Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All is Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
Recent
Stories
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
10, 2003
"Fraternally
Yours, Chris":
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
Editors' note: Norman
Finkelstein is writing a political memoir, which will serve as
the introduction to a new edition of his book, The Rise
and Fall of Palestine, to be published by New Press next year.
Below is an excerpt on the phenomenon of political apostasy,
focusing primarily on Hitchens' recent grab-bag of writings in
support of the US attack on Iraq. The title refers to how ex-leftist
Christopher Hitchens used to sign off his correspondence. CounterPunch's
forthcoming The
Politics of Anti-Semitism, has a fine essay by Finkelstein,
on his bizarre experience of being attacked in Germany as an
anti-Semite. AC/JSC
I'm occasionally asked whether I still consider
myself a Marxist. Even if my "faith" had lapsed, I
wouldn't advertise it, not from shame at having been wrong (although
admittedly this would be a factor) but rather from fear of arousing
even a faint suspicion of opportunism. To borrow from the lingo
of a former academic fad, if, in public life, the "signifier"
is "I'm no longer a Marxist," then the "signified"
usually is, "I'm selling out." No doubt one can, in
light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate
past convictions. One might also decide that youthful ideals,
especially when the responsibilities of family kick in and the
prospects for radical change dim while the certainty of one's
finitude sharpens, are too heavy a burden to bear; although it
might be hoped that this accommodation, however understandable
(if disappointing), were accomplished with candor and an appropriate
degree of humility rather than, what's usually the case, scorn
for those who keep plugging away. It is when the phenomenon of
political apostasy is accompanied by fanfare and fireworks that
it becomes truly repellent.
Depending on where along the political
spectrum power is situated, apostates almost always make their
corrective leap in that direction, discovering the virtues of
the status quo. "The last thing you can be accused of is
having turned your coat," Thomas Mann wrote a convert to
National Socialism right after Hitler's seizure of power. "You
always wore it the 'right' way around." If apostasy weren't
conditioned by power considerations, one would anticipate roughly
equal movements in both directions. But that's never been the
case. The would-be apostate almost always pulls towards power's
magnetic field, rarely away. However elaborate the  testimonials on how one came
to "see the light," the impetus behind political apostasy
is--pardon my cynicism--a fairly straightforward, uncomplicated
affair: to cash in, or keep cashing in, on earthly pleasures.
Indeed, an apostate can even capitalize on the past to increase
his or her current exchange value. Professional ex-radical Todd
Gitlin never fails to mention, when denouncing those to his left,
that he was a former head of Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS). Never mind that this was four decades ago; although president
of my sixth-grade class 40 years ago, I don't keep bringing it
up. Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on the exploitation
of one's political past? In any event, it's hard to figure why
an acknowledgment of former errors should enhance one's current
credibility. If, by a person's own admission, he or she had got
it all wrong, why should anyone pay heed to his or her new opinions?
Doesn't it make more sense attending to those who got there sooner
rather than later? A member of the Flat-Earth Society who suddenly
discovers the world is round doesn't get to keynote an astronomers'
convention. Indeed, the prudent inference would seem to be, once
an idiot, always an idiot. It's child's play to assemble a lengthy
list--Roger Garaudy, Boris Yeltsin, David Horowitz, Bernard Henri-Levy--bearing
out this commonsensical wisdom.
Yet, an apostate is usually astute enough
to understand that, in order to catch the public eye and reap
the attendant benefits, merely registering this or that doubt
about one's prior convictions, or nuanced disagreements with
former comrades (which, after all, is how a reasoned change of
heart would normally evolve), won't suffice. For, incremental
change, or fundamental change by accretion, doesn't get the buzz
going: there must be a dramatic rupture with one's past. Conversion
and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides
of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having
more in common with religion than rational discourse. A rite
of passage for apostates peculiar to U.S. political culture is
bashing Noam Chomsky. It's the political equivalent of a bar
mitzvah, a ritual signaling that one has "grown up"--i.e.,
grown out of one's "childish" past. It's hard to pick
up an article or book by ex-radicals--Gitlin's Letters to
a Young Activist, Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism--that
doesn't include a hysterical attack on him. Behind this venom
there's also a transparent psychological factor at play. Chomsky
mirrors their idealistic past as well as sordid present, an obstinate
reminder that they once had principles but no longer do, that
they sold out but he didn't. Hating to be reminded, they keep
trying to shatter the glass. He's the demon from the past that,
after recantation, no amount of incantation can exorcise.
Two altogether opposed political stances
can each draw an audience's attention. One is to be politically
consistent, but nonetheless original in one's insights; the other,
an inchoate form of apostasy, is to bank on the shock value of
an occasional, wildly inconsistent outburst. The former approach,
which Chomsky exemplifies, requires hard work, whereas the latter
is a lazy substitute for it. Thus Nat Hentoff, the hip (he loves
jazz) left-liberal writer, would jazz up his Village Voice
columns by suddenly coming out against abortion or endorsing
Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination. The master at this
pose of maverick unpredictability used to be Christopher Hitchens.
Amidst a fairly typical leftist politics, he would suddenly ambush
unsuspecting readers with his opposition to abortion, admiration
of the misogynist and juvenile lyrics of Two Live Crew ("I
think that's very funny"), or support for Columbus's extermination
of Native Americans ("deserving to be celebrated with great
vim and gusto"). Immediately the talk of the town became,
"Did you read Hitchens this week?"
Although a tacit assumption equates unpredictability
with independence of mind, it might just as well signal lack
of principle. As if to bear out this point, Hitchens has now
repackaged himself a full-fledged apostate. For maximum pyrotechnical
effect, he knew that the "awakening" had to be as abrupt
as it was extreme: if yesterday he counted himself a Trotskyist
and Chomsky a comrade, better now to announce that he supports
Bush and counts Paul Wolfowitz a comrade. Their fates crossed
when Wolfowitz and Hitchens both immediately glimpsed in September
11 the long-awaited opportunity: for Wolfowitz, to get into Iraq,
for Hitchens, to get out of the left. While public display of
angst doesn't itself prove authenticity of feeling (sometimes
it might prove the reverse),  a sharp political break must,
for one living a political life, be a wrenching emotional experience.
The rejection of one's core political beliefs can't but entail
a rejection of the person holding them: if the beliefs were wrong,
then one's whole being was wrong. Repudiating one's comrades
must also be a sorrowful burden. It is not by chance that "fraternity"
is a prized value of the left: in the course of political struggle,
one forges, if not always literally, then, at any rate, spiritually,
blood bonds. Yet, the élan with which Hitchens has shed
his past and, spewing venom, the brio with which he savages former
comrades is a genuine wonder to behold. No doubt he imagines
it is testament to the mettle of his conviction that past loyalties
don't in the slightest constrain him; in fact, it's testament
to the absence of any conviction at all.
Hitchens collects his essays during the
months preceding the U.S. attack on Iraq in The Long Short
War. He sneers that former comrades organizing the global
anti-war demonstrations "do not think that Saddam
Hussein is a bad guy at all" (emphasis in original), and
the many millions marching in them consist of the "blithering
ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist." Similarly, he
ridicules activists pooling their meager resources for refreshments
at a fundraiser--they are not among the chosen at a Vanity
Fair soiree--as "potluck peaceniks" and "potluckistas."
Yet, he is at pains to inform readers that all his newly acquired
friends are "friends for life." As with the solicitude
he keeps expressing for the rights of Arab women, it seems that
Hitchens protests too much. The famous aphorism quoted by him
that nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests,
might be said to apply, mutatis mutandis, to himself as
well. Indeed, his description of a psychopath--"incapable
of conceiving an interest other than his own and perhaps genuinely
indifferent to the well-being of others"--comes perilously
close to a self-portrait. To discover our true human nature,
Freud once wrote, just reverse society's moral exhortations:
if the Commandment says not to commit adultery, it's because
we all want to. This simple game can be played with Hitchens
as well: when he avows, "I attempt to write as if I did
not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing
opinion might be," one should read, "My every word
is calculated for its public effect."
Hitchens has riotous fun heaping contempt
on several of the volunteer "human shields" who left
Iraq before the bombing began. They "obviously didn't have
the guts," he jeers, hunkered down in his Washington foxhole.
Bearing witness to his own bravery, Hitchens reports in March
2003 that, although even the wife of New York Times columnist
Tom Friedman is having doubts about going to war, "I am
fighting to keep my nerve"--truly a profile in courage,
as he exiles himself in the political wilderness, alongside the
Bush administration, Congress, a majority of U.S. public opinion,
and his employers in the major media. Outraged at the taunt that
he who preaches war should perhaps consider fighting it, Hitchens
impatiently recalls that, since September 11, "civilians
at home are no safer than soldiers abroad," and that, in
fact, he's not just a target but the main target: "The
whole point of the present phase of conflict is that we are faced
with tactics that are directed primarily at civilians.
It is amazing that this essential element of the crisis should
have taken so long to sink into certain skulls" (emphasis
in original). No doubt modesty and tact forbid Hitchens from
drawing the obvious comparison: while cowardly American soldiers
frantically covered themselves in protective gear and held their
weapons at the ready, he patrolled his combat zone in
Washington, D.C. unencumbered. Lest we forget, Hitchens recalls
that ours is "an all-volunteer army" where soldiers
willingly exchange "fairly good pay" for "obedience"
to authority: "Who would have this any other way?"
For sure, not those who will never have to "volunteer."
It's a standing question as to whether
the power of words ultimately derives from their truth value
or if a sufficiently nimble mind can endow words with comparable
force regardless of whether they are bearers of truth or falsity.
For those who want to believe that the truth content of words
does matter, reading the new Hitchens comes as a signal relief.
Although redoubtable as a left-wing polemicist, as a right-wing
one he only produces doubt, not least about his own mental poise.
Deriding Chomsky's "very vulgar" harnessing of facts,
Hitchens wants to go beyond this "empiricism of the crudest
kind." His own preferred epistemology is on full display, for
all to judge, in Long Short War. To prove that, after
supporting dictatorial regimes in the Middle East for 70 years,
the U.S. has abruptly reversed itself and now wants to bring
democracy there, he cites "conversations I have had on this
subject in Washington." To demonstrate the "glaringly
apparent" fact that Saddam "infiltrated, or suborned,
or both" the U.N. inspection teams in Iraq, he adduces the
"incontrovertible case" of an inspector offered a bribe
by an Iraqi official: "The man in question refused the money,
but perhaps not everybody did." Citing "the brilliant
film called Nada," Hitchens proposes this radical
redefinition of terrorism: "the tactic of demanding the
impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint." Al-Qaida is accordingly
terrorist because it posits an impossible world of "clerical
absolutism" but, judging by this definition, the Nazi party
wasn't terrorist because it posited a possible world without
Jews. Claiming that every country will resort to preemptive war,
and that preemptive is indistinguishable from preventive war,
Hitchens infers that all countries "will invariably decide
that violence and first use are justified" and none can
be faulted on this account--which makes you wonder why he's so
hot under the collar about Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
Hitchens maintains that that "there
is a closefit between the democratically minded and the pro-American"
in the Middle East--like "President for Life" Hosni
Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan...; that Washington finally
grasped that "there were 'root causes' behind the
murder-attacks" (emphasis in original)--but didn't Hitchens
ridicule any allusion to "root causes" as totalitarian
apologetics?; that "racism" is "anti-American
as nearly as possible by definition"; that "evil"
can be defined as "the surplus value of the psychopath"--is
there a Bartlett's for worst quotations?; that
the U.S.'s rejoining of U.N.E.S.C.O. during the Iraq debate proved
its commitment to the U.N.; that "empirical proofs have
been unearthed" showing that Iraq didn't comply with U.N.
resolutions to disarm; that since the U.N. solicits U.S. support
for multilateral missions, it's "idle chatter" to accuse
the U.S. of acting unilaterally in Iraq; that the likely killing
of innocent civilians in "hospitals, schools, mosques and
private homes" shouldn't deter the U.S. from attacking Iraq
because it is proof of Saddam's iniquity that he put civilians
in harm's way; that those questioning billions of dollars in
postwar contracts going to Bush administration cronies must prefer
them going to "some windmill-power concern run by Naomi
Klein"--is this dry or desiccated wit?
On one page Hitchens states that the
world fundamentally changed after September 11 because "civilians
are in the front line as never before," but on another page
he states that during the 1970s, "I was more than once within
blast or shot range of the IRA and came to understand that the
word 'indiscriminate' meant that I was as likely to be killed
as any other bystander." On one page he states that, even
if the U.S. doesn't attack or threaten to attack, "Saddam
Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the
verge of implosion" (emphasis in original), but on another
page he states that "only the force of American arms, or
the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh
face to power." On one page he states that the U.S. seems
committed to completely overhauling Iraq's political system,
but on another page he states that replacing Saddam with "another
friendly generalmight be ideal from Washington's point of view."
On one page he states that "Of course it's about
oil, stupid" (emphasis in original), but on another page
he states that "it was not for the sake of oil" that
the U.S. went to war. In one paragraph he states that the U.S.
must attack Iraq even if it swells the ranks of al-Qaida, but
in the next paragraph he states that "the task of statecraft"
is not to swell its ranks. In one sentence he claims to be persuaded
by the "materialist conception of history," but in
the next sentence he states that "a theory that seems to
explain everything is just as good at explaining nothing."
In the first half of one sentence he argues that, since "one
cannot know the future," policy can't be based on likely
consequences, but in the second half he concludes that policy
should be based on "a reasoned judgment about the evident
danger."
Writing before the invasion, Hitchens
argued that the U.S. must attack even if Saddam offers self-exile
in order to capture and punish this heinous criminal. Shouldn't
he urge an attack on the U.S. to capture and punish Kissinger?
And, it must attack because Saddam started colluding with al-Qaida
after the horrific crimes of September 11. Should the U.S. have
been attacked for colluding with Saddam's horrific crimes, not
after but while they unfolded, before September 11? France is
the one "truly 'unilateralist' government on the Security
Council," according to Hitchens, a proof being that 20 years
ago it sank a Greenpeace vessel--next to which the U.S. wars
in Central America apparently pale by comparison. He assails
French President Jacques Chirac, in a masterful turn of phrase,
as a "balding Joan of Arc in drag," and blasts France
with the full arsenal of Berlitz's "most commonly
used French expressions." For bowing to popular anti-war
sentiment in Germany, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stands
accused of "cheaply" playing "this card,"
while in the near-unanimous opposition of the Turkish people
to war Hitchens detects evidence of "ugly egotism and selfishness."
He says that that Wolfowitz wants "democracy and emancipation"--which
must be why Wolfowitz rebuked the Turkish military for not stepping
in after the Turkish people vetoed participation in the war.
A "principled policy cannot be measured," Hitchens
sniffs, "by the number of people who endorse it." But
for a principled democrat the number of people endorsing a policy
does decide whether to implement it. Hitchens's notion of democracy
is his "comrade," ex-Trotskyist but ever-opportunist
Kanan Makiya, conjuring up a "complex and ambitious plan"
to totally remake Iraq in Boston and presenting it for ratification
at an émigré conference in London. The invective
he hurls at French, German and Turkish leaders for heeding the
popular will shows that Hitchens hasn't, at any rate, completely
broken faith with his past: contemptuous of "transient polls
of opinion," he's still a Trotskyist at heart, guiding the
benighted masses to the Promised Land, if through endless wars
and safely from the rear.
Most of Long Short War is given
over to parsing words. According to Hitchens, all the key terms
of the debate on Iraq were meaningless. In his hands this is
probably true. For many years Hitchens impressed some readers
with his verbal facility. Now his ego delights in testing whether,
through sheer manipulation of words, he can pass off flatulent
emissions as bouquets. It perhaps would be funny watching fatuous
readers fawn over gibberish--were not human life at stake. Hitchens
can't believe a word he's saying. In contrast to bursting windbags
like Vaclav Havel, Hitchens is too smart to take his vaporizings
seriously. It's almost an inside joke as he signals each ridiculous
point with the assertion that it's "obvious." Hitchens
resembles no one so much as the Polish émigré hoaxer,
Jerzy Kosinski, who, shrewdly sizing up intellectual culture
in America, used to give, before genuflecting Yale undergraduates,
lectures on such topics as "The Art of the Self: the theory
of 'Le Moi Poetique' (Binswanger)." Translation: for this
wanger it's all about moi. Kosinski no doubt had a good
time of it until, outed as a fraud, he had enough good grace,
which Hitchens plainly lacks, to commit suicide. And for Hitchens
it's also lucrative nonsense that he's peddling. It's not exactly
a martyr's fate defecting from The Nation, a frills-free
liberal magazine, to Atlantic Monthly, the well-heeled
house organ of Zionist crazies. Although Kissinger affected to
be a "solitary, gaunt hero," Hitchens says, in reality
he was just a "corpulent opportunist." It sounds familiar.
Norman Finkelstein is the author of The Holocaust Industry
and Image
and Reality of the Palestinian Conflict. He is also a
contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Visit his website at: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
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