveOn.org for its despicable ads, Tammy Bruce's "Move On Freudian Nazi Ad" remains one of my favorites:
Click to expand...

pomeroo said:
We are kidding, aren't we? I said that GEORGE SOROS, MoveOn's principal backer, has made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler. That much is incontrovertible.
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In your first post (quoted above), to which I was responding, you never mentioned Soros. You said MoveOn compared Bush to Hitler. You said MoveOn has made a "practice" of it.

So no, we are not kidding.

However, presented with evidence, you changed it to Soros in a later post. That's perfectly fine, end of MoveOn discussion.

Re Soros: I can only find one such reference. If you have evidence that Soros has indeed "made a practice of comparing Bush to Hitler," I'll accept it. I wouldn't even be shocked by it (except that it's incredibly simpleminded), I was merely responding to your MoveOn allegation. Not that I'm a fan of MoveOn, just clearing up a misunderstanding.

The sole reference I can find for Soros is from Nov. 2004, in a Washington Post interview: Soros, an emigre from Hungaria, said he felt the White House was guided by a "supremacist ideology," adding that "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world.... When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans.... My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me."

That's not a direct Bush-Hitler comparison, but it's close enough that I'd count it, more or less.

But you said Soros has made it a practice. I'm not sure how many times qualifies as a "practice," but I am sure it's not one. Let me know if you know of others, for what it's worth.

Pomeroo, I'm not ignoring your other points, I'll get to those tomorrow. I want to respectfully answer with references, which I don't have offhand. Must finish other work, then I'll reply.
 
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pomeroo, you seem to be upset that Soror may have funded some organizations that compared Bush to Hitler. Without judging the basis for that, were you equally upset that rich rightwingers accused Clinton of murder and running drugs? And selling a video with those charges? Under cover of a religious organization?

Were you equally upset that Richard Mellon Scaife funded equally heinous charges?

And would you like to discuss a comparison between Bush/Hitler and accusing the President of a capital crime? If both have no basis, which is more egregous?
 
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The Left's Outrageous Comparison

I acknowledge that Moveon.org removed the offensive ads after the Republican National Committee and various Jewish groups raised hell. Soros has backed away from some of his more outrageous remarks comparing Bush's America to the Third Reich, but what did he actually say in his book? For a useful analysis, see:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15710

Googling "Bush and Hitler" produces about 2,040,000 results. The left has promoted this insane comparison for years, starting with false allegations about the father of George H.W. Bush. Prescott Bush was not the "Nazi's financier," nor did he make money from the death camps. Yet, the madness persists. It is impossible to contend that the Bush-Hitler trope, grotesque though it may be, hasn't been a staple of leftist rhetoric.

My relative indifference to the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party contrasts sharply with the unthinking devotion bestowed on the Democratic Party by certain uncritical types. To me, Republicans are preferable in the sense that a C-minus student is a better scholar than an F student. Perhaps I am damning him with faint praise, but Bush, for all his flaws, struck me as having a far clearer understanding of the jihadist threat than John Kerry, whose sonorous incoherence revealed no understanding of it whatever.

A major difference between me and the Democratic sycophants is that I have no interest in defending indefensible behavior. The outlandish rumors circulated about Clinton by rightwing groups, his murders and drug-running activities, served no useful purpose and managed to debase the level of political discourse--never very high--in this country. Nevertheless, drawing bogus parallels between an American politician and the genocidal maniac who caused World War II is far more pernicious than making baseless accusations of wrongdoing. There's a problem with turning your political opponents into comic book super-villains. You need comic book super-heroes to combat them and they're hard to find.
 
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richorman said:
....snip... As Mr. Hitchens eloquently pointed out, the Barbary states kidnapped American sailors and sold them into slavery. When President Jefferson asked them why they were attacking American shipping, their reply was that the American sailors were American sailors were infidels and that the Koran was very clear that capture and enslavement were not only legal under Sharia, but moral and proper.

...snip...
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Hang on a mo' that does seem rather a one-sided view of the world at the time since wasn't at Jefferson's time slavery morally proper and also legally enshrined in USA law?
 
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