fallows@large | Dialogues with James Fallows
In his new collection of essays, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, the journalist Christopher Hitchens takes his cue from Percy Shelley, who famously declared that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Meanwhile, in the February and March issues of Harper's magazine, Hitchens makes his own bid for legislator—or prosecutor—status, arguing for the indictment of Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. James Fallows engages Hitchens in an exchange of e-mail correspondence about both the book and the magazine articles
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From: James Fallows
To: Christopher Hitchens
Subject: Literature, Politics, and Henry Kissinger
Hello Christopher:
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Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere by Christopher Hitchens Verso 358 pages, $25.00 |
The last time I got to ask an author questions about his book, on this Web site, the man in question was someone I'd never met, the historian Joseph Ellis. The work was a (very fine) book about a subject I'd never dealt with myself, so I mainly could be in the role of Oprah, supportively (and sincerely) asking an expert to explain his points to the larger crowd.
You and I have met each other over the years, although no one has ever thought of us as making up a set. We have some topics and biases and friends in common—and a lot of others not in common. So my role here is less Oprah-like and more in the "Sir, do you mean to say...?" mode.
But before asking "Do you mean to say..." let me offer congratulations. Your new book is a collection of previously published essays, mainly book reviews. The odds against such a collection are stiff, in both commercial and artistic terms. The commercial problem is that publishers believe people won't buy collections, and therefore they often publish them in such a way as to guarantee that they don't sell. The artistic problem is that the elements in most collections are either too disparate, betraying the writer's desire to "do something" with a grab-bag of previous works, or too similar, showing that the author has only one idea or tone or speed.
I think this collection succeeds in the way most don't. The essays have a common theme—the role of writers, intellectuals, novelists, protesters, and other "irresponsible" critics of public life—and they raise some questions I'd like to try on you in our next round. (Here's an easy preview: On today's political stage, who most embodies, and who is most the antithesis of, the "rock the boat" ethic you endorse? Ralph Nader on the one hand? David Gergen on the other? More next time.) But the essays have a variety in subject, length, and voice that precludes monotony. They are funny, mean, informative, astute.
This book is also a reminder of a practical reality of writing: the need to turn out copy if you want to make a mark and earn a living this way. This is quite an amazing output, in terms of sheer tonnage. What's your secret?
Oh, I almost forgot. There is one sentence in the book that struck me as absolutely phony, and I wonder if on reflection you would defend it (versus confessing that it was the product of a late-night need to turn the copy in). Here goes: "A page of Stephen Hawking on the 'event horizon' is more awe-inspiring than anything in Genesis or Ezekiel." Oh really? Do you have a specific page in mind? With no disrespect to Hawking's role as a scientist, the public fetishizing of his book, A Brief History of Time, seems to be an illustration of something you normally attack: posturing so as to be well thought of. Here's my bet: if you took a thousand people, all proud of having "read" this book, and asked them to write a single paragraph explaining what it said, five hundred would sit there stumped. And answers from the other five hundred would have nothing in common with one another. Am I being unfair?
But now let's turn to Henry Kissinger. The February and March issues of Harper's contain two very long articles of yours about him, called "The Case Against Henry Kissinger." On February 22—Thursday of this week—Harper's will sponsor a forum at the National Press Club, in Washington, in which you and other Kissinger experts will discuss the man and his deeds. I assume C-Span will cover this event; among the guests I'd be most eager to hear is Roger Morris, who along with Tony Lake resigned from Kissinger's staff at the National Security Council to protest the "incursion" into Cambodia. You can think of the questions here as softball warm-ups for that session.
From The Atlantic:
The first of two articles on Henry Kissinger's service as national security adviser to Richard Nixon. By Seymour M. Hersh
"The Price of Power" (December 1982)
Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile. By Seymour M. Hersh I don't have before me Seymour Hersh's articles about Kissinger, which The Atlantic published in 1982, so I can't do a careful textual comparison of his analysis with yours. (I believe that readers of this discussion can do so if they want, for the Hersh articles will be linked.) But even without that reference, it is clear that you've really covered the horizon of Kissinger's activities, from the obvious cases (Vietnam, Chile) to ones much less often discussed in the United States (Cyprus, Bangladesh, East Timor, the doings of the Greek junta). I'm not asking you to summarize these cases—hey, people should buy the magazine—but I will say that in one, at least, you seem to have smoking-gun evidence of plain lies. I'm speaking of East Timor, the part of the Indonesian archipelago that Indonesia invaded in 1975. After the fact, Kissinger pretended barely to have known where East Timor was, and certainly not to have given support to Suharto's plan to send in the Indonesian army. But the State Department memos you reprint show that he was minutely aware of the details of Timor, obviously supported the Indonesian plan, and was concerned only with the risk that newspapers might learn his true policy. I am perpetually resurprised by people who can tell huge, outright lies in public. I'd be paralyzed by the inevitability of getting caught. And you have much more in this vein. (I liked, too, the details of his business dealings.)
But here are the questions. First, a matter of fact: Can you let us know how much of this is new? Newness does not trump all other qualities when it comes to this sort of report. There is often tremendous value in the account that puts many previously reported fragments together into one whole. But, especially since this magazine ran Hersh's reports, it would be useful to know the state of Kissinger studies. Was this mainly on the record before? (I note that your report on the murder plot against the Greek journalist is signaled as being new.) Do you think of your pieces mainly as connecting what was already known into a new pattern? Or as providing new details? If the latter, which ones?
Second, a more fundamental question. What exactly is the point of this sort of broadside, decades after its subject has left power? The pieces give many signals that you're arguing for Kissinger to be considered a war criminal—I guess the subtitle, "The Making of a War Criminal," would be a little clue. There's also the connection to the Pinochet case, the call for "magistrates," and so on.
But if you have a case for "war crimes," shouldn't you be making it against the U.S. government as a whole? Kissinger may have been a shameless schemer, as your evidence shows. But he was not running some rogue operation. These were forays carried out allegedly for the U.S. interest—or so he convinced the Presidents of his time. He was working with half the people who are running the government today—Cheney, Rumsfeld, the elder George Bush. Kissinger is an appealing target because of the eeliness you describe. But on the evidence you present, it seems fairer to make your complaint against U.S. policy and the system that created it. Right? So why confine it to Kissinger?
One answer, of course, is that an attack on "the system" is more tedious, and simultaneously more irritating and more dismissable, than looking at a particular person. Still, I must ask: Sir, do you mean to say that policies in Cambodia, Timor, Greece, and elsewhere should be considered Kissinger's failures, not America's, and that we can purge ourselves by putting him in the dock?
Over to you, and again, thanks for joining in.
Jim Fallows
Next Page: Christopher Hitchens - Feb. 21
Part Two:
James Fallows - Feb. 26 | Christopher Hitchens - Feb. 27
New Part Three - Mar. 1:
James Fallows | Christopher Hitchens
Part Two:
James Fallows - Feb. 26 | Christopher Hitchens - Feb. 27
New Part Three - Mar. 1:
James Fallows | Christopher Hitchens
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