Hitchens

I debated whether to write about someone who agitated for war and for racism against Arabs/Muslims.  I never met this man, and never liked him.  I thought--even when he was a leftist--that he was a poseur and that he was not as principled as he made himself to be.  I also remember back in the 1980s when he penned a piece for the Washington Post (at a time of intense publicity about the notorious Abu Nidal), in which he fantastically claimed that he met with Abu Nidal at a cafe.  I decided then that he was a liar and that he can't be believed and that he has the Robert Fisk disease: that tendency to throw yourself into the story you are covering even if you have to make things up.  The rest is known about this man.  After Sep. 11, I accept an invitation from a radio station in SF to debate him for an hour.  I don't know if there is a recording of that somewhere, as people ask me about him.  And then toward the end of the Bush years, I received an email from him with a link to his article in Vanity Fair in which he came out against water boarding.  I was surprised that he chose to send that piece to him and I did not even reply to him via email but wrote on this blog that if Hitchens truly wanted to atone for his political sins he needs to live for a while in Afghanistan and Iraq and receive US bombs inside modest homes, since he was a cheer leader for the bombing of those countries.  I guess he did not take me up on my suggestion.  I think that his former (and principled) friend, Alexander Cockburn does a good job in this tribute--of sorts.