Add Christopher “gin-soaked ex-Trotskyite poppinjay” Hitchens to the list of people whom it’s almost too easy to poke fun at, were it not so intensely gratifying. Like that other “sensible liberal” Michael Ignatieff, the Hitch has tried for a public retraction of his previous unconditional and vocal support for the Anglo-American genocidal assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hitchens, circa 2002:
MOYERS: Well, [the deaths of American soldiers] was a significant factor, as you know, in the growing opposition to the Vietnam War.
As the body count kept coming back, the reality kept hitting home, and no amount of euphemistic language in defense of south Vietnam would suffice to answer the growing piles of body bags.
HITCHENS: Quite. Well, this won’t be the case this time.
Hitchens, circa 2004:
George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries.
Hitchens, circa 2006:
Contrary to innumerable sneers, [Bush in 2002] did not speak only about WMD and terrorism, important though those considerations were. He presented an argument for regime change and democracy in Iraq and said, in effect, that the international community had tolerated Saddam’s deadly system for far too long. Who could disagree with that?
Alas, in 2007, it isn’t quite as easy to mount a pseudo-intellectual defense of either failed war, or of the leaders who declared them. So while we irrational bleeding-hearts sadly shake our heads—the “prize” for being right is, unfortunately, a pile of dead Middle Easterners—Hitch is trying to backtrack a bit.
How do I dislike President George Bush? Let me count the ways. Most of them have to do with his contented assumption that ‘faith’ is, in and of itself, a virtue. This self-satisfied mentality helps explain almost everything, from the smug expression on his face to the way in which, as governor of Texas, he signed all those death warrants without losing a second’s composure.
“Faith” that is little different than that of Hitchens himself—who was, through his arguments, perfectly happy to sign the death warrants of Afghanis, Iraqis, and the soldiers of the occupation forces—if you only wish hard enough, your fantasies of a just, liberating, and permanent war will come true.
In this real-world argument, there is a very strong temptation for opponents of the war to invoke the lessons of Vietnam. I must have written thousands of words attempting to show that there is absolutely no analogy between the two conflicts.
Right. He’s still for the war. He’s just against Bush.
The bulk of the article is a bunch of hastily thrown together reasons why Iraq really, really had it coming, and Vietnam didn’t. (Ho Chi Minh quoted Thomas Jefferson, dontcha know? Those jihadis don’t have that much respect for America’s greatness.)
But what’s missing from Hitchens’ article is an honest assessment of why people (the Bush administration excepted; they have their own reasons) tend to make comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. The similarity isn’t between the victims. There’s a continuity, however, in the aggressor’s behaviour—an American-led imperialist adventure war against southeast Asia then, and an American-led imperialist adventure war against the Middle East now. It’s nowhere near as complicated as Hitch makes it out to be.
The problem is, of course, that Hitchens can’t admit that he was wrong, that he put his faith in a lying madman, that he glibly wrote off the human costs of the wars, and that millions of ordinary people, whom he regarded with nothing but disdain, were able to grasp what he couldn’t—that these wars were Very Bad Ideas. Failure to acknowledge this is worst sort of intellectual dishonesty. But would you expect anything less?
(Hat tip: springheel_jack)
Recently