More on Hitchens

What an exceptionally tendentious reading of Hitchens’ article! Under any reasonable reading, The main focus of the article is not to attack the Left but to point out the inconsistency of the Bush’s relative inaction on Uzbekistan. He doesn’t just “get around” to this, its shot through the whole thing. The second paragraph ends:

“However, the United States not only maintains air bases on Uzbek soil but has “rendered” wanted prisoners to Karimov’s tender mercies, so we have no right to be neutral about what goes on there.”

There is a sting at the end about leftist critique
about the Uzbekistan “exception” conceding the value of the Bush administration’s overall strategy of democratic regime change, but to say that the article is mainly about either whacking critics to the left or justifying current administration policy is a ridiculous distortion.

JQ is a fine example of being unable to distinguish between supporting some of Bush’s policies and “Having signed up with Bush” which implies some overall loyalty. Yes, some on the Left supported the war, but that is different from being a complete “Bushie”.

If you want to have a dialogue with liberal hawks then you might want to look at things with a bit more subtlety than this either you’re 100% for Bush or 100% opposed nonsense.

I’ve seen a response to the effect that the Administration did not back Saddam unequivocally. Rather, it supported whichever side in the Iran-Iraq war appeared weaker (Iran-Contra being cited as an example), aiming to prolong the war but not allow either side a decisive victory.

Which rather begs the question of why the US didn’t supply lend-lease to Germany when they were in the later, losing, stages of their war with the Soviet Union. Clearly FDR was no Ronald Reagan.

Hitchens seems to be the topic of the week. Via Ophelia Benson, I see that Norman Geras is taking him to task for what looks remarkably like religious bigotry. I don’t know his work well enough to pronounce on that. Maybe he had taken a drink or three. As to this article, the bit that caught my eye was:

If Bush’s critics are implicitly demanding that he do something about Uzbekistan, are they not also conceding that his policy there blemishes the wider support for regime-change?

Speaking for myself, if I mention Uzbekistan, Darfur or whatever to a liberal hawk, the only point I am making is this: You evidently believe that Bush is not a practitioner of realpolitik wrapped in humanitarian clothing. Have you considered the possibility that you might be wrong?

Hitchens seems to see this as a PR problem for Bush, rather than a matter of liberal hawks misreading the situation completely.

am: is your point that Iraq was, in no small measure, armed and funded by the Soviets? That’s true, but the US also supported Iraq for precisely the reasons John identifies, as part of a strategy of offshore balancing in the Gulf with a particularly strong emphasis on containing Iran.

Hitchens’s entire point in the article is obfuscated by his own writing – riddled as it is with gratuitous snipings and defensive posturings. He spends so much time doubling back on himself rhetorically or pouncing on (what appear to be) unrelated third parties (as usual, “peaceniks” and the left) that he renders himself incoherent, which is another reason which I’ve found him a consistently lousy writer. Most liberals have only begun to remark on this since his post-9/11 swing to the right, but it’s always been there, and the comparison between him and Orwell in the last thread was laughable.

Nevertheless, what little message can be gleaned from Hitchens’s petulant defensiveness appears to be here:

“States and superpowers cannot only be moral individuals, and even moral individuals may need to make shabby compromises for survival, and there may be an occasional need to practice realpolitik for pressing military reasons, but in all cases it is necessary to be aware that one is doing so. …Uzbekistan has been a hypocritical ally of regime change, and Saudi Arabia a cunning foe in the guise of a friend, but our complicity in both is about the same.

“It has always to be remembered that such regimes will not last forever, and that one day we will be asked, by their former subjects, what we were doing while they were unable to speak for themselves. Better to have the answer ready now and to consider American influence in a country as the occasion for leverage rather than as the occasion for awkward silence. The common term for this dilemma during the Cold War, when things were much more zero-sum, was ‘double standards.'”

In other words, bad luck, old chums, but war’s a messy old business. Chin up, it won’t last forever, y’know!

Dan, if you want to know what am’s “point” is, look at comments no. 44 and 46 in Harry’s thread. That’s am for you.

Yes, Hitch’s pod has hatched and now he’s just a member of the pod people.

I think that Hitchens’ main point is that there are many who level a double standard charge against the Administration in bad faith, because what they seek is not consistency in regime change, but rather no regime changes at all–no matter how dire the humanitarian need–if Bush is to be the changer.

Certainly not everyone who levels the double standard charge levels it in that sort of bad faith. But there are enough who do to warrant Hitchens’ sarcasm.

..And that of all genuine progressives (if we must have these labels) for that matter.

Irked by John Q’s suspiciously rigid position on Uzbekistan, I became curious what he might have to say about North Korea — quite another case, of course, but similar in that NK is also an unsavory regime presenting few alternatives other than useless fulmination and war.

I found this, from 12/16/02, on his own blog:

“[…]Unfortunately, there are no appealing options in this case. It seems clear that the co-operation, or at least acquiescence of the Chinese government is going to be needed, and that any military option raises a severe risk of an attack on South Korea and perhaps Japan. The most promising solution is one where China applies the pressure required to force the abandonment of North Koreas nuclear program and its missile development. The amount of pressure required will be large, and the diplomatic price correspondingly high….”

“I find the prospect of a deal with the Chinese Communist Party even more worrying than than the deal with Musharraf that was needed to secure Pakistans overthrow the Taliban, or the various trade-offs that will be required in any Middle East deal….But there may be no alternative to a deal. Some juicy carrots will have to be offered, but if Bush has the moral clarity he claims to have he shouldnt be afraid to show the stick as well….”

Like I said, North Korea is a ompletely different case than Uzbekistan. For starters, NK actually threatens the US with substantial physical damage, and Uzekistan does not. But John Q’s thoughts on NK are nuanced, tempered with an understanding that the real world does not offer ideal solutions, in a way that his Uzbekistan position is not.

The salient point abuot Uzbekistan, that the ‘pro war left’ seem unable to understand, is that their argument is that there has been a 180 degree change in American foreign policy, and that despite the fact that George Bush is a member of the same political party of Kissingerean realpolitik, and despite the fact that Dubya is biologically related to one of the prime proponents of this policy (his dad), there is, literally, no relation between Bushie foreign policy and that which preceded him. Hence the reason Hitchens continually lies and states that Kissinger did not approve of the current war (not only a lie but an easily disprovable lie).
This is why Uzbekistan is so important. If Bush is SERIOUS about democracy one would expect that

a: he would no react to the current abuses in Uzbkeistan by threatening to cut aid, and threatening to pull out the military bases there.

b: stop threatening (and more) to overthrow Latin American democratically elected governments and replace them with dictatorships.

c: break the corrupt links with countries like, say, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, known proponents of anti-semitism, terrorism, and grotesque human rights violations, withdraw funding/aid unless this is linked to human rights, and withdraw their military bases from other countries with poor/apalling human rights records.

To date none of these things have happened. We are now into Bush’s 2nd term. When will they start happening? And if they don’t by the end of Bush’s terms, will Hitchens et al admit that Bush is simply business as usual, with the exception that he has tended to be even more violent and aggressive than almost all of his predecessors (with the exception, so far, of Nixon).

“seriously fight Islamist terrorism instead of retreating”

Wow, there *are* still articulate, apparently sane people (well, one person) who still think that “Islamist terrorism” is such a serious threat that it’s more important than everything else when choosing a leader. I thought they’d all quietly died of shame…

Hitchen’s article has recently been discussed at Harry’s Place.

“There is a sting at the end about leftist critique about the Uzbekistan “exception” conceding the value of the Bush administration’s overall strategy of democratic regime change”

I think Hitchen’s point that regime change is the strategy and Uzbekistan is the exception could be debated, surely there’s a case that support for dictators is the policy and Afghanistan and Iraq are the exceptions? Someone at Harry’s Place mentioned that if we start listing dictators that the US wants to overthrow and dictators that the US is propping up, the first list will be much shorter than the second.

Hitchens also proposes we should be “properly grateful” to the Uzbek regime for its help against the Taliban. I find this slightly sinister, as any gratitude is going to go to Karimov and not the Uzbek people – and if it takes material form will help support his regime. It also reminds us that part of the price being paid for democracy in Afghanistan is support for people repressing democracy in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. This make me more than a little uncomfortable.

The only thing I can draw from this debate is that there are still people who are convinced that they, not Hitchens, are the authentic anti-fascist left in the manner the shrill, hysterical anti-war left derided Orwell on the eve of WWII. Should we be so wedded to our politics of opposition that we are unable to see the difference between George Bush and Slobodan Milosevic?

For the last two decades I have been watching these mass totalitiarian movements slowly moving forward; there can be bombs exploding from Madrid to Thailand and still there are people falling all over themselves making excuses for it. We have met the enemy and he is us?

The fact that this enemy is real, that they are irrational and the US is a prop in their grandiose fantasy, and that there are less than pretty characters who we need to protect ourselves and the secular, liberal societies many of you ostensibly support shouldn’t be lost in the shuffle.

Who had #29 in the “Hitchens is the new Orwell” pool?

george, exactly what what sticks (policy, economic, whatever) has the U.S. used to curb Karimov?

‘The only thing I can draw from this debate is that there are still people who are convinced that they, not Hitchens, are the authentic anti-fascist left in the manner the shrill, hysterical anti-war left derided Orwell on the eve of WWII.’

This is false. As I thought would be tolerably well known on the EVE of WW2, Orwell was an ‘ultra’, an ‘extremist’ left winger: or in other words, part of the ‘shrill, hysterical anti-war left’. Right up until August 1939 Orwell wanted to form a radical left wing movement that would destroy the British war effort and start a revolution. It was only after his famous ‘dream’ on the night before that pact (i.e. the 27th August) that he decided that he would not sabotage the war or otherwise try and hinder the war effort. Even until 1942/1943 Orwell was aggressively anti-Churchill, and very much on the extreme left of the Labour party, as his essays of the time make clear.

OK, but isn’t it absolutely true that the US did not, in fact, create Karimov?

“He’s a horrible, sloppy writer, and always was.”

Please. You may disagree with his opinions, but Hitchens is one of the better stylists around today. Not in Mark Steyn’s league, but who is?

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Hitchens is the new Orwell.

What’s the good reason to distance from Chomsky and Ali, ‘the bad faith crowd’, as George XVII puts it? Have they been proven wrong – when? I must’ve missed it.

It’s late. I’m on my way to bed. But a couple of quick ideas for you folks to kick around:

1) Maybe there’s a middle road. Maybe we can keep our bases in Uzbekistan and financially punish the Uzbeki leadership. In general, though I’m not familiar with the specifics of the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Uzbeki governments, American military installations overseas give priority in employment to host-country nationals. While the U.S. military isn’t a branch of the State Department or a contingent of Peace Corps volunteers, it can serve a very useful public relations role with the Uzbeki people. Employment on American installations provides Uzbeki citizens with regular contact with Americans and (likely) better pay than the local economy.At the same time, all American aid to the Uzbeki government (and most especially its military and security programs) should be halted, save for humanitarian and other aid distinctly for the Uzbeki people. (This means ending all joint training programs between Uzbeki and American forces as well.)

By taking a more nuanced view (and using U.S. military overseas hiring policy to one’s advantage), it almost seems like one gets to punish the leadership while continuing to build pro-American sentiment among the citizenry and, hopefully, solidifying a middle class that can ultimately take control of the country on their own (to some degree).

2) Military strategy toward China. I don’t think our East Asian bases can be viewed solely through the lens of current Middle Eastern-centered “war on terrorism” strategizing. Personally, I see American bases slowly hopscotching their way through the Middle East and getting closer to the China.

Quiggin’s reading of Hitchen is tendentious: it reads like a Chomsky/Buckley misrepresentation of what another author actually said. Not that Hitchens column is coherent. One can read it as a veiled apologia for bedding down with torturer, or as a restatement of the long-standing Liberal dilemma between intervention and self-determination. See Kant, Perpetual Peace; Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience; Michael Doyle, Kant, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy
and Public Affairs.

Washington’s relations with Islam Karimov pre-date 9-11 and the invasion of Aghanistan by nearly a decade, so when Hitchen’s writes that the U.S. – “merely accepted its offer of strategic and tactical help in the matter of Afghanistan” –

he’s either lying or totally ignorant of the subject matter. The UK involvement with Karimov also commenced much earlier. Had Hitchen’s checked Hansard he would see, for example, that in 1994 Karimov reportedly “brought all his gold over in the plane and delivered it to the Bank of England”.

File Hitchens under – “Court Jester”

Hitchens.

Always an interesting topic. Basically, he’s a polemicist, a stylist, whose knowledge is a mile wide, an inch deep. I guarantee if you read an article on a topic he writes on which you happen to know a lot about personally, you’ll see he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about half the time. I found this in his discussions of Jefferson.

Basically, I find him to be an incoherent thinker who lacks a moral center. He only writes against, never advocates in favor. His militant – violent – anti-religiousity is disturbing, and perhaps a reason why his writing seems so decentered and incoherent. Because at the end of the day, he doesn’t offer a coherent worldview for which he advocates: only a series of targets for which to attack. What, after all, does Hitchens believe in, now he’s no longer a committed leftist/socialist?

In some ways, I find his support for Bush and the Iraq War almost comical. His complete inability to understand the relevance of any knowledge or context outside his almost messianic belief in himself as a defender of some kind of dessicated spirit of “principled leftism.” The guy might write well, but he sure doesn’t seem to read much. Once again, Hitch has backed the wrong horse.