False-but-true, says Hitchens
In a recent piece in Slate, Christopher Hitchens seems to come out as undecided about the accuracy of Lancet/Johns Hopkins 2006, although the vibe of his article tends to the sceptical.
He does allow, however, that the study kind of gets it right as regards the fact that most deaths in the post-invasion period were not caused by Coalition forces.
The Lancet figures are almost certainly inflated... But there is no reason why they may not come to reflect reality more closely.
Thus, for Hitchens, Lancet/Johns Hopkins 2006 is false-but-true. For him, there’s good reason to doubt the bits he can’t use, but there’s a truthiness about the rest that transcends those bad bits.
By the way, the theme of this piece is about the purported “moral idiocy” of Lancet/Johns Hopkins. Well geez, Hitcho, there’s plenty of that on all sides, thanks very much.
Labels: Christopher Hitchens
posted by Jacob A. Stam at 10/17/2006 10:09:00 PM
4 Comments:
Hitchens wrote a piece on the rorted vote in Ohio a while ago that proved he still had it in him, but he finds 'it' only rarely nowadays.
Isn't it striking how often wingnuts use the word 'moral' as a term of abuse; Paddy McGuinness used to chunter on about the 'preening moral vanity' of us luvvies, and Hendo, Sheehan and Devine have all used it since. This followed on from the once ubiquitous 'moral equivalence' we used to hear so much about.
It's very like Paddy and his Quadrant crowd now calling themselves 'nonconformists' for pity's sake. Rugged individualists who never disagree, trench-coated antihero outsiders, locked out of the corridors of power, choked as they are with leftish luvvies.
It's projection. They run things but need to pretend they don't, just as footy coaches love to insist their mob are underdogs even though they haven't lost a game all year, or impugn the ref's probity even though they won 41-0.
Same with morality. Right now, we have it and they don't. Taking their cue from the US, power is their morality, and Iraq is only the largest elephant in the room, one that reminds them every time they bump into it that their fealty to powerful people and institutions (and nations), going along to get along, led them into supporting this monstrous crime.
Some of them recognise this at a level too deep to express, and it emerges as a kind of group pathology, a collective ego-defence mechanism, which must tar those who have shown up their panicked groupthink, their weakness and their lack of genuine independence, their morality deficit.
So we dissenters become the amoral conformists, and those moral vacuums are the fearless nonconformists. Oy.
They can rig the game and work the refs til they're blue in the face, but there will always be some of us who won't let them forget their weakness and it's dreadful dividends. 655,000 and counting, and that's only those who died.
Oy.
I recently had an encounter with a die-hard pro-war guy on Webdiary's Johns Hopkins thread.
He had made the comment that "The US won the war, but the Iraqis lost the peace." And various other statements to the effect that the Iraqis don't deserve 'our' efforts, etc. Now, he said, 'we' may as well leave them to it.
Among other things, I reminded him of Colin Powell's warning that "If we break it, it's ours." I delicately asked him whether he thought maybe he might be being too kind to the architects of the debacle.
Water off a duck's back! He maintains that, whatever the outcome, it was "worth a try". Just another case of utter denial.
I bowed out of the discussion, thanking him for another glimpse into the abyss. I am done discussing the topic with these types now, for once and for all. No common ground at all, no nexus for communication.
'I am done discussing the topic with these types now, for once and for all. No common ground at all, no nexus for communication.'
I am still occasionally goaded into a lengthy spat, but this was once a daily occcurence for me.
Then I thought 'people can't be so resistant to sense'; now I know they can.
What's with the "goaded" business?
Shouldn't that have been "goated"?
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