Chritopher Hitchens and Iraq

Hitchens has always been a hard left bomb thrower, wanting to try Henry Kissinger for war crimes for example. Yet he has been a staunch proponent for the invasion of Iraq and for the War on Terror. There have been various explanations for this from the puzzled Left, mostly ad hominem explanations - the insidious effects of alcoholism, premature senility, greed for the money and power that is supposed to come to Lefties who go over to the Dark Side, or general moral turpitude and sheer evil. Take your pick.

I always thought it was because he had gone into the Kurdish region in 1991 and had a chance to see the effects of Saddam's regime first hand. It left his mind ravaged and determined him to uphold the Kurds at almost all cost. Here is his account from his latest letter from Kurdistan in Vanity Fair:

In the town of Halabja, which has now earned its gruesome place in history, I met people whose hideous wounds from chemical bombardment were still suppurating. The city of Qala Diza had been thoroughly dynamited and bulldozed, and looked like an irretrievable wreck. Much of the area's lavish tree cover had been deforested: the bare plains were dotted with forbidding concrete barracks into which Kurds had been forcibly "relocated" or (a more accurate word) "concentrated." Nearly 200,000 people had been slaughtered, and millions more deported: huddling in ruins or packed into fetid camps on the Turkish and Iranian frontiers. To turn a spade was to risk uncovering a mass grave.

Then he makes a confession:

I was among those who thought and believed and argued that this example could, and should, be extended to the rest of the country; the cause became a consuming thing in my life. To describe the resulting shambles as a disappointment or a failure or even a defeat would be the weakest statement I could possibly make: it feels more like a sick, choking nightmare of betrayal from which there can be no awakening. Yet Kurdistan continues to demonstrate how things could have been different, and it isn't a place from which the West can simply walk away.

I certainly empathize with the whole letter and especially agree with the last point. To see what Kurdistan has accomplished is to see what could have been, and may actually be at some point. Thus it is difficult to sign on to the "Get out now" agenda. It is almost as difficult to be satisfied with "set a timetable and then get out" plan. But another two years of more of the same, with little hope of progress, is simply not an option.

How did we get into such a box, and what can we do about it? Both questions will make for some interesting history.

Bush is not going to be able to walk away from his responsibility for this, though the full responsibility lies much wider. It is an indictment of the whole American political class and much of the media. What this all means will be a broader political change than simply ushering a few Rupubs out and welcoming a few new Demos.


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