Miti, ma bucur ca ti-a placut, imi pare rau ca n-am avut timp de transcris mai mult din interviu.

Stef, ca sa n-o mai lungesc, iata intii fragmentele promise. Interviul poate fi citit la http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4301 si nu e recomandat celor care se enerveaza la fraze gen "And nobody gives a shit outside a small constituency what Chomsky thinks anymore, or Ramsey Clark" sau celor care uita rolul lui Carter-omul-pacii in razboiul Iran-Irak.

"[...] There are people who cannot forget, as neither do I, the lesson of the years of the Indochina War. Which was, first, that the state is capable of being a murderer. A mass murderer, and a conspirator and a liar. For some people that's definitive. They can't get over it. So the idea that the United States could use force with moral justification is to them totally alien. They can't — they can't go there. They won't. But that is more a proof of their inflexibility than their attachment to principle. It's an empty position. It's a nihilistic position. If they said, "Yes, if bin Laden's the only revolutionary, he may not be perfect, but we're on his side," well, I could sympathize. No — I won't say sympathize, but I could see it, I could respect it. But they don't do that. They look for bogus equivalencies that actually lead to a cop-out. "Well, he did this bad thing, but we've done this bad thing." That leaves you exactly nowhere. And surely it should at least condemn both. In fact it appears to excuse both.
And Orwell was clever about this. I mean, there were a lot of people, a very large number in fact, in 1940, for example, not just in England but in Europe and America, who would say, "Well, this Nazi business in Poland is pretty rough, obviously, but look at how the British behave in India. Why should we pick a side?" He sort of knew by the same instinct that I hope your readers have why that stinks as a means of arguing. I could explain why it stinks, but if I had to explain why to someone who didn't get it right away, I probably would never succeed.
Because it's obvious on its face?
I would distrust at once someone who didn't see there was a fallacy there. And those who didn't I think would not be open to persuasion.
What is the fallacy?
The fallacy is one of moral equivalence. The motive for it, or the ruse of it, is — I prefer to call it masochistic. It's a self-hatred. It's a refusal to believe that you would ever be justified yourself in having the arrogance to define and defend yourself against or to destroy an enemy. That would surely make you no better than them. But this is disabling."
"[...] The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved. Ramsey Clark didn't organize a protest against Saddam Hussein's attack on Iran, or Kuwait. He's not antiwar to that extent. And nobody complained about the failure of the West — nobody complained in an organized street-protest way — about the failure of the West to rescue Rwanda. And nobody complained about Milosevic's invasion of Bosnia — well, that's not true, a lot of people did — but their juices only kicked in when there was intervention to remove him. Voilè! You see the bad faith of this all the way through. It culminates in the most fatuous slogan yet devised, which is: "Stop the war before it starts." Which is a protest against removing either al-Qaida from Afghanistan or the Taliban from Afghanistan or both. Well, at this point it has to be said I think that the left has lost every moral and political element that made it a formidable force as an antiwar movement in the 1960s."
"[...] Here's an attempt to destroy, physically to destroy, a European minority, the third attempt of the 20th century. The first being the Armenian Christians, the second being the Jews, the third being the Muslims of the former Yugoslavia, or Bosnia Herzegovina. If you can't be against that, when it's taking place in front of your own eyes, what the hell can you say you are against?
All the Chomskyans and that lot — I call them Chomskyans for short now — said, "No, the problem with that was American imperialism daring to intervene in the Balkans." As to the destruction of the Muslims, they had nothing much to say. They made weird predictions, like, "It'll lead to a quagmire, it'll lead to mass civilian casualties, it'll lead to a wider war with Russia" — and so on, all of which was false. Then comes bin Ladenism. Suddenly the people who didn't care about the murder of the Muslims [in Bosnia] say, "You musn't offend Islam." Bad faith. Catch them doing it twice, bad faith. It's a pity there isn't a term for this pathology. I'm certainly at the point where I think I can tell it when I see it, or smell it or taste it. And it's summarized most recently in: "No war with Iraq." In other words, let's discuss Mesopotamia as if human rights didn't matter. Well, I'm not willing to accept that invitation. [...]"

Zizzy, pe loc repaus :)

Stef, am avut iar o saptamina plina si merit din plin 2 zile outdoors, dar promit sa continuam dialogul saptamina viitoare. Deocamdata vreau sa-ti spun ca argumentele impotriva razboiului sint (pentru mine) de l'eau de pluie cind vin de la cei pentru care oricum orice face America e rau, iar argumentele pentru interventie sint interesante cind vin de unde nu te-astepti, cum e acest Hitchens de care te intrebasem. Figura legendara a stingii americane, cu 20 de ani la activ la The Nation (www.thenation.com ar trebui sa fie un musai-sa-l-am pe lista de favorite a colegilor nostri din Clubul Beat-The-Beast). Fost trotzkist, in "Koba the Dread - Laughter and the 20 million" (o destul de buna introducere in ororile stalinismului) Martin Amis i se adreseaza in deridere cu "comrade Hitchens"; aparitia cartii anul trecut, a zdruncinat serios prietenia celor doi. Iconoclast de profesie (bataia de joc la adresa Maicii Tereza incpe chiar din titlul cartii din '95, "The Missionary Position"), activist acerb pentru judecarea lui Kissinger ca criminal de razboi s.a.m.d. Tipul a demisionat toamna trecuta de la The Nation, iar in interviul post-factum cu care o sa vin saptamina viitoare o sa citesti lucruri care ar trebui sa dea de gindit luptatorilor pentru pace. Cele bune si mai vorbim.

Teddy, ma bucur ca ti-a placut, as avea mai multe sa-ti spun, promit (iar) sa revin saptamina viitoare. Pina atunci, gasesti la http://www.geocities.com/lapozar/ingmar.htm fragmente dintr-un interviu (unul din foarte putinele) televizat din 2000 al lui Ingmar Bergman (82 de ani la vremea aia) si Erland Josephson, actor in multe din filmele lui si prieten din adolescenta. Ingrid, de care vorbeste la un moment dat, e contesa Ingrid Karlebo, care i-a fost sotie 24 de ani (pina in '95). La buna vedere.