Fight In Lebanon

An accurate account of how Chris Hitchens and Michael Totten got attacked in Lebanon.

There were rumors about what happened circling the blogosphere a couple months ago, but I never got a full account. This seems like a good account.

Obviously, it's easy to talk about this type of thing from afar, writing on the internet, etc. In hindsight, it's pretty obvious they should of kicked the shit out of the first dude who was hanging onto Hitchens while waiting for his "back up" to arrive and gotten the hell out of there. The guy was defacto holding them prisoner. What did they expect to happen? The thugs could of easily busted out a weapon and in hindsight what actually occurred - an old fashioned jumping - was probably the mildest of responses one could reasonably expect.

It's good to hear Hitchen's spirit is unchanged:

“Once you credit them like that,” he said, “you do all their work for them. They should have been worried about us. Let them worry. Let them wonder if we're carrying a tool or if we have a crew. I'd like to go back, do it properly, deface the thing with red paint so there's no swastika visible. You can't have the main street, a shopping and commercial street, in a civilized city patrolled by intimidators who work for a Nazi organization. It is not humanly possible to live like that. One must not do that. There may be more important problems in Lebanon, but if people on Hamra don't dare criticize the SSNP, well fuck. That's occupation.”

It's too bad this happened. But if the most we hear about these fuck-schlubs is a jumping of a journalist now and again, it's pretty clear we're winning and their resorting to mild thuggery.