The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> the puzzle that is Christopher Hitchens..

the puzzle that is Christopher Hitchens..
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Wednesday, October 6 2010, 15:54:44 (UTC)
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...for a guy so sharp on the foolishness and danger of religion in general, I donīt see how to explain his support for the war on Iraq or his claim that Islam is the greatest threat to America and the entire world....I swear, if I close my eyes and make a simple substitution Iīm again hearing a Nazi official explain why Jews must be exterminated....they couldnīt very well have a regular, old-fashioned,war against Jews since they had no state or country....but, since they were your NEIGHBORS, they could be EXTERMINATED, like bed bugs.

..this hysteria over yet another religion that isnīt Christianity, by a guy who appears to see right through Christianity while still sounding very Christian in his condemnations is a puzzle....the only way I can reconcile it is that Hitchens too, like every other rational and humane product of an upbringing in a Christian land, is appalled and ashamed of what Western Christianity has done, and therefore strives hard to justify its actions against Islam (they already took care of Jews), because of his affinity to and preference for Western culture, by further demonizing those whom Christianity has most recently set its sights against.

Hitchens admits out front that Christianity has done god awful things, and continues to do them...and yet he sees nothing wrong or provoking in what Christianity has done to MUSLIMS in the last 60 years....he does indeed condemn Israel for its apartheid, but how the hell can anyone who reads long books NOT do that? Yet all of his forgiveness and understanding flies out the door at the mention of Islam. It seems to me that he feels Islam HAS to come out worse than the already horrible Christianity he skewers so well...it simply has to.

Iīm hardly going to defend what political Islamists do to their own people...but, whatever the reason, I have to recognize that not until Israel was planted, by Europeans, on stolen Muslim lands did Islam give foreign Chritsians much thought...especially if they stayed in their own countries and minded their own business...there was no attempt to conquer the West, or convert French or Irish Christians to Allah...there were never any Islamic missionaries gathering funds in Iran or Algeria to go to other countries and "save" the "deluded followers" of that "devil" Jesus, as Western Christian missionaries did...on the contrary Islam respected Jesus where Christians have always demonized Muhammad.

Seems to me Hitchens, like so many believers, and non-believers alike, simply refuse to grant that if you wound someone, they WILL bleed...that if you kill someoneīs child, they may feel morally justified in killing yours, especially if YOU have started the jihad against Islam, against Iraqis, for instance, who never harmed any Americans but rather have been supplying the oil whereby Christians get to work and get rich and drive to church for decades....

Why does his logic, why does human compassion, why does his magnificent effort to shed light on dark dogmas fail him where the wars against Muslims by Christians, and the reasons given for those wars, are conerned? He does mention that the last pope apologized for the Crusades, for sacking Byzantium and murdering its Christians etc....and for forced conversions .....why canīt a mind that sharp admit that Islam never went hunting Americans until the crimes of Americans became so gross and wholesale that ANY human bean, religious or not, would eventually have turned to confront such violence and disregard for another personīs human rights and dignity.

After all, Palestinians would feel no less anger and animosity if those occupying their lands and killing their hopes and children were French...or Buddhist, or even Muslim...it is the ACT, not the religious affiliation of those committing the crimes that counts to them...it has only been Christians who murdered innocent people, no less, for their RELIGION. It is not "hatred" that Muslims feel but a legitimate sense of OUTRAGE which has finally crystalized into a determination to fight back, however inefficiently and crudely they must. And, to the extent that hating your enemey makes you a better soldier, they have indeed come to HATE...not hate Christianity, but what Christianity is DOING. It is the act, not the religious affiliation of the criminal that matters, even now.


If Iraqis were of no religion at all...or even if they were all Christians, would they NOT be resenting Americaīs war against them, or the death by starvation of over 700,000 of their babies? Is Hitchens claiming that it is Islam, and Islam alone, that has made them angry, where, had they been Christian, or anything ELSE, they would have done.....what? Nothing? They would NOT have wept and sorrowed and sought revenge? Or would he say that had they BEEN Christian, there would have been no Saddam and therefor no need for us to go to war to save them? Really? Have there been no Christian dictators on a par with Saddam, and much worse? What does starving Iraqi children to death qualify as....?

The only thing I can think of is that although Hitchens rightly attacks and exposes Christianity, still his personal prejudice lies with Western society and he too sees the exotic Orient as a foreign and unwholesome source of all the dangers he believes are aimed at the West for NOTHING it has done to deserve them....he makes a great point that Christianity, by offering up Jesus as a human sacrifice who will wash YOUR sins away with HIS death, makes the case for moral IRRESPONSIBILITY...for failing to hold YOURSELF morally accountable for YOUR sins...if this is true, and I believe it is, how can he excuse Western Christianity and Western nations from suffering the consequences and taking responsibility for THEIR actions towards Islamic countires who, until recently, were way too content to forgive countless transgressions made against them by the West.

Does he mean the West, America in particular, was not "responsible" for ANY of the acts, which even he admits, were illegal provocations and acts of terror against the Palestinians, and others by American-backed and funded Israel? Can the West, morally, wash its hands of all responsibility for the anger, sorrow, pain, death and anguish these actions have cost people...people who only recently have begun to fight back, as they can, with what little they have to fight with?

For such a logical and enlightened mind as he displays elsewhere, to so completely fall apart in failing to consistently demand that all people take all responsibility for their actions, shows me that Hitchens is SO appalled by what Christianity has done, as most eloquently and bitingly explained by him, that he feels almost forced, by his own brilliance, to say, "yes but Islam is much worse because it JUST HAS TO BE"! Because to fail to do so, after having ripped the Christian West a new asshole, is to admit that Muslims have CAUSE to be extremists...can be JUSTIFIED for strapping bombs to their bodies and moving among the "innocent", since they donīt have drones to guide from the safety of Colorado.

He doesnīt seem willing to carry his own searing insights to their logical conclusion, which is that Christians MUST take responsibility for ALL their actions...for all their "sins", if you will...that they canīt conventiently leave out the many many crimes they have committed and are STILL committing and threatening to commit more of, against a people who initially wished them no harm at all but were only driven to such a desperate state by what Christians DID and not by what Islam IS.

On the contrary, Islam has been patient for many years, confining their retaliations to one spot against a specific enemy: Israel. Way more patient than was America when it launched an immediate war againsy Iraq, a country everyone now admits, and our leaders knew then, had nothing to do with 9/11 or anything else that could conceivably be used as an excuse for war...America hesitated NOT AT ALL to go after the completely innocent...and yet we are to condemn Islam for finally taking direct action, as best as nations who have never developed an arms industry can, against those who have been OPENLY and unabashedly supplying and supporting indiscriminate and provacative acts of violence against what was once a completely innocent and harmless Arab population for DECADES?

Itīs a tremendous failure...a cosmic case of failing to go the full distance in your own arguments but stopping short just at the point when you might hope that people will "reasonably" draw the false conclusion that Islam and not Christianity is the present and greatest danger the world has ever faced....he too "scapegoats" and argues for "human sacrifice"...only this time itīs the scapegoating of Muslims and the sacrifice of THEIR children and lives and welfare and homes and countries.

Itīs hard to watch what amounts to toadying up to America, his new nationality...all his critical faculties seem to fly out the window as he yet insists that the war on Iraq was the right thing to do because Saddam was a "horrible person" and that Iraqis are better off today...or might be in some future we, and they, canīt imagine. In other words America has "saved" Iraqis, even by destroying all they held most dear: their families and children and parents. The very same argument the Inquisition made when condeming "your corporal body as a necessary step to saving your immortal soul".

Who would NOT have said, to such a proposition: "No thank you, Iīd prefer to keep my body intact and take my chances with my soul." Whether the offer of such salvation was made by the Grand Inquisitor, or Hitchens, riding in on the back of an American tank, which Iraqi would not have said...."Iīll take Saddam and his plans for Iraq over Bush and his plans any day, now get the fuck out of my country and let me save myself".



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