Replying to Hitchens

I have gotten a lot of mail asking me to react to Christopher Hitchens comments in the Nation magazine and on the Nation website.I am loathe to do so because I fear that considerable energies of wonderfulpeople will go into worrying about precise wording of diverse entries in aback-and-forth battle of writers, instead of into the hard and worthy work thatneeds to be undertaken to prevent mass starvation in Afghanistan, to ward offmilitary insanity around the region, and to obstruct and reverse a reactionaryreorientation of mind and policy here in the U.S. But, so many have asked aboutHitchens comments, that apparently silence won’t best reorient attention backwhere we all know it belongs. 

Hitchens’ initial essay in the Nation rightlypointed out that the motives of those who planned the September 11 attack couldnot possibly have been to better the lot of suffering people, whether in theMideast or any other part of the world. For one thing, such terrorism obviouslyworsens prospects horrendously for the poor and weak, particularly in theMideast. For another thing, bin Laden’s self-stated motives revolve aroundtoppling Middle Eastern governments and installing, instead, Taliban-likecreations, not reducing injustice, of course. The attack was presumably to drawthe U.S. into a massive retaliation, throwing the Middle East into turmoil. Bothpoints have been made early and often by critics of Bush, most centrally thevery person Hitchens attacks, Noam Chomsky (see interviews posted on ZNet,www.zmag.org). But to rightly assert that bin Laden’s own mindset and motivesor those of Taliban leaders aren’t hatched from the pain and sufferinginflicted by oppressive U.S. policies, doesn’t tell us that the networks ofsupport for terrorism and even the harsh mindsets of enlistees in terroraren’t nourished by that broader context, of course. 

In the September 15 issue of In These Times,Hitchens sensibly urged that "why questions" need to be asked, not solely"how questions." He bemoaned that the range of permissible thought wasallowing technicalities to be endlessly discussed, but was cutting off socialand historical context. In Hitchens’ follow-up Nation piece, he does aturn-about implying that many opposing a U.S.-managed war on terrorism weren’tdoing so because it would have horrific impact on innocent people, but insteadout of ratification of or even sympathy for the terror attacks themselves. Inthe ITT piece, Hitchens wanted to enlarge the range of permissible thought. Inthe Nation piece, he attacked those who have succeeded in doing so. In ITT hecelebrated anit-war activism. In the Nation he made unwarranted andunsubstantiated criticisms of anti-war activists--vulgar criticisms that heknows full well are false. 

It shouldn’t be necessary to say, but of course there isno ratification or rationalization of terrorism in the words of the individualsHitchens has attacked. To understand this most simply, suppose someone says thathuge stress in a postal workplace contributed to the mindset of a worker whocame in and shot his workmates. Would that correspond to saying the killer wasjustified in shooting his workmates? Of course not. Would it be an importantthing to notice? Of course it would, assuming, that is, that one cares aboutdiminishing the likelihood of people "going postal" in the future.

The analogy of terrorists to over-stressed workers goingpostal is far from perfect, admittedly, but it is instructive.To point out thatinjustice creates a context propelling some people toward supporting and evensigning up to engage in terrorism is no more to justify terrorism than notingthat stress creates a context leading to workplace violence is to justifyworkplace violence. When the people who point out the role of injustices inproducing support for terrorism are long-time  fighters for justice allaround the world, does it make an iota of sense to jump from theiridentification of a contributing contextual factor to asserting they werejustifying the terror, against their entire life’s activities, even againsttheir current activities and words? More broadly, rejecting the use of violenceagainst civilians informs activists’ opposition to the war on terrorism andapplies as well to the September 11 events, of course. Hitchens’ knows this.His claim that Chomsky, as well as Howard Zinn and Norman Finkelstein justifiedthe terror was scurrilous and, of course, unsubstantiated since nosubstantiation was possible. I doubt it even crossed Hitchens' mind to offerevidence. He knows there is none.

Now I suppose it may be that the Nation-Hitchens, unlikethe ITT-Hitchens, thinks there is something unseemly, at a time when the U.S.president is talking about a long-term massive war, in bringing forwardinformation bearing upon the likely implications of such policies includingevidence that, rhetoric aside, our forays into militarism and even politicalpunishment (as in embargoes) rarely if ever seriously concern themselves withmatters of justice, including the plight of civilians--but I can’t see whyHitchens would feel that. Instead, aligning with the ITT-HItchens, it seems tome that the time to begin being critical of a proposed horrific policy and tobegin offering evidence to raise broad social opposition to such a policy isbefore the horrible policy is implemented, which is now, of course.

Hitchens’ Nation piece apparently brought a bunchof outraged email his way. And this is where the story deteriorates greatly. Hereplied to his critics via a second essay, also placed on the Nationwebsite. In his second Nation message Hitchens excoriates the motives ofSam Husseini and Noam Chomsky, again due to their going beyond the limits ofpermissible thought that Hitchens himself earlier bemoaned. It is hard for me tobelieve that Hitchens actually believes that Husseini, Chomsky, and others whoare working as hard as they can to avert piling catastrophe on top ofcatastrophe, were or are "soft on fascism," or any of the other epithetsHitchens hurled at them. If Hitchens doesn’t believe this, hopefully he willrescind his comments shortly and return to more productive activities. Ifagainst all evidence, logic, and his entire lifetime of political involvements,he does believe these things, then the time to worry about the process thatbrought about such a devolution of intelligence is probably much later. Nowthere are far more important matters to attend to.