forwarded from Jim Holland who is away travelling and temporarily unsubscribed

[Michael Eisenstadt]

Hi Mike,

No sooner did I suspend (I'm in SF visiting friends and wanted to have a
cleared morning email thicket) than I ran across this little bit of
grist
for the mill, and thought you might like to have it, or even post it,
since
it's left talking to left.  Hitchens in the Guardian.

Jim

  Ha ha ha to the pacifists

Christopher Hitchens
Wednesday November 14, 2001
The Guardian

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the
tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel
magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the
slightly
drivelling style employed by the journalists of tourism. "Land of
Contrasts"
was our shorthand for it. ("Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and
new."
"South Africa: a harmony in black and white." "Belfast, where ancient
meets
modern.") It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a
few
weeks ago that my enemies in the "peace" movement had decided to borrow
from
this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this
newspaper, was: "Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains
bombs
on the world's poorest country."
Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What
about, "Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the
world's most closed one"? "Where American women pilots kill the men who
enslave women." "Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are
bombed by
the world's most accurate ones." "Where the largest number of poor
people
applaud the bombing of their own regime." I could go on. (I think number
four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for
the
"doves" to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at
their
scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like,
"The
bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic."

If the silly policy of a Ramadan pause had been adopted, the citizens of
Kabul would have still been under a regime of medieval cruelty, and
their
oppresssors would have been busily regrouping, not praying. Anyhow, what
a
damn-fool proposal to start with. I don't stop insulting the Christian
coalition at Eastertime. Come Yom Kippur I tend to step up my scornful
remarks about Zionism. Whatever happened to the robust secularism that
used
to help characterise the left? And why is it suddenly only the injured
feelings of Muslims that count? A couple of years ago, the same people
were
striking pompous attitudes about the need to avoid offending Serbian and
therefore Russian Orthodox sensitivities. Except that those sensitive
people, or their leaders, were engaged in putting the Muslims of Europe
to
the sword...

There's no pleasing some people, but as a charter supporter of CND I can
remember a time when the peace movement was not an auxiliary to
dictators
and aggressors in trouble. Looking at some of the mind-rotting tripe
that
comes my way from much of today's left, I get the impression that they
go to
bed saying: what have I done for Saddam Hussein or good old Slobodan or
the
Taliban today?

Well, ha ha ha, and yah, boo. It was obvious from the very start that
the
United States had no alternative but to do what it has done. It was also
obvious that defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be history.
Al-Qaida will take longer. There will be other mutants to fight. But if,
as
the peaceniks like to moan, more Bin Ladens will spring up to take his
place, I can offer this assurance: should that be the case, there are
many
many more who will also spring up to kill him all over again. And there
are
more of us and we are both smarter and nicer, as well as surprisingly
insistent that our culture demands respect, too.

=B7 Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.