"POSTURING LOONS": No, not the state bird of Minnesota, but rather those who idiotically misinterpreted 9/11 as some sort of Marxist revenge fantasy. Here's Christopher Hitchens, in a column on "how not to remember September 11," in which he finds time to bash those leftists, in addition to flagwavers, as well as those who practice "Ground Zero Kitsch." The best part:
Reflect upon it: Civil society is assaulted in the most criminal way by the most pitilessly reactionary force in the modern world. The drama immediately puts the working class in the saddle as the necessary actor and rescuer of the said society. Investigation shows the complicity of a chain of conservative client states, from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, in the face of which our vaunted “national security” czars had capitulated. Here was the time for radicals to have demanded a war to the utmost against the forces of reaction, as well a full house cleaning of the state apparatus and a league of solidarity with the women of Afghanistan and with the whole nexus of dissent and opposition in the Muslim world. Instead of which, the posturing loons all concentrated on a masturbatory introspection about American guilt, granted the aura of revolutionary authenticity to bin Laden and his fellow gangsters, and let the flag be duly seized by those who did look at least as if they meant business.
(Cue "Looney Tunes" theme song...)
Posted by Stephen Silver at September 9, 2003 01:15 PM