Re: Open blast of redbaiting from Christopher Hitchens

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and professor of liberal
studies at the New School in New York. His most recent book is "Why Orwell
Matters" (Basic Books).

I hope Hitchens is making money for he is certainly not making sense.  At any
rate, as a former Washington editor of Harper's Magazine, how far left could he
have been?  Ironically, he is now once more in the oppposite camp of his
favorite target: Henry Kissinger, on whom he had been waging ineffective
gossippy criticism rather than serious policy issues.  For example, by focusing
on accusing Kissinger of war crimes, Hitchen implies the moral correctness of
the war on communism.  He attacks Kissinger Associates for being supported
financially by corporate clients, yet Vanity Fair survives from ad revenues
from the same corporations.  Kissinger is against another war on Iraq on the
ground that the political objective of regime change would require the longterm
occupation of Iraq by US forces.  The occupation by the US of an Ilamic nation
in the Mideast Kissinger considers as a disasterous propsect, even though it
might be ideologically correct.

Hitchen plays on the terror of events but remains indifferent to structural
systemic terror.  He blames the tragedy of a fatal highway crash on illegal
speeders rather than the unsafe design of the highway system and automobiles.
The sight of the collpase of two skyscrapers in a matter of minutes resulting
in the death of three thousand causes Hitchen to foam in the mouth with
indignation against Iraq, while the systemic starving the millions of children
over a decade is to him just a fact of life of preserving "liberal society".

Hitchen has always focused on tactics rather than strategy, a sign of either
intellectual dishonesty or vanity fair mentality, or both.  His official
departure from the left will strength the left.

Henry C.K. Liu


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