Idiocy

In an odd piece on anti-Americanism composed of straw men and pop-psychopathologising, David Aaronovitch writes of Andrew O’Hagan:

I should admit that I am irked by O’Hagan’s dismissal of the “idiots who supported that bad and stupid war (ie, Iraq)” and am willing to match my idiocy against his intelligence in any debating forum that he cares to name. More interesting, though, is the desire to blame America. For all that O’Hagan claims that the US has lost its purchase on the world’s affections, it remains the chosen destination for the most ambitious of the planet’s migrants. For all that he claims that this change in sentiment is recent, I can’t help recalling those – the most honest – who commented, in journals he writes for and on the very day after September 11, that the Americans had had it coming.

Couple of things: it depends what you understand by ambitious, since, for instance, there are people literally dying to get into the European Union every year in search of a better life. And a large number of the planet’s migrants don’t get the option of choosing their destination, as, for instance, the millions of Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan could tell you.

And Andrew O’Hagan would do well to recall the old advice about never arguing with an idiot.