Hitch Talks Iraq
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On Terrorism, WarThe ever readable Christopher Hitchens talks about the Iraq war, its possible failure and the consequences of not intervening.
Another request in my in-box, asking if I’ll be interviewed about Iraq for a piece “dealing with how writers and intellectuals are dealing with the state of the war, whether it’s causing depression of any sort, if people are rethinking their positions or if they simply aren’t talking about it.” I suppose that I’ll keep on being asked this until I give the right answer, which I suspect is “Uncle.”There is a sort of unspoken feeling, underlying the entire debate on the war, that if you favored it or favor it, you stress the good news, and if you opposed or oppose it you stress the bad. I do not find myself on either side of this false dichotomy. I think that those who supported regime change should confront the idea of defeat, and what it would mean for Iraq and America and the world, every day. It is a combat defined very much by the nature of the enemy, which one might think was so obviously and palpably evil that the very thought of its victory would make any decent person shudder. It is, moreover, a critical front in a much wider struggle against a vicious and totalitarian ideology.
It never seemed to me that there was any alternative to confronting the reality of Iraq, which was already on the verge of implosion and might, if left to rot and crash, have become to the region what the Congo is to Central Africa: a vortex of chaos and misery that would draw in opportunistic interventions from Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Bad as Iraq may look now, it is nothing to what it would have become without the steadying influence of coalition forces. None of the many blunders in postwar planning make any essential difference to that conclusion. Indeed, by drawing attention to the ruined condition of the Iraqi society and its infrastructure, they serve to reinforce the point.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 and is filed under Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 9th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
It never seemed to me that there was any alternative to confronting the reality of Iraq, which was already on the verge of implosion and might, if left to rot and crash, have become to the region what the Congo is to Central Africa: a vortex of chaos and misery that would draw in opportunistic interventions from Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. …
There is no one in Iraq, besides the Iraqi people, whose interest is served by peace now. If you are a Kurd, why give up your autonomy? If you are Shiite, why give up your position of power? If you are Sunni, chaos serves you better, because peace may bring Shiite payback.
Who fears the Coalition forces enough to pay them any attention? We have proven that we can destroy anything we like, but can we build, and more importantly protect what we build? And, most importantly, is what we build what the people want?
We know we were led into this war by less than honest information about what really was going on in the country (via Chalabi, Curveball, et al). We still don’t really know what is going on the country, because we can’t leave our compounds to find out. Read Steven Vincent’s last blog entry before he was gunned down in Basra (http://tinyurl.com/8f3m2). This is an account of a good man trying to do good, and not knowing how, related by someone who supported the war effort wholeheartedly.
The most frustrating thing for me personally is that everyone I know that opposed the war thought it both a diversion from the “war” on terror, and a dangerous precedent to show the gulf region. Our enemies in the Arab and Muslim worlds would point to the fact that we would give up on Osama and invade a country full of oil on a manufactured pretext. At the time I thought that to be propagandistic hyperbole, not the God’s honext truth.
August 9th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
what if Bush Sr. was right and the people rebelled and punished Hussein, thus being out of power? do you think it would be all sunshine? what is happening now is exactly what would have happened ten or so years ago – the fight between the majority Shites destroying the minority Sunni power, with the stronger chance of being a theocracy.
I am a moderate liberal who was originally against the iraq war. but after seeing how people give up so quickly at the face of adversity, it left me wondering if we had the same challenge in Afghanistan would we have dealt with it or accuse Bush Jr. of “killing our sons?”
It also makes me wonder if we would have had the same attitude in WW II
August 9th, 2005 at 11:49 pm
I also loved the article, but there were some good counterpoints in the comments section of my post on it.