Comments on: Justin Raimondo vs. Christopher Hitchens on al-Jazeera

By: Abdullah

Abdullah — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:27:33 +0000

This is kind of a typical Hitchens ploy, bring up FLN and drop words like “takfir” to give himself the appearance of vast knowledge and as a way to talk down to his counterparts. For instance, with great bluster, he spoke of the Hazaras that the Iranians wanted to defend but he was 100% wrong by saying they are ethnically Persian.

I was a bit disappointed with Justin’s appearance on the program. He seemed annoyed to be on the show. Justin’s views call for more nuance and probably not fit for the Hitchens’ style talk over each other and trade insults and I’m sure that had a lot to do with it. But still, I expected more.

By: sifta

sifta — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:51:12 +0000

Note that the audience here is Al-Jazeera, not the New York Daily News. As Hitch is aware, he basically loses all credibility with that audience (like it or not) if he comes off as anti-religion and anti-Islam. He was pandering to that audience in his remarks and would have had to go one way or another to respond to such an attack. However carefully thought out your ideas are, changing the context in such a sound-bite debate will throw you off.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:09:01 +0000

Seemed like Hitchens was trying to bring AQ into sharp focus by explaining where they are on the 20th anniversary and what they have been up to around the world aka
“Al-Qaida’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, used the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks on the United States to announce on video that the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) had officially joined al-Qaida. He had a message for France (despite its government’s refusal to follow the United States into Iraq as part of the war on terror: “This blessed union will be a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders . . . and will bring fear to the hearts of the miscreant sons of France.”

Just google “Algeria Al-Qaida” you will have knowledge.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:04:28 +0000

Hitchens doesn’t believe in God
and he hates religion

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:03:27 +0000

Actually I have noticed Hitchens as looking impassioned and sincere when he talks about the future of the middle east.
His astute comments about 1/2 the Muslim population being regarded as subhuman by Wahhabist theology seems to be of no concern to Raim or most posters on this board.
What gives?
Raimondo came armed with one weapon, “its our own fault” And you’re right, even he seemed bored with it.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:56:53 +0000

M,
Hitchens has hours and hours of recent debates online. As good as he is at “one liners” his skill at positing and defending his point of view for 40 min+ is one of the best out there.
Defining Mr Hitchens as ignorant, merely show your lack of exposure to well informed commentators.
Sorry,
You can call him a lot of things, a sot yes, but ignorant no.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:43:28 +0000

Sorry sifta but sending Hitchens “into blabbering, livid, damage-control mode” is a pipe dream.
Hitchens positions are carefully thought out and he is careful to fully admit the mistakes made by the US and the West however he does not fall into, (and has distain for those that do) the trap of moral equivalency.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:35:02 +0000

That an absurd, slanderous allegation. You sir, are the worst sort.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:32:16 +0000

Justin will never be burying Hitchens. Hitchens is just to sharp.
Your advice for attacking Hitchens about booze is poorly given.
“Just get to the meat of your argument” is his best bet. And be ready to follow with some proof of sorts.
Also Justin should drop the word “nonsense” from his vocabulary. Unless he can quickly tell us why it is nonsense.

By: sifta

sifta — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:47:46 +0000

The caller from Afghanistan was speaking very honestly, but conflated the Taliban and Al-Qaida. That is, he said that it was hellish living under Al-Qaida; of course, he was talking about the Taliban, not the interior of some training camp. I thought that Justin was kind of chagrined in having his remarks taken out of context.

In fact, the whole thing suffered from lack of context. Justin’s perspective was what should “we” (i.e. the USA) “do” about “Al-Qaida.” However, the “we” for Al-Jazeera is not really the USA. Of course, most viewers will understand what Justin means, but it doesn’t help him with his message. In any case, that is why Hitchens was trying to score points by talking about ‘takfir’ and whatever, and speciously bringing in the Algerian conflict (was this related to Al-Qaida?).

The three commentators didn’t necessarily agree to the basic question of “What is Al-Qaida?” Justin tried to answer this by saying that it is the product of American foreign-policy blowback. That’s not a very good definition, unfortunately, and the rest of the conversation went off the rail as well. It would have gone better if the Washington Institute guy had “defined” Al-Qaida for Hitch and Justin to argue about.

By: sifta

sifta — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:29:58 +0000

Irrespective of what Al-Qaida wants, demands, or would do, I would agree that it is dumb and inappropriate to try to figure out a list of demands and try to assuage them.

Such an approach would presume some sort of bilateral negotiations which are not and will not take place. Trying to deduce the interests, etc., is kind of silly.

So in the real world, we should rather re-assess our own position and decide if the course of action really makes sense. Incidentally, even the Bush administration has technically pulled troops from Saudi (they’re in Qatar now) because they *wanted* to. People as diverse as Michael Sheuer and Ron Paul would take this a step farther and try to figure out what we are trying to achieve and whether we really want it and need it. The costs, in general, are a lot higher than expected, and the benefits are a lot lower.

How you sell this analysis to the bulk of people who can’t be expected to go through all the details is another story. So far, we have been unwilling to consider truths that “won’t sell” and the current administration has taken this sort of cowardice to unprecedented lows. And the mainstream media, taking a cue from the business model of Fox news, is also seemingly arrested by this kind of puerility. But, I digress…

By: sifta

sifta — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:16:22 +0000

He made it up. The only justification is based on the resume of the UN chief involved. The idea that the Iraqi suicide bombers would have been tracking the career histories of the people in the UN is both speculative and highly improbable. But, that is the kind of thing that Hitchens can easily do when there’s a camera on him.