The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Hitchens: Curiouser and curiouser

Hitchens: Curiouser and curiouser
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, February 13 2015, 16:17:57 (UTC)
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The contrast between his dismal and inept performance against George Galloway and the masterful and inspiring debates with religious folks has to have a root cause. You can hardly believe it is the same Hitchens....even his usual studied state of chic dishevelment when set against the seedy, sweaty, furtive look in his debate with Galloway calls for some explanation. It couldn't have been just an off day for Hitchens. Obviously Hitchens doesn't care for Galloway, but that doesn't explain his poor performance.

It had to be the topic. It had to be Hiichens' defense of the Iraq war and the general state of the war against terror which unhinged Hitchens. His position was weak to begin with. All it took was someone as knowledgeable and skilled in debate as Galloway to kick out the weak props Hitchens leaned against.

In later justifications for a war against Islam Hitchens liked to point out that Islam declared “war” against the United States almost from its inception. His evidence was the seizure of American ships in Muslim “waters” and the enslavement of sailors during Jefferson's presidency. I suppose the point is to inflame us even more by showing us that Islam has always been primed against us and has acted with hostility so we should feel no qualms in “defending” ourselves now from “attacks” started long ago.

The insincerity of this point, or rather the person making it, begs to be explored. Hitchens is extremely well -read but he wouldn't have to be to have read or heard of the European/American/Christian slave trade which had been going on for a couple of hundred years before any Muslims boarded American ships and made slaves of the sailors. Also in numbers and treatment the Muslims took far less slaves than the Christians took from Africa, which is where the Muslim pirates were based, and treated them better.

On every score where Hitchens tries to paint Islam as the dangerous and violent religion, Christianity fares much much worse, as in this case. Hitchens doesn't mention the Christian slave trade and the millions it enslaved and killed...not a word, even though it was going on when this other incident occurred. If you were going to condemn any religion for taking slaves, surely you would place Christianity at the top, if you were being honest and thorough and not just trying to score propaganda....or at the least you'd mention it...except if you mentioned it there would go the point against Islam you were trying to make.

I guess that's what undid Hitchens against Galloway and in this point too...he is being dishonest. Obviously he fears Islam and wants us to share his fear and support the wars he supports against it...but his reasons are not honest ones...they don't ring true. But there has to be a reason, a true reason because obviously he wants these wars....but the reasons and examples, such as the Muslim pirates, are not the real ones...they are the best he can come up with, but they are not convincing...which brings us back to the question of what really was behind his shift in beliefs.

Did he like kissing powerful ass...many people do. Tony Blair wasn't the only poodle, it turns out. Was it the lucrative contracts, as Galloway wondered? Was it the whiskey, in other words did his intellect suffer some grave damage? Was he truly afraid for his children, for the world they would live in and wanted any threat to his new country eliminated, even if the threat was one caused and nurtured by that same country? Never mind who started it just wipe out the Muslims so there would be no excuse for America to bomb the world, or get bombed.



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