Looking for nuance; beware the village idiot

[uvula_fr_b4]

This was inspired by ezrael's post of Wednesday, 28 July 2004 at 2022, titled "PoliticsNuance is certainly not fashionable in these times, as in so many -- too many -- others.  Nuance is time-consuming.  Nuance requires that one think before one speaks, or applies one's digits to one's keyboard.  Nuance by its very nature almost never offers a simple

Comments

[ratmmjess]

I tend to think that Hitchens' long respect for and support for the Kurds obscured his vision with regard to the war on Saddam, and he's too far gone now to admit that he was wrong.

Rushdie too...?

[uvula_fr_b4]

Doubtlessly true; but I also suspect that the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the public feud that Hitchens had with John Le Carré after the latter said that Rushide deserved whatever he got for insulting a great religion pretty much drained the last iota of Hitchens' patience for apologists of Islamic extremists.

What most troubles me is the fact that I don't get the sense that Hitchens is four-square with the "neo-cons" -- he wrote a very nuanced essay in last April's issue of The Atlantic Monthly wherein he critiqued other authors (Michel Houllebecq, Oriana Fallaci, V.S. Naipaul) accused of anti-Islamic sentiments, some more justly than others -- and yet his articles over the last few months for Slate and Vanity Fair read increasingly as though he's converted, or at least been co-opted. Hitchens dunned former ambassador Joseph Wilson and defended the intelligence that Iraq was trying to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger in his "Fighting Words" column for Slate of Tuesday, 13 July ("Plame's Lame Game"); lambasted Michael

<i>Imperial Hubris</i>

[uvula_fr_b4]

A forthcoming book by "Anonymous" called Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey's, Inc.; July 2004; HB / 352 pps.) sounds as though it may have some new perspectives on the "Why Do They Hate Us?" bit:

"According to the author, the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe -- at the urging of U.S. leaders -- that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do.

......

"Anonymous contends they will go to any length, not to destroy our secular, democratic way of life, but to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities, and their religion. Unless U.S. leaders recognize this fact and adjust their policies abroad accordingly, even moderate Muslims will join the bin Laden camp."