Tag: Christopher Hitchens

Human Rights, Blah Blah Blah

Of the war on terror, Christopher Hitchens once said: I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost. Now comes Bernard-Henri Lévy, who, when asked by Jon Lee Anderson why he supported the intervention in Libya, says: Why? I don’t know! Of course, it was human rights, for a massacre to be prevented, and blah blah blah… Never underestimate the murder men will commit, the mayhem they will make, just to escape their boredom. But every enthusiasm has a shelf life. Even imperialism.

When Intellectuals Go to War

On the recommendation of my colleague Shang Ha, I’ve been reading Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. There I came across this letter from Arnold Schoenberg to Alma Mahler, dated August 28, 1914. Ross only quotes a snippet, but here’s a lengthier excerpt: Meanwhile, you have certainly already heard of the glorious victory of the Germans against France, England, and Belgium. It is among the most wonderful things that have happened. But it does not surprise me: it is not any different from the war of the Greeks against the Persians….My friends know it, I have often said to them, I never had any use for all foreign music. It always seemed to me stale, […]

Why Did Liberals Support the Iraq War?

In September 2005, on the fourth anniversary of 9/11, The Nation ran a long piece I did on liberal support for the Iraq War and for US imperialism more generally.  By way of Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Beinart—as well as Judith Shklar and Richard Rorty—it addressed what I thought and still think are some of the deeper political and intellectual roots of the liberals’ support for the Iraq War. On the tenth anniversary of the War, I thought I might reprint that essay here. Some things I got wrong (Beinart, for example, went onto have something of a turnabout on these issues; it wasn’t Oscar Wilde but Jonathan Swift who made that jibe). Other issues I […]

Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012

Alexander Cockburn, one of the finest radical journalists—no, journalists—of his generation, has died. Because of the similarities between him and Christopher Hitchens—both Anglos (he of Ireland, Hitchens of England) in America; both friends, for a time; both left (though, in Hitchens’s case, for a time); and both dying relatively young from cancer—people, inevitably, will want to make comparisons. Here, very quickly, are three (and why I think Cockburn was ultimately the superior writer). First, Cockburn was a much better observer of people and of politics: in part because he didn’t impose himself on the page the way Hitchens did, he could see particular details (especially of class and of place) that eluded Hitchens. At his best, he got out of […]

“Yes, but”: More on Hitchens and Hagiography

Reading more of the commentary on Christopher Hitchens’s death—and the reaction to those of us disinclined to join the hagiography—I’m struck by a consistent line I hear from some of his admirers and followers: “Yes, he was wrong on Iraq, but…”  And then any one of a number of claims follow: he was a brilliant raconteur, a steadfast opponent of authoritarianism, a lovely stylist, a sensitive critic, a hilarious polemicist, a bon vivant, a loving and lovable mentor to younger journalists, a loving and lovable friend, and so on. I want to focus on that “Yes, he was wrong on Iraq, but.” First, Hitchens wasn’t just wrong on Iraq; he was wrong on the war on terror. As soon as […]

Christopher Hitchens: The Most Provincial Spirit of All

On the announcement of his death, I think it’s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most. Speak for himself: [On the use of cluster bombs by the US in Afghanistan] 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. […]