A Lib friend of mine emailed me this morning rejoicing that Hitchens had endorsed Kerry. I was highly skeptical.

Now that the info turned out to be false, he'll probably go back to calling Hitchens a drunk bastard, etc.

David Horowitz mentioned it a few days ago:

“Hitchens for Bush; Moore against Bush; taxpayers screwed - Saturday, October 30, 2004 7:12 PM

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 An email from Christopher Hitchens to my friend Ron Radosh indicates that Hitchens's comments on the election in Slate, which we posted here, were actually intended as an edorsement of Bush not Kerry as the editors indicated. When my daughter first sent me the Hitchens comments I told her they didn't look like an endorsement of Kerry to me, but then she sent me the Slate headline which indicated that they were. Now the record is clear. Hitchens is voting for Bush.”

Actually hitchens does not endorse anybody in this election. Go see http://slate.com/id/2108714/
Scroll down to Hitchens

If Hitchens is voting for Bush than it's a clear example of Republican vote fraud. Hitchens is not an American citizen.

Actually I believe both Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan have become American citizens.

I dunno about Hitch, but Sullivan mentioned that he is still not a citizen. (So who cares WTF he thinks?)

Two points: 1) Hitchens says in the Slate post that "I do not in any case yet have the right, let alone the inclination, to vote." Not having heard that he is a convicted felon, I infer from this that he has not become a citizen, though the use of the word "yet" implies that he may be on the road to citizenship. 2) I think Andrew Sullivan got it right and Michael, I think you've overread Hitchen's piece. AS says "I see no Bush endorsement." I don't see it either. He objects to being characterized as a Kerry supporter, and he says Bush's "attitude" toward the war is closer than Kerry's to his, but he goes on to say he can see the case for Kerry. To my mind, this stops short of an endorsement. If he WERE a citizen, he'd look to me like an undecided, perhaps leaning Bush.

that's the way I read Hitchens, too: undecided, leaning Bush.

The reason Hitchens cannot vote for Kerry, which presumably is the reason that Michael cannot either, is that to do so would first require him to look at himself in the mirror and see what he has become.

Ironically, the re-election of Bush (with the result that there will be no-one else to blame for the disastrous failure of the project of remaking the middle east by force) would eventually force that to occur, with all the angst and self-loathing that that process will inevitably entail (assuming that either man retains enough honesty and moral clarity to feel shame).

On the other hand, if Kerry is elected, these folks will conveniently be able to blame him for being unable to rescue an already irredeemable situation, and so they will never be forced to reconcile their beliefs with reality.

It's funny how it goes.

WTF does it matter who he votes for? It's one vote just like anyone elses. Just because you are not a citizen doesn't make it impossible to vote. Its a matter of how many times you vote that counts...hehehe

Just because people make up perceptions of Bush or Kerry doesn't make them true. Bush has made courageous moves that will not be realized for many years, unfortunately the guy has had the worst period of time a President could have and has came out in pretty good shape. I don't think the libs will ever have the guts to do what is necessary to help this nation as their 40+ years of welfare have proven. The only thing the libs have been successful at is dumbing down ordinary Americans.

Vote Early, Vote often!!!

Here is a splendid article concerning folks like Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Drezner:

"Anybody seeking to prove the Kerryan criticism that George W. Bush doesn't know how to build an alliance need look no further than the pan-ideological coalition he built right here at home. In the heat of battle, when their support was most important, the liberal hawks broke ranks and fled the battlefield. Nor will they acknowledge having betrayed the president who gave them what they claimed to wish for: In the minds of the liberal hawks, it is Bush who has betrayed their grand ideals with his "mismanagement" of the postwar situation."

http://www.reason.com/cavanaugh/110104.shtml

Mork,

why is the project to remake the Middle East such a "disaster"? You can't name a single reason that makes it a disaster. All you can do is show me that it's been costly; but everything worthwile costs something. You're just a Lib and expect everything for free. That's what's going on.

Hyperbole and pessimism is all John Kerry will be offering tommorow at the polls.

Yes, remaking the Middle East a disaster. As opposed to the last however many decades? The only two things the ME has exported in the 20th Cent. were oil and terrorism. I'd rather have someone roll the dice and try to make it better than someone who'd prefer the old status quo.

why is the project to remake the Middle East such a "disaster"? You can't name a single reason that makes it a disaster. All you can do is show me that it's been costly; but everything worthwile costs something.

Come on, David, it's been horrifically costly in all the obvious ways, but much more costly in less tangible ways such as increasing the number of people who hate America enough to commit violent acts, driving away allies and decreasing American prestige. We will be feeling those costs for years, believe me (although people like you will blame the results on President Kerry and whoever succeeds him).

And what have we gained in Iraq for all the damage it's caused us?

Nothing. We've replaced a dictatorship with a situation that from this point can go only one of two ways: an Islamic theocracy or a civil war.

Bravo.

Mork,

like I said, it's been costly, and you've pointed out the reasons why. But all the talk of "disaster" is just silly and completely ignores the benefits and potential benefits.

Vote "disaster" tommorow, vote John Kerry.

So what are the "benefits and potential benefits".

Seriously. And don't tell me the things that might plausibly have been thought of as benefits at the time the decision was made. What are the benefits looking at the situation right now, as it actually exists?

They hated and despised Reagan too, and he was right, and the Morks of the world were wrong.

Wishful thinking, Matthew. I didn't hate and despise Reagan at all, in fact I always felt great affection for him.

He had a very mixed record, to be sure. He was wrong about as many things as he was right, and he was a bit too hands-off to be an effective president across the board, but I'd take him above either of the two contestants in this race.

I didn't hate and despise Reagan at all, in fact I always felt great affection for him.

It's very strange, I can't find any Reagan haters anymore. Where'd they all go?

Obviously Mork, you don't want to talk about the potential benefits. The reasons why couldn't be more obvious; which means I also have no interest in discussing them with you.

Nonetheless, Saddam's reign of terror is over and
Iraq has rejoined the community of nations, the people are no longer under a decades-long sanctions regime, and all those "children" that the Libs claimed to care for aren't "starving" to death anymore and are about to be the first Iraqi democrats in that nation's tortured history.

I'm not talking about YOU, I'm talking about the screaming meme you so typically represent "world hates us, sky is falling, disaster".

I remember how much the MSM, press, talking heads, Europeans, and intelligencia despised Reagan because he was willing to call an Evil Empire where he saw it.

If you want to vote with the liberals and progressives in Iraq and Afghanistan, vote for Bush.

If you want to vote for the candidate supported by the head-choppers in the Sunni triangle, the Nuke-happy dictator of N. Korea, and bomb-makers in Ramallah, vote for Mork's candidate.

David, do you really think that the marginal benefit to Iraqi people of exchanging Saddam's regime with the instability and danger of today's situation (to say nothing of how the situation might further deteriorate over the next few months) is worth what it has cost America and the American people.

It's like paying a thousand dollars of postage in order to give your friend a nickel.

Seriously, David, if before the war, you knew that it would cost 250 billion dollars and 2,000+ American lives and increase the number of terrorists, but it would not result in finding any dangerous weapons, in the establishment of a stable Iraqi democracy, or a permanent and consensual US presence there, would you honestly have thought that it was a good idea?

Because that is, you know, the test.

Matthew, I'm sorry to be rude, but if you really think that Islamic terrorists give a flying fuck who the U.S. President is, let alone believe that that non-fact should influence someone's vote (as opposed to, say, the somewhat more pertinant question of which candidate is actually going to reduce their numbers) then you're just a fucking idiot.

Mork: The reason Hitchens cannot vote for Kerry, which presumably is the reason that Michael cannot either, is that to do so would first require him to look at himself in the mirror and see what he has become.

Fuck you.

Mork: I'm sorry to be rude

No, you're not.

Mork,

Get a grip, grab Mindy and blow off a little steam. Iraq is a great move and although we have have lost some of heroes they died for the right thing, yours and my safety and freedom. People like you spit on their graves just like your candy date Kerry. You like most all of us don't have a clue what is happening in Iraq. I think you should go live in Europe for a couple years and if you ain't ready to come back to the greatest nation on earth stay where you are. I'll bet you won't be able to stay because they are appeasers waiting for the worst to happen and I don't think you are. You just hate Bush because you love dick, so don't get so upset you'll get to vote for Hillary in a short 4 years.

Mork,

obviously I'm dissapointed that not finding those WMDs has given the haters ammo, but I'm going to explain this very carefully so please pay attention.

I haven't changed my mind, and I won't change my mind, that it would have been irresponsible for ANY president to ignore the evidence that we had at the time. Therefore, even though I'm dissapointed at no WMDs, taking Saddam out was the right thing to do, for that and other reasons too.

Of course, when the president does nothing, he's screwed for sleeping on the job, which is what you tried to do to Bush about 9/11 "because he did nothing." Therefore, I'd rather the President be screwed for taking the threat seriously than for US to all be screwed because he didn't take the threat seriously.

If you still don't get it, reread it. And after that if you still don't get it, you won't ever get it unless maybe you find a president you don't hate so much, then maybe you'll finally achieve some clarity.

No, you're not.

Sure I am, Michael. I'd much rather have an honest conversation than respond to slimy idiocies from the likes of our friend Matthew.

On your other comment, I'm not sure why you're so purturbed. If you honestly believe that Iraq is a success, then of course you ought to vote for Bush. And, if you were to vote for Kerry, presumably, it would be because you no longer believed that to be the case, so in order to reach that conclusion, of course you'd have to admit that you made a terrible mistake. And, being a sincere person, if you came to that realization, then of course you'd feel embarrassed about your error and its consequences (though I'm not sure the same can be said of Hitchens, who as far as I am aware has never acknowledged being wrong about anything, despite having held a variety of inconsistent positions with equal vehemence).

So what's the beef?

Mork: So what's the beef?

This "what you have become" talk doesn't deserve a polite response. People who vote for Bush aren't serial killers. Half the country will vote a different way. Get used to it. All of you.

OK, Michael, an OTT choice of words, and I apologize for the offense caused.

However, I stand by the thrust of the comment, which is that your rigid ideology has become a such a psychological straitjacket that to admit the facts and possibilities that are leading most "liberal hawks" to vote for Kerry would entail too great a self-abegnation for you to currently contemplate.

Unfortunately, if Bush wins, the dissonance between the reality that your ideology demands that you see and the reality that actually exists will eventually become so great that even you will forced to acknowledge error. And if you imagine that your views have been of any consequence, and if you are sincere about wishing to be an agent for good, then the result will not be pretty.

Mork: I apologize for the offense caused.

Okay. Accepted.

We'll just have to wait and see about the rest of it. Iraq ain't over until the fat mullah sings.

You could be wrong, too, you know. I daresay you ought to considet the possibility. I have no crystal ball, and neither do you. You're a lot more certain of the end-game than I am. The "quagmire!" brigade has a poor predictive track record. So far, they have only been right once, and that was more than three decades ago.

You could be wrong, too, you know. I daresay you ought to considet the possibility.

I do my best to consider that possibility, Michael, I assure you. You might think that my negative outlook in influenced by my views of George Bush's fitness for office, but when I look at the situation honestly, I think that it is so far gone that not even President Kerry has a real chance of rescuing it (much as I wish it to be otherwise) and my feeling is that that fact will dog, if not doom his presidency.

I believe I hear the fat mullah singing pretty much every day now. When the Secretary of State, a week out from an election, authorizes his aides to leak to Newsweek that he thinks we are losing, you can pretty much take it to the bank. So, in my book, the quagmirists are already 2 for 3.

This "what you have become" talk doesn't deserve a polite response.

Mork,

I know what YOU'VE become. You've become terror enablers, traitorous in your cheerleading for our enemies, and indistinguishable from terrorists in your language. Even terrorists endorse your candidates!

What have YOU become?

David,

Enough with the "traitorous" tag. Mork is a pessimist, not a traitor.

Everyone try to chill out through the election. Please. Don't go hatin' on everybody who doesn't vote your way.

Michael,

is it unfair to attribute to Mork the language of the Left, Michael Moore's "minutemen"? I don't think it is.

Considering Osama Bin Laden's talking points come straight from Fareheit 9/11, I think everything I said was pretty fair.

Mork is a pessimist, not a traitor.

Thanks, Michael, but I'd like to think of my foreign policy views as being squarely in the realist school of the first Bush Administration.

You've become terror enablers

Dude - your guy is the best recruiter that Al Qaeda ever had, because he bears out all of the negative stereotypes that fuel Arab rage, while at the same time being too incompetent to actually scare real terrorists.

is it unfair to attribute to Mork the language of the Left, Michael Moore's "minutemen"?

Well, it would be fair if I'd ever said anything like it, or ever said anything remotely sympathetic towards the Iraqi insurgents.

Which of course I haven't, as you well know.

And describing them as an inevitable result of a stupid policy does not in any way resemble a statement of sympathy for their aims.

Mork,

it doesn't matter to me whether terrorists are "afraid" of us. I'd rather they not be, to kill them all the easier.

Having said that, I think they ARE scared, that's why they're begging us to vote for John Kerry.

Most of the troops in Iraq don't believe they are losing the fight against the insurgents in Iraq anymore than the US troops believed they were losing the war in Vietnam. But just like then, the MSM who helped sell two Clinton wars in the 90's to the American public based on claims of genocide being carried out by the Milosovic regime in Bosnia and Kosovo, our anti-war MSM doesn't see any valid or legitimate humanitarian reason that would justify us taking military action in Iraq to remove a brutal dictatorship that made the alleged crimes of Milosovic look like a cakewalk. The defeatist liberal leaning MSM along with many members of the democratic party are doing far more damage to the success of our mission in Iraq by informing the insurgents that the American public support for the war is erroding more and more each day, and if those attacking our troops could just pull of a modern day "Tet offense" that results in hundreds of causualties as it did during the Vietnam war, there's no reason why the young Naval Officer who helped the Media defeat our troops back then wouldn't be able to do the samething again if he's elected president of the United States. So to all of the terrorists, to the insurgents and to the other murdering power hungry thugs
who've always wanted to be like Saddam, don't lose faith because there is a chance Kerry will win and you know his motto is "Help is on the way".

Mork is, sadly, one of those people who, having always lived under freedom, has no idea what it is worth to people who have lived without it for so long. Having no idea what it is like to live under the dictatorship of an insane, capricious, vicious, totalitarian murderer, he thinks that it is equivalent to living with some instability and sporadic violence.

Mork thinks that the change in Iraq is of "marginal benefit" to the Iraqi people. I doubt very much he's ever been there, talked to any, or even troubled himself to read some of the Iraqi bloggers such as those at iraqthemodel.com. I have never read such eloquent defenses of freedom, and the promise and meaning of freedom to those who have never known it before, in my life. These people have hope for the first time in their lives, and a great deal of truly gritty courage. Unlike Mork, they are realists, who never expected the road to be easy, but they are willing to travel it.

This one's for you, Mork: http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/archives/2004_04_01_iraqthemodel_archive.html#108152812710601777

(Please don't let this offend you. If you believe in Freedom of Speech, hopefully you won't censor this. Disagree if you must, but please let me express my humble Canadian opinion!) :)

Bush put you in debt. He put your troops in harm's way for shifting, flip-floppish reasons. He squandered America's international standing like no other President in history. He assisted Al-Q'aida's recruitment efforts by bombing Iraq when they had nothing to do with 9/11. He changed the laws to permit the government to know where you buy your books and what you told your doctor. He held innocent men captive in a concentration camp (Guantanamo Bay Prison) although none of them have ever been prosecuted as true terrorists. He let Osama Bin Laden get away. Should I go on?

I must. Bush gave tax cuts to the wealthy and signed a deal that would enrich the pharmaceutical companies in the years to come. He gutted the Clean Air Act and allowed polluters to write the legislation that should regulate their polluting ways. He threatened to ban gay marriage and then chided John Kerry for mentioning that Dick Cheney's daughter is gay (and that it's OK because she's a good person). Bush never visited the NAACP. He didn't remove Donald Rumsfeld despite the human rights abuses that appear to be systemic across Iraq's American prisons.

I could continue until I'm blue in the face but why bother? I can't vote in this election because I'm a Montrealer eh? Still, I figured I might as well take one last crack at convincing you.

If you're an American, prove to the world that you can make a sound decision. John Kerry is not perfect but when you compare him to George W. Bush, he looks like John the Baptist.

Vote Kerry, please. I'll beg if I must.

Voting starts in earnest in about seven and a half hours here in the Central time zone. There has been no 'Iraqi Tet Offensive' (or Ramadan offensive, if you prefer), no massed nationwide attacks on either Multinational Forces or Iraqi government troops in a last-ditch attempt to sway the American electorate. The so-called insurgents are losing, and they know it. The only remaining question is whether or not the American people will give them in the voting booth what they could not win on the field of battle.

This blog should be loads of fun at about this time tommorow night.

May the best man win.

(that would be George Bush)

I doubt very much he's ever been there, talked to any, or even troubled himself to read some of the Iraqi bloggers such as those at iraqthemodel.com.

Thanks for the tip, blogaddict, but you're a little late - I've been reading that blog regularly for close to a year.

But it's just one blog, right. Imagine what a perception you would have of this country if you derived all your information from, say, LGF or DU.

A sensible person seeks information from a variety of sources with a variety of agendas (and obviously ITM has a very clear agenda to provide back-up for the 101st fighting keyboards, from whom they derive so much support).

A sensible person does not find a source that says what they want to hear and then assume that, as a result, it must be correct in all respects.

As for the validity of my comparison between living under a dictatorship and living an a violent and unstable society, let me say this: were there a way to independently verify our claims, I would bet a large sum that I have spent more time in totalitarian countries and know more people who have lived under such regimes than you. I know that a person with my instincts would find it intolerable. But I also know that a lot of people, maybe most, don't particularly give a shit what sort of government they have as long as they are safe, are able to cater for their needs and are able to enjoy the love and companionship of their family and friends. For people like that, a functioning dictatorship may well be no worse that, or even preferable to, a violent anarchy.

Well, Mork, no wonder you support Kerry. He feels the same way. He said so, long ago. And I'm sure the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, and eastern Europe would agree with you, too. Not.

How you can read iraqthemodel (and many other Iraqi blogs, by the way) and feel the way you do is beyond me.

Have you ever read the Grand Inquisitor, from the Brothers Karamazov? If you hadn't, please do. I think you'd find yourself a kindred spirit to the Inquisitor. He believed mankind couldn't handle freedom, and needed protection from it.

I see you weren't prepared to take that bet, blogaddict.

Unlike you, I have spent a great deal of time in some of the countries you name. I know first-hand of what I speak. There are many people in this world who, if forced to choose, would take a job, three meals a day and the security of their family over the right to publicly express a political opinion.

Your last paragraph is a strawman. I am not disputing (obviously) that the ideal is a situation where you have security, food and political freedom.

But the choice that many people who have been forced to live without one or more of those things would make is no-where near as obvious as you imagine.

Mork,

people are eating far better now these days than under Saddam.

You want it both ways, my friend, but you can't even have it one way.

Jeremy: Regarding your comment: "He held innocent men captive in a concentration camp (Guantanamo Bay Prison) although none of them have ever been prosecuted as true terrorists. He let Osama Bin Laden get away."

With respect to Guantanamo, several released prisoners have returned to terrorism - one was killed and another captured recently in Afghanistan. Another is being hunted in Pakistan for kidnapping Chinese engineers and planning a bombing of a hotel in Islamabad. Sorry, I can't work up any tears for the Gitmo prisoners although there are likely some innocent among them. Link to that story is: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6675237

Just what evidence do you have that Bush let Bin Laden get away?

Regarding Hitchens; last week he gave a long interview on CBC radio's Sunday Morning program. He was quite explicit in his support for Bush for the reason that he had faith that Bush and not Kerry would prosecute the war on Islamic fascism

Jeremy,

Showing your obviously french roots by waving the white flag. What happened to you Northern Americans you used to be so brave, you must be the generation that was left by our deserters. Tis a shame. A montrealer who doesn't complain isn'happy. Funny how your province can't get along with the others.