Great catch.
I would add that Hitchens seems to be under the impression that he is "not particularly a war lover". Can you name any one as combative as he is? The news may surprise him, and he may not be a war lover in the sense that the lower orders of milbloggers etc., are, but it seems to me that as a thinking man he really ought to know this about himself.
There is some sort of disconnect there between the ideal and the reality, akin to people who are anti-abortion until they or someone they know needs one. There is initial distaste since their immediate reaction is that one _shouldn't_ have one, for whatever reason (Jesus said so, it's icky, etc.). But it turns out that when the rubber meets the road, they are all for it.
That's Hitchens and war. It's icky, probably a mistake and we shouldn't sink to this level, but he will fight to the death, guns blazing.
I'm only an amateur psychologist, but that makes you a war lover. Own it.
U
I will never become tired of waging it
Waging what Chris, and do you have to pay for food and drink or is it on the house?
As I watched the attacks unfold, I felt nothing remotely like the "ultimate meaning" Dreher blathers about. I felt a sense of great horror knowing that real people were really dying in real terror and real agony as I watched on TV, and that many more real people would really suffer and really die in the aftermath of the attacks -- not least from the horrors that would be unleashed when this wounded giant of a nation started flailing about in response. (Though if you'd have told me that morning that this would eventually involve the invasion of Iraq, I'd have chalked it up to the craziness of the day.) It seemed likely that this would result in even more suffering and death on the part of innocents, piled atop the undeniable suffering and death that were unfolding before me on the screen. Let Dreher speak for himself. 9/11 did not bring meaning; it brought madness.
The closest thing I felt to the thrill of "ultimate meaning" Dreher describes came as I watched firefighters running into the buildings. But the willingness to do that has an awesomeness that has nothing to do with Dreher's self-congratulatory jingoism.
I predict that when future archaeologists sift through the rubble of our civilization, they will be particularly baffled by the manifestos of masturbatory Manichaeism belched forth in response to 9/11. The surge of interest in spiritualism, seances, etc. after World War I seems almost rational in contrast.
On one side, the ethics of the multicultural, the secular, the skeptical, and the cosmopolitan. (Those are the ones I love, by the way.) On the other, the arid monochrome of dull and vicious theocratic fascism.
Ummm, is Hitchens aware that this is really about one group of "vicious theocratic fascists" against a slightly set? The Bush administration used to side with the Iranians & other conservative Muslim states on UN panels dealing with women's rights, reproductive rights.
Also, Rod Dreher & such blamed the attack on our ethics of the multicultural, the secular, the skeptical, and the cosmopolitan. I've precisely heard all those wingnuts say those are the very virtues we must give up to win this "war". We can't afford to be any of those things, we have to sink to an even lesser level of humanity than those who did attack us, etc. etc.
And so, while I admire that Hitchens does come clean about his thoughts, still fuck him for being a cheerleader for a disastrous, immoral & illegal war.
I'll come out & say this: 9/11 changed nothing. I was saddened & depressed by the events, but nothing in my world view changed. I knew there were dangerous men (not monsters, men) out in the world who hate America and our freedom. Some of them wear turbans & squat in caves while others wield a bible & squat in offices.
I don't think the 9/11 terrorists hate our freedoms. They hate(d) our Government.
not monsters, men
Sometimes, in idle, near-optimistic moments, I fancy that if more people could grasp this simple point, we would, as a species, behave with something approximating sanity.
Multicultural, secular, skeptical, cosmopolitan-- one should add ironic, too, given the allies Hitchens chose on the heels of this exhiliration (you know, the monocultural, monolingual, faith-based, Jesus-only, we-don't-need-to-learn-no-French, more-white-babies-please axis).
Note that Hitchens has elsewhere described a similar elation about abandoning "partisanship" (I'll try to dig it up, Roy)-- what is it about his psyche that it leads to such momentous releases? I suspect that what he is describing is a newfound moral cover for channeling rage and malice. The exhiliration comes from being free to hate with absolute ethical justification, which slices straight through the whiskey and fog.
My first thoughts when learning of the attack were something like, "Ah shit- now Americans are gonna act insane for years."
I've seen very little that goes against first thought in the intervening years.
Horror, yes, and incredulity that we -- the biggest and the bravest (ad nauseum)-- were so inept. Then the clock moved on and the whole country went bat shit crazy. The Mighty Jack Booted one pointed at a scare figure and suddenly the trial was over. Bin Laden was guilty. Al Qaeda was guilty. Then in the middle of marching into Afghanistan (WTF?)the owners of the oil became guilty.
To this day I doubt that a civilized court of law would find any of this justified -- based on the material presented. Perhaps the accused are guilty. But the matter is still in question.
--ml
Sad to learn that it takes the deaths of a couple thousand of his fellow citizens to give meaning to life for Rod Dreher. The poor man should look into filling that spiritual void somehow. Maybe join some sort of religion or somethin'.
"I'll come out & say this: 9/11 changed nothing."
Bingo. In 2000, I remember noticing, with a slight touch of alarm, that the Bush campaign (and later, administration) had a very fixed agenda. The REASONS for the agenda, however, shifted with the tides. Do you remember when we needed tax cuts because there was a (Clintonian) budget surplus? And when the surplus melted away, we needed tax cuts because there was a deficit?
Do you remember when we needed to invade Iraq because Saddam had WMD, then because he was a bad man, then because he had violated the no fly zones, then, finally (and much to the very great relief of the Bushies) because some Arabs had attacked us on 9/11?
Bushco had decided long before the election, long before 9/11, and long before the invasion of Iraq just exactly what it was going to do. The only question was what the latest, most effective justification was going to be.
9/11 was a godsend to the neocons. There's nothing like being a "War President" to make anything possible.
As for Dreher, he's just sophomoric.
"I'll come out & say this: 9/11 changed nothing."
You are right in the big picture, Me. The world is the same as it always was. However, one thing that 9/11 actually did change was the political climate of the US. Overnight, the Public's fear level went from about 4 to about 8 (on a scale of 10), and the anger level was raised almost as precipitously. This has had a big effect.
Nevertheless, whatever one's view of the Iraq War, the feeling all, or nearly all, of us had on 9/11 and in its immediate aftermath was one of ultimate meaning returned to the world.
This all reminds me of the glee that so many Europeans felt at the beginning of WWI. The idea that meaning can best be found in war, conflict and enmity reminds me of proto- or quasi- Nazis like Ernst Junger or Carl Schmitt.
I think that one of Hitchens' motives was a desire to quit having people call him "Cockburn lite". For a long time he alternated with Alexander Cockburn at "The Nation", and he was clearly the junior of the two.
My second thought upon seeing the attacks of 9/11 (my first thought was "thank God George W. Bush is president!") was that bin Laden's nutjobs had succeeded in getting what they'd missed in 1993, and that we were now about to all go batshit insane. I don't recall any epiphanies or exhilaration on that day, but later I completely revised my first thought to more of a "holy shit, George W. Bush is president!" realization.
Unless I missed something, Dreher links to Douthat linking to Sanchez quoting Hitchens, but none links to Hitchens. It's from a one-year anniversary 9/11 piece in the Boston Globe, and if any of the three bothered to read the whole thing we have a good explanation for the failure to link:
...everything depends, and has depended, on proving bin Laden wrong. And not merely in proving him wrong, but in demonstrating exactly how wrong he is. (Or how wrong he was: I am one of those who do not expect to hear from him in person again.)
But more to the point, why are we so timorous in the face of such a contemptible foe? Why did our vice president go into hiding? Why are we so bent on the useless collective punishment of law-abiding air travelers, none of whom are any better protected from a determined suicide-murderer than they were this time last year? What is the point of all these ominous "warnings" issued by the authorities, which resemble airport or subway announcements in being very loud but highly incomprehensible? Where is the spirit of Flight 93?
...as civilians in this war, and therefore as primary front-line targets, we do not need to submit to any culture of trust or loyalty or deference. We have a right to know who is in charge and what policies are being debated and what measures taken. We do not have to agree with the choice of any old ally in this struggle, and we dare not assume that any step taken in the name of the "national security" mantra is automatically OK.
There should by now have been a chorus from the American Congress and press and civil society demanding that the administration make good relations with Iran into a high priority.
And why should our elite, which has got everything wrong in Iran from the shah to Oliver North's hostage-trading, be trusted just because this is an emergency? The most one can say here is that the "axis" rhetoric has been quietly dropped, but that's not good enough.
But that does not dissolve America's longstanding promise to sponsor mutual recognition between equal populations [in Palestine] - a promise that has been unkept for far too long and is now made more urgent rather than less.
Reading the above excerpts from both Hitchens and Dreher, I'm struck by one thought that rumbles up from the depths as if it were molten stone spewed forth from my volcanic soul, malice from the very core of my being:
What a pair of suburban yuppie, bubble-dwelling, pussy-wimp, sissies they both are.
"Ultimate Meaning","Irony suspended", "Crystal clarity" and this one takes the cake as it has to be an intentional double entendre: "Un-Cut Evil".
Maybe they both should have joined the Human Race as an active participant, instead of as a professional voyeur. Fuck both of 'em.
His groupthink is phony, yep, but I suppose it represents an improvement on the great void that was his inner life before:
Whatever else life was, it was no longer boring.
So now we know what's been missing from Dreher's life. A dreadful act of violence finally let daylight (and a lot of fear) into his narcissism for a few days and he's been living on the memory ever since.
Boredom with himself and fear of The Other. It must be fun to be him. How on earth do people get like that?
: L)
R2K
I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it,
...from the comfy couch in my living room and from behind my computer screen. America, I'm here for you!
God, what a bonehead.
It's alawys exhilitating when a war is starting and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, you won't have to fight in it, nor will it be fought on your soil. Whoopee!
Good post, Roy. I agree with Underlying Patterns's demonstration that Hitchens is a war lover, despite his protestations (which are always a signal that the opposite is true, like "I'm no prude, but..." or "I don't think that all liberals should be shipped off to concentration camps, but..."); I take issue with atheist's "My first thoughts when learning of the attack were something like, 'Ah shit- now Americans are gonna act insane for years'" because Americans have always acted insane, and 9/11 didn't change anything in that respect.
What I felt on the morning of September 11, 2001 was heartsick. I knew that terrible things would result. This piece by Mark Crispin Miller --
http://www.centerforbookculture....o10/
miller.html
-- who lives near NYU, was at home that morning, and saw the WTC right after the planes' impact, is so much better. I just reread it to get the taste of Hitchens's and Dreher's raving out of my mind. At the same site you can find Cruise Missile Liberal Michael Berube's repulsive take on the day. He heard about the attack from a safe distance, unlike Miller. (Not that it's necessarily a determining factor: I live in Indiana, and I felt as Miller did. It seems that numerous New Yorkers agreed with Berube.)
Dreher is drunk on self-righteousness. To walk around--in NYC or anywhere on that day--and react to the attack was NOT to see things with crystal clarity. It was to see things emotionally, which is always the opposite of crystal clarity.
An honest person would acknowledge this. It's bracing and exhilarating to feel strong emotion--hate for enemies, love for neighbors, moral superiority, etc., etc.--but that's not seeing things clearly. If that phrase means anything, it means seeing beyond the fog of emotions (no matter how appropriate they are).
The result of this "crystal clarity," meanwhile? Iraq, the botched campaign in Afghanistan, the indulgence and unthinking support of the Bush administration, the self-corrupting endorsement of Guantanamo and torture, etc.
Crystal clarity my ass. Rather, bellicose grandiosity. Anytime someone says, "Now, at last, I see things clearly," you know they're in the grip of a strong emotion. Nod silently and slowly back out of the room.
Dead-on, elegant and simple analysis, Roy.
I take issue with atheist's "My first thoughts when learning of the attack were something like, 'Ah shit- now Americans are gonna act insane for years'" because Americans have always acted insane, and 9/11 didn't change anything in that respect.
OK dude, it made them act insaner than normal how's that? It made people act more afraid and angry, more willing to start wars for any reason, or no reason. That is a significant change any way you slice it.
My first thought was that there would be a meeting later that day in which some seriously twisted men would be working out how they could turn that to their advantage, because they sure as shit wouldn't care that a few thousand citizens were wasted. And then I felt enormous pity for the people of Iraq, because whoever was responsible, it was obvious to anyone capable of thinking a step further than the likes of Dreher that they were going to get killed for this.
Resentement from Hitchens and Dreher, plain and simple. Always writing from their lack, and a need to feel righteous in hating something...
The "crystsal clarity" that we were suddenly "at war," not with a few thousand (at most) sociopathic, some of them suicidal, religious maniacs, but that "we" were "at war" with evry single Arab & Muslim on the face of the earth.
See also public idiot Tom Friedman, via Eschaton. What a repugnant piece of work. It looks to me as if we should be "taking out" a few of these "public intellectuals" in order to "burst their bubble," and get them to shut the hell up.
To walk around--in NYC or anywhere on that day--and react to the attack was NOT to see things with crystal clarity.
I know what you're saying, but for me, there is no other day in memory that remotely competes with the morning of 9/11 for crystal clarity. The sky was the bluest it has ever been. The air that morning set a record for being crisp and clean. And clean white flakes fell like snow from heaven.
My main political observation is that those who were farthest from the tragedy were the ones screaming loudest for retribution. I think most of us who were there realized that we didn't want to see that kind of thing happen to anyone else. In that sense it's unfortunate that more people don't get to personally witness the mass murder of innocents. If they did, perhaps they'd be less inclined to repay mass murder with mass murder and just go after the fucking criminals instead.
I remember thinking on 9/11, as I watched the news, one tower burning and the other yet to be hit, that this was going to be a great excuse for the government to limit personal liberty and get away with otherwise reprehensible things.
I wonder if anyone else thought that.
ummm yeah
9/11 was the overture. the invasion of iraq was act one of a tragic opera that will be ongoing for decades.
i'll say this about hitchens -- at least he doesn't give a damn about what anybody thinks about him or his ideas. i admire that attitude, and not the sentiments behind it.
i live in the small-town midwest, and have seen the what-will-people-think-of-me attitude cripple too many souls.
Hmm, I recall thinking (1) need to get to my wife on the overwhelmed cell network asap, tell her I'm ok, (2) how the hell am I going to drive back through this mess (3) my coworker is a collossal douchebag to think it better to work through the afternoon rather than return back to families, despite the enhanced DC traffic.
I admit, there's a harrowing sense of drama as your guts lift up, your nuts pull in, and your senses grow keen, as your body gets ready for fight or flight. No doubt siphoning blood away from teh doubt centers in the brain.
On the lawn of my building, there was a view of the plume of smoke coming from the Pentagon, not especially far away. One guy looked at me, and said it's going to be like the movie "the Seige" (a propagandistic overacted shite-fest; Roy must have loved it). Can't remember if it was that guy or another guy who remarked that this is what it must be like living in Israel. I personally thought, or wanted to believe, this was unlikely to change much in the scheme of things. (I already wanted to get the fuck out of DC.)
chuckling's spot on. It was the day coupled with the tragedy that made it so mindbending. There was never a nicer day in all my 8 years New York.
And it was also the proximity. New Yorkers felt it the most intimately, and they reverted to normality (or rather, what passes for normality in the city) much faster than the rest of the country. Again, here chuckling is right too: those who saw it up close, well they already shouldered the worst -- why would anyone want to pass that horror along to other poor saps caught in the middle?
There were three things that helped me get over it: Drinking with friends, the brilliance of the cityfolk and the Onion's special edition "Holy Fucking Shit".
But I bristled listening to "outsiders" stories about how they responded after watching it on TV, usually after I told them of my 9/11, spent in lower Manhattan. The last thing I wanted was them to glom on to my memories with their whiny bravado defending a city so many of them hated to begin with.
if it was that guy or another guy who remarked that this is what it must be like living in Israel.
Where the tall buildings an Tel Aviv and Hiafa are regularly flattened by hijacked jets. Happens once a month.
If it takes place on a Saturday, it's a hell of a time trying to get any rescue workers to the site.
Overnight, the Public's fear level went from about 4 to about 8 (on a scale of 10),
The fear level in America is like Spinal Tap's amplifiers. You can turn it up to 11!
Well, it's not what I said, it was the guy next to me. And to be fair, quite likely he meant the fear (mongering) rather than some allegorical sequence of events. You can probably weight each of those thoughts to fit an approximation of what actually happened. (And The Siege was bad, even if I was a little sympathetic with it's point.)
They are both sick, sick men.
"Exhilaration" is about the last adjective I would have chosen for my feelings on 9/11.
I guess it's a good thing that Hitchens takes responsibility for that twisted, nauseating reaction. I don't think he knows how sick it is, though, and that's because there are apparently a horrifying number of people who shared it.
Dreher is a useless tool and it's no surprise that he can't express his own delight directly.
In order to get my own emotions out of the way, I should say briefly that on that day I shared the general register of feeling, from disgust to rage, but was also aware of something that would not quite disclose itself. It only became fully evident quite late that evening. And to my surprise (and pleasure), it was exhilaration.
Exhilaration. Kind of how I feel when some asshole cuts me off in traffic - a righteous hatred, a de-humanization of that bastard (how DARE he do that to ME?) in that car, the acting-out of impotent rage signified by the lifting of one, if not both, middle fingers. 9/11 was just one big clusterfuck of road rage.
9/11?
Wait a second, I thought having children was the moment of Dreher's epiphany.
Hold on, here it is. A walk through a parking garage after a GWB presser was it.
Oh, nope, I was wrong. It was this time. BTW, that page also has one of my favorite post by roy -- "REYNOLDS' UNIVERSAL ROBOTS." Pure genius.
And those're just in the few years.
Ahem, "past few years," that is.
So roy has discovered that the difference between a first rate hack and a tenth rate hack is just how much in love with himself a first rate one is? Or, to put it another way, what makes Rod Dreher the voice of the follower is that, well, he's quintessentially a follower. He doesn't even know what he thinks about his own thoughts without having to rush to assure us, and himself, that his thoughts and emotions are thoroughly borrowed. I'll give Hitchens this: he doesn't care about anyone else's thoughts but his own. He's too in love with himself to care what the rest of the country was thinking or feeling. Which is good, because given how he thinks, he'd get it wrong.
aimai
WADR, they strike me as two remarkably similar writers.
The manner is pretty similar, and, come to think of it, the matter isn't all that different either.
They're failing to follow different maps, but they both ended up lost in remarkably similar places.
So roy has discovered that the difference between a first rate hack and a tenth rate hack is just how much in love with himself a first rate one is?
Offhand I'd've said vocabulary.
Ummm, is Hitchens aware that this is really about one group of "vicious theocratic fascists" against a slightly set?
Yes. Other people have pointed out to him how, for someone who seems to have been waiting his entire life for a Spanish Civil War in which to play Orwell, he appears to have learned nothing from Homage to Catalonia, and ended up on the side of the Stalinists in Barcelona.
He finds those moments uncomfortable.
Like Andrew Sullivan, you do get the sense from Hitchens that this is someone thinking. Often thinking in shallow ways, or silly ways, or self-serving ways, but there's a mind at work behind the prose. Still, you could say the same about Macaulay, and who remembers a word he wrote?
Also, Hitch is turning into an old Kingsley Amis. What Martin would think about that, I dunno.
fixed: I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time, because I am a sociopathic drunk. I will never become tired of writing about how much I love it, although it might tend to make me shudder (or it might not——depends on the time of day, really), because it is so fucking sweet to be able to write the same bellicose shit over and over, and to still have people agree with me and quote me approvingly all the time. Also, I don't really know anyone who is actually fighting or dying (what a droll suggestion! Don't make me laugh so hard; I'll spill my drink!) And because it is so interesting. Much like me. Christopher Hitchens. I am fascinating. And better than Mother Teresa, Christians, brown people of any sort, and you.
I've met Dreher before. He's not a very deep or very original thinker. His "crunchy conservative" schtick is pretty week, too, because he'll ultimately butter his bread on the side of unregulated big business conservativism vs. real environmentalism.
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