And Speaking of Hitchens
As part of his continuing bitchfight with Juan Cole, Michael Young of Reason writes
In the end, Hitchens has usually been on the right side of the debate on Iraq because when he writes about it he thinks of Iraqis, not the Bush administration.
Hm. Iraqis, the Bush Administration . . . Is there anyone whose welfare doesn’t occur to Michael Young to include in his conceptual cosmos? Could it be – the American people? Why yes, that would be them.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
September 8, 2005 @ 3:22 am
For a long time, I’d assumed Young was an American Libanophile. His set of arguments, positions, etc became a lot more comprehensible once I realized that he’s in fact a (christian/maronite) Lebanese nationalist. He’s gotten what HE wanted for the country he’s loyal to out of the war.
Comment by matthew hogan —
September 8, 2005 @ 6:39 am
A kinder gentler Aounist, he. THe big somewhat pro-Syria post-dead-Hariri huge Hizbollah demonstration he almost denounced as being an hallucination, not done by real people.
Comment by Iron Lungfish —
September 8, 2005 @ 7:07 am
When was the last time Hitchens thought about the welfare of Iraqis? He applauded the carnage in Fallujah – twice. He shrugs off the coming theocracy and has mostly ignored the future of Iraqi women under sharia. He was waving aside Chalabi’s corruption and treachery for months by basically saying “Ahmad pinky-swore it wasn’t so” until he stopped mentioning him entirely.
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The one constant in all of Hitchens’s pieces on Iraq is neither Iraqis nor the Bush administration: it’s Hitchens. His articles read as a prolonged and desperate exercise in ass-covering, serving less to excuse the war than to excuse Hitchens’s continued defense of it. His primary targets are never Zarqawi or the insurgents or even Saddam, but the anti-war movement; he doesn’t tell us that we’re really winning the war (as so many warbloggers do) so much as he insists again and again that there was plenty of reason to launch it. Each Hitchens piece on Iraq should not be viewed as an argument regarding Iraq per se, but an argument regarding Hitchens’s own credibility as a commentator; each should be properly titled “Why I Am, Despite All Evidence To The Contrary, Still Right.”
Comment by Glaivester —
September 8, 2005 @ 8:40 am
“He big somewhat pro-Syria post-dead-Hariri huge Hizbollah demonstration he almost denounced as being an hallucination, not done by real people.”
Joseph Farah denounced it as being done by Iranians, and not-so-subtly implied that all Shiites who do not hail the new government ought to be ethnically cleansed out of there.
Comment by Johnathan —
September 8, 2005 @ 4:11 pm
Bearing in mind that Hitch has been writing about the plight of Iraqis for years, such as the Marsh Arabs in the South and the Kurds, his claim to be interested in the plight of said nation is pretty strong.
Comment by Iron Lungfish —
September 8, 2005 @ 4:31 pm
his claim to be interested in the plight of said nation is pretty strong.
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His interest in the nation, sure. In the inhabitants of that nation? I don’t see a shred of credible evidence of that. If he cared about Iraqis as a people he would actually give a damn about what was happening to them, and about his own role in supporting policies and policy-makers that have pushed them further down a dark and ugly path, instead of waving their present plight aside to glower at the “peaceniks” he so despises.
Comment by Steve —
September 8, 2005 @ 6:05 pm
Lungfish, I came to the conclusion that the only way Hitchens’ increasingly desperate-seeming lurch rightwards is remotely consistant with his previous persona and politics is that the Kurds are doing pretty well out of this. Saddam is gone; Turkey has not invaded Kurdistan-in-all-but-name; they may get Kirkuk; no Iraqi force is going to be equipped to make them give back what’s now theirs. And Hitchens has been a long-time backer of Kurdish nationalism. I’d say it’s a toss-up between this and #3 (or, most likely, some combination of the two, with a little bit of brain-pickled-in-gin and Republicans-throw-better-parties for spice).
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 8, 2005 @ 9:10 pm
Do Republicans really throw better parties? That’s very hard to believe.
Comment by Anon —
September 8, 2005 @ 9:28 pm
Republicans are probably freer with the liquor.
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 8, 2005 @ 9:50 pm
No dope, though. And the chicks won’t ball you unless you make a lot of money.
Comment by Steve —
September 8, 2005 @ 9:55 pm
Do Republicans really throw better parties? That’s very hard to believe.
Well, we’re talking about the Washington-New York axis of punditry here — I can imagine few things more deadly than being at Katha Pollitt’s Cinqo de Mayo bash.
Comment by Justin —
September 8, 2005 @ 9:57 pm
Er, Jim, have you seen many Dem chicks?
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 8, 2005 @ 10:02 pm
Steve: Uncle!
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Justin: I grant you they are not as hot as our libertarian women, but Julian fishes that pond and hasn’t done so badly.
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General note: this entire discussion is, of course, subjunctively from Hitchens’ perspective, and not at all an indication that we ourselves think about women this way, oh no. Also, how many Republican gals do @nal? I mean, really?
Comment by Shawn Metcalf —
September 9, 2005 @ 7:19 am
Here’s one:
http://washingtonienne.com/blog.html
Comment by Eric the .5b —
September 10, 2005 @ 12:27 am
Honestly, I supported the war at the time it started, and Young passed laying it on too thick for me some time ago…
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
September 10, 2005 @ 6:39 pm
Yecch…what a mess. I’ll try again.
The one constant in all of Hitchens’s pieces on Iraq is neither Iraqis nor the Bush administration: it’s Hitchens.
Well, sort of. His obsession isn’t so much himself as it is his former friends on the left, whom he is now exposing for the traitorous fiends they really are. He’s not really “for” anything anymore so much he’s “against” his detractors. Like Sullivan and Kaus, he’s “anti-left” above all else; the rest is gravy. And as in their cases, his writing shows it: It’s just one long pissing contest, except that watching people literally piss competitively would be a hell of a lot more interesting.
Aside: I’d party with Katha Pollitt before Hitchens any day of the week. Somebody in that room would know how to have a good time.