We have written confirmation: Christopher Hitchens is a wanker given over to snottiness and hyperbole. Give the article a read; a few of my hastily written comments on it can be found below.

Hitchens: “This I divine from the fact that this supposedly ‘antiwar’ film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.”
It’s not an antiwar film. Moore does not, nor do I think he would ever, refer to it as such. It’s an anti-Iraq-war film, and certainly an anti-Bush film. Moore isn’t so pragmatic to think that war is never necessary. He just seems to think that this Iraq war was not.

Hitchens: “Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not.”
I wasn’t aware that US policy could be driven by only one factor at any given time (e.g., in May it’s the Saudis; in June it’s Bill Clinton’s book…). It’s possible that they influence it in some way, just as it’s possible that Enron or North Korea or NAFTA or the economy of Turkmenistan might.

Hitchens: “In the interval between Moore’s triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights.”
By this point in the article Hitchens has called out Moore several times for ignoring news and facts that don’t support his cause (which Moore may well do, however: stones & glass houses), so it’s worth nothing that Hitchens ignores rather suspicious reasoning behind it. The FBI determined – by September 14th, 3 days after the attacks – that all 142 Saudis flown out of Miami (where the mostly Saudi hijackers were based) had “nothing to do with the attacks” (from the Miami Herald). Quick work. Of course, this is no proof of a conspiracy, but it certainly doesn’t hurt Moore’s suspicions, and it does little to discourage anyone’s curiosity about the matter.

Hitchens: “The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that’s what you get if you catch the president on a golf course.If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.”
More double-standards. Hitchens knows full well that if Clinton had done it, he would have been crucified by the right-wing media. And while we’re on the topic, Eisenhower earned the right to act however the hell he wanted to when war was at hand. He’d stared it in the face; Bush was a draft dodger. What did Roger Waters call it, “The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range?”

Hitchens: “In fact, I don’t think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic.”
You’re right, Chris. No news organization, certainly no American news network, would ever have cast an inversely skewed look at Iraq. Certainly, the news never centered on the the misdeeds (and there were many) of the Baathist leadership of Iraq, on the infamous torture chambers, on the exquisite pain that Saddam and his henchmen would inflict on the populace. There seemed no point in mentioning the other millions upon millions of regular, ordinary people who went about their lives every day, having nothing to do with this. Obviously the evil few are what the country’s all about. Equally, you have the US, who is prone to ignoring the Geneva convention in Cuban and Iraqi prisons, who revoke personal freedoms of their own citizens in the name of security, and who occupy countries militarily based on wholesale lack of proof. America, the country, is obviously evil and must be invaded. C’mon. Of course Moore’s shots were propogandistic. So is 99.9% of the footage that Americans have been shown for the past 18 months. If you want to call bullshit on someone, call it on everyone.

Hitchens: “Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American.”
If he in facts says this in the film, then of course it’s silly. In fact, it’s silly to think that any country in the world, scrutinized to the degree that Hitchens does here, wouldn’t be as threatening to America as was Iraq. The UK, France, even Canada could be made to look aggressive according to Hitchens’ arguments, never mind countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran or North Korea. Why were we all not targetted?

Hitchens: “Finally, Moore complains that there isn’t enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters.”
I once sat in a London theatre, listening to Michael Moore talking about this very point. He wasn’t arguing for more intrusion and confiscation; he was arguing for more intelligence when doing it. He pointed out that on his flight to London he wouldn’t have been allowed to bring on, say, a nail file, but he *could* bring on a lighter – when only months after 9/11 some wingnut tried to blow up a shoe bomb using a lighter. The only device used in an attempted attack on an airliner, an attack which was highly public and forced airport security everywhere to relieve people of their shoes for months, was carried out with a lighter. But lighters were still ok to bring on board to light anything other than a shoe bomb, so long as you didn’t try to file your nails or remove a staple at the same time.

Hitchens: “Moore has announced that he won’t even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning.”
Moore has said that he’d like to go on the O’Reilly Factor (where he’d surely face some tough questioning), but Bill O’Reilly wouldn’t even sit through a screening of the film, so I can’t imagine why Moore would do him any favours. Other than that, he’s appearing on at least talk show every day this week for what I can tell by the TV schedule.

Hitchens: “But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia. Such courage.”
Heston fucking well deserves every bit of humilation, animosity and aggression that he gets, from Moore or anyone else. Anyone who, for years, continually showed up for NRA rallies in towns that had just suffered gun fatalities, in the name of preserving the right to bear arms, should be expect any bad karma that comes his way.

Hitchens: “If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq.”
First of all, Afghanistan is all but under Taliban rule again anyway. Second, when did we start talking about the Balkans or the first Gulf War? And what the hell does Hitchens know about how Michael Moore would have preferred to handle Milosevic? Is everything so black and white to Hitchens that violent reprisal is the sole, solitary way by which to control international crises? Let me give you a hypothetical situation: I look out into my yard and see a small child kicking my dog. I tell him to stop; he refuses. I take out a gun and shoot the child, wounding my dog in the process. Was this the only solution available to me? Of course not; but anyone opposing the method by which I stopped the child is immediately cast as hating dogs.

Christopher’s just so screamingly tedious.