RE: Marc Cooper waves the flag

["Michael Keaney" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Louis P. writes:

[Marc Cooper intervened here a couple of months ago to defend the
corporate takeover of Pacifica. He and Henwood are among the Nation
Magazine editors who have taken a stand against "simplistic" antiwar
positions while their fellow columnist Christopher Hitchens supports
the war wholeheartedly.]

It's bizarre. It's like a collective David Horowitz experience, where
some major shock (is this Hitchens' first ever sighting of a bomb
crater?) induces a gestalt switch that leads to frenzied rationalisation
and justification and ever more vitriolic denunciation of what was once
held sacred. Hitchens and Horowitz bring to mind an observation made
long ago by Jim Craven on PEN-L about "ultras", where it is usually the
ultra that is important as opposed to the "left" or whatever, indicating
the ego-driven nature of the exercise. Hitchens' fixation on
personalities leads him into all sorts of stupid positions. His
demonisation of Clinton, for example, means that he can blithely
describe Dubya as democratically elected (in his Newsweek column I
forwarded earlier). Someone with his forensic skills does not make that
sort of mistake lightly. Well, this is his moment, and I suppose we can
look forward to a reincarnated Paul Johnson or even Woodrow Wyatt, "the
voice of reason" (Wyatt, a former Labour MP back in the 50s/early 60s,
switched sides and became an avid devotee of Thatcher, like Johnson,
earning a peerage for his slavish lickspittling in a pisspoor News of
the World column that outdid "Sir" David Frost for sheer adulation of
the establishment). How long before he recants and acknowledges the
greatness of Kissinger? Actually, it's much more likely that he joins
neoconservatives like Jeane Kirkpatrick et al.,since Kissinger's
"realism" is in no way as emotionally satisfying as the shrill moralism
of the neocon crew.

Not being a Nation subscriber myself, could you (without risking your
digestion) expand on what a "simplistic" antiwar position might be? Does
Edward Said's position veer toward the "simplistic"?

BTW, re Harper's magazine, its editor, Lewis Lapham, wrote a nice little
book published by Verso a couple of years back, "The Agony of Mammon",
on the shenanigans at Davos.

Michael Keaney

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