tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post1806600855350054613..comments2024-01-16T03:42:46.705-05:00Comments on The Downward Spiral: Jonathan Alter: Warmongering DouchebagBill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17551954408189665078noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-36297459863750666612011-12-20T19:35:53.178-05:002011-12-20T19:35:53.178-05:00i think tom friedman is a crypto-neocon.i think tom friedman is a crypto-neocon.Gregghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15760459113377124889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-7788124252792507992011-12-20T17:07:29.032-05:002011-12-20T17:07:29.032-05:00@Gail - I actually don't think the average Ira...@Gail - I actually don't think the average Iraqi who was not a dissident is "better off" without Saddam. They are no more "free" under the current corrupt regime than they were then, just more apt to be killed in sectarian violence.Bill Hickshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17551954408189665078noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-41113869729069963332011-12-20T11:34:28.313-05:002011-12-20T11:34:28.313-05:00I think you may be mis-reading Alter when he wrote...I think you may be mis-reading Alter when he wrote:<br /><br />Is Iraq better off? Yes, we removed Saddam Hussein, but...<br /><br />I think the Yes refers only to having removed Saddam Hussein, not to whether Iraq is better off. Having said that, your condemnation of the invasion is much for powerful and accurate and necessary than his.<br /><br />I hate Tom "Suck. On. This." Friedman so much, I would dearly love an opportunity to throw a pie in his face.<br /><br />Did you see Glenn Greenwald's column about Hitchens?<br /><br />http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_figure_deaths/singleton/<br /><br />It's pretty good:<br /><br />...Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views — not ancillary to his writings but central to them — that were nothing short of repellent.<br /><br />Corey Robin wrote that “on the announcement of his death, I think it’s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most: speak for himself,” and then assembled two representative passages from Hitchens’ post-9/11 writings. In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (“those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words”), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was “exhilaration” because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call “Islamofascism”: “I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.”<br /><br />Hitchens, of course, never “prosecuted” the “exhilarating” war by actually fighting in it, but confined his “prosecution” to cheering for it and persuading others to support it...Gail Zawackihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.com