Christopher Hitchens vs. Katha Pollitt

Thanks to Brian N. for passing along this great exchange between Christopher Hitchens and Katha Pollitt. The subject matter surrounds Hitchens departure from The Nation, his disdain for neutralism and tolerance of tyranny, and his general disgust of some familiar luminaries.

Some highlights…

Hitchens: “I have been doing some work with the Iraqi and Kurdish resistance in the past few years, and these people have already experienced things that no scaremonger could have invented. All I’ll say is that I feel truer to my left self, in helping them, than I could if I was carrying a dumb placard, confusing ‘Iraq’ with ‘Saddam,’ in a parade organized by those who explicitly admire the latter, as well as Kim Jong Il and Slobodan Milosevic (and later sheepishly claiming that I’d joined the wrong picket line).”

Pollitt: “Even Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi dissident who strongly favors invasion, admitted in a recent interview in the Boston Globe that there is only a “5 percent chance” that the aftermath will be what you’d like to see: a democratic, peaceful Iraq that respects human rights, as opposed to a US military dictatorship, an Iraqi military junta, civil war or other very bad outcome. Makiya acknowledges, too, that in order for his scenario to have a chance of success, America would have to keep troops in Iraq for years and spend untold billions. How likely is it that our government will, or even can, make that kind of commitment?”

December 5th, 2002