exotic talk
Two takes on the Galloway-Hitchens face-off, first from an attendee and one from my main man, the Angry Arab, who watched a webcast:
Although I left 90 minutes into the Galloway-Hitchens debate, I feel pretty confident that I had taken in the high points, such as they were. The event succeeded more as theater than as education, with both characters playing to the gallery and practically imitating themselves.
The basic problem is that a debate over the war in Iraq is a little bit like debating whether the earth is round or flat, or as Galloway put it, "Is there any sentient being on this planet who still believes that this war was just and necessary?" Apart from the inner circles of the Bush administration, Hitchens and the odd band of his admirers drawn to the debate, that is.
[snip]
Amidst all the brawling, there were some educational points. When Hitchens mentioned the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon as a positive consequence of Bush's war, Galloway replied that if there were elections in Lebanon tomorrow, the head of Hizbollah would likely be elected. However, since he is a Moslem that would be impossible since the constitution bars anybody but Christians from taking office. Where did that constitution come from, Galloway asked? It was imposed as the result of the invasion of the US marines in 1958. That was a valuable point and one worth following up on.
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The "big debate"... I have just finished watching this debate. I will evaluate it as a debate first. I am no fan of either men: I wrote about Galloway before, and I find him to be quite demagogic in his approach and more than slightly buffoonish in style. I watched him once campaign on Edgeware Road in London, and was mightily unimpressed. Furthermore, his very meetings with Saddam Husayn and his cronies--no matter what was discussed, and no matter whether he received or did not receive some oil benefits--discredit his position and pronouncements on Iraq. His blustering rhetoric can sometimes be irresponsible. I know when I write those words that he is wildly popular in the Arab world, and among Arabs in the world (and in the US) only partly because his current wife is Palestinian (although most of his Arab fans seem to have ignored what she had to say about him in the Daily Telegraph last year). But watching Hitchens in this debate convinces you that he has emerged as the quintessential demagogue in the US.He is now more of a demagogue than Galloway, in my opinion. He now knows what to say and how to say it to get that typical robotic American patriotic applause, especially when he ticks off the names of the 82nd airborne and the 43rd (I made this one up) squadron, etc. He has become a parochial demagogue whose message is crafted with an eye for a mainstream American patriotic audience. In fact, the best moment of the evening was provided by neither men, but by the moderator, the able Amy Goodman who simply asked Hitchens whether his recent political positions have made the US press "friendlier" to him. He could not speak; a man who never suffers a loss for words, could not utter a word. And when he did, it was not even coherent or decipherable, and did what every person who realizes that he appears clearly embarrassed by the question: he attacked the question.
The debate, for me, has raised deeper questions than the one at hand. If you please, let me riff a little here: as Atrios and the like have pointed out time and again, whenever a professor or pol or activist makes a media stir with comments that tempt offensiveness, no matter how thought-provoking they may be (as in the case of Ward Churchill), or if they just act in a self aggrandizing way that will only attract scorn (say, like this) generally like-minded people, or at least people on the left who may agree with their analysis are expected to act as interpreters or something, soft-pedaling generally ugly truths. But then I start thinking about Greg Palast's Sept. 14 column on Galloway.
More riffing - sure, Galloway is molded in the shape of a demagogue. But is he that wrong - as the AA says, that "discredited"? To paraphrase Stalin, how many aircraft carriers does Sir George command, and how many bombs has he dropped on Iraq? Is the gap between being despicable and being a murderer that wide? Is now the time to be picky and choosy about forming alliances? Is this another, though different case of means and ends? And how about for Hitchens? How much guilt does he share with the Bush Administration? Is he just pathetic and wrong, or an enabler, or worse, a participant who shares some measure of blame, of criminality?
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