I issued some criticism of David Brooks a couple of days ago for his thinly reasoned, self-serving editorial about the present situation in Iraq. But Brooks ain't got nothin' on Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens first criticises those who were opposed to the war, but supposedly now argue that they would have supported it had the invasion force been larger. His examples prove that an overstatement - he references E.J. Dionne who does not argue that he would have changed his mind on the invasion, but instead suggests that had we not had an enormous post-war security void subsequent events might have gone more smoothly. It might be possible to find somebody who disagrees with Dionne's larger point, but it would take some work. Hitchens' argument is an absurd straw man.
Further, there would be nothing wrong with opposing a war on the basis that the proposed invasion and occupation force was too small, while supporting a war which would utilize a larger invasion and occupation force. A great many hawkish voices were airing concerns about whether the number of troops proposed by the Bush Administration would be sufficient to hold the peace after the war and - although Hitchens can't bring himself to admit it - they were right. The present troop deployment is significantly larger than the White House proposed, and it is presently being increased because even that larger number of troops is inadequate.
Worse, Hitchens misrepresents what Dionne argues, claiming "E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post has just instructed his readers that Fallujah and the Sunni triangle would more likely have been under control the first time around, except that we refused the offer of help from the Turks." Dionne in fact argues the opposite: "And when Turkey denied our troops the chance to invade from Iraq's north -- those troops might have pacified the now violently unstable regions of the country -- Bush did not pause or delay." How can Hitchens possibly justify his misinterpretation of a plain English sentence describing how Turkey declined us aid we requested, and pretend that the author wrote that we declined aid Turkey offered?
Hitchens then presents a reductio ad absurdem about de-Baathification:
Now we hear on all sides, including Lakhdar Brahimi of the United Nations, that de-Baathification was also a mistake. Can you imagine what the antiwar critics, and many Iraqis, would now be saying if the Baathists had been kept on?I have yet to hear anybody argue that de-Baathification should not have occurred. The argument is that de-Baathification was handled in an clumsy (perhaps incompetent) manner, resulting in the exclusion from employment of large numbers of qualified individuals who had no real ties to the Baath party beyond obtaining membership so that they would qualify for particular jobs or careers. There is a huge difference between what is now widely accepted - that a more judicious de-Baathification would have better served our post-invasion needs and the needs of the Iraqi people - and the claim that no de-Baathification should have occurred.
Hitchens adds another layer of absurdity - the false dichotomy that the Iraqi military had to be dissolved in its entirety or not at all - suggesting that it was only through dissolution of the entire military that it became "impossible for any big-mouth brigadier or general to declare himself the savior of Iraq in a military coup" - yet I have never heard anybody argue that (above a relatively low rank) the officers of Hussein's military would have been retained, let alone that retaining them would be a good idea. As expected, Hitchens doesn't identify any.
Hitchens then rambles about the threat Hussein was believed to pose, and the fact that he once had some nasty weaponry. I can't tell quite what he intends to argue - perhaps that it was okay to use 9/11 as a subterfuge for attacking Iraq because Hussein was so nasty. If that is his point, I am not sure how it relates to criticism directed at the disingenuousness of the government in pressing for the war. If the case for war against Iraq could have been made on its own merit, why did the Bush Administration find it necessary to mislead the public, and why would any journalist complain that it is somehow unfair for people to demand honesty from their elected leaders - particularly on matters as important as going to war?
Hitchens confesses only one small mistake himself, which he self-servingly describes as "the thing that least undermines the case" - the extent of Iraq's religiosity. Hitchens doesn't explain himself on this point, perhaps with good cause. After all, it appears that Iraq is likely to elect a theocratic government in about a year, assuming elections are held, at which time the invasion will have successfully removed a secular regime and replaced it with an Islamic theocratic regime (ideally, one which nonetheless accepts religious and political plurality). To the extent that Hitchens endorses the Iraq war as a crusade which delivered the Iraqi people from the evil clutches of Islam, it is not yet clear that the war didn't do the opposite. [nb: I am not describing Islam as evil, but am merely describing an inferred mindset.]
Hitchens then reverts to bashing the "anti-war Left", pretending that everybody on the anti-war left had previously wished to gratify Hussein by unconditioinally removing sanctions from Iraq. I don't recall any such unity on the anti-war left, and as is usual none is documented by Hitchens. I do recall criticism of the sanctions as being harmful to the Iraqi people, as helping to consolidate Hussein's grip on power, and thus that different alternatives should be considered - but that's something apart from what Hitchens pretends.
Hitchens next criticizes France and Russia for "acting as knowing profiteers in a disgusting oil-for-bribes program that has now been widely exposed." Okay - let's accept that the oil for food program was corrupt (seemingly another argument in favor of the reform Hitchens just told us were a bad idea), and that France and Russia were leading profiteers. Why then, Mr. Hitchens, did Russia and France advocate for reform or elimination of the sanctions and the associated oil for food program, from which they were supposedly profiteering? No explanation? That's okay.... I didn't expect one from you.
Reverting to his bashing of the "anti-war Left", Hitchens pretends that those who favored any change in the sanctions were arguing that removal of the sanctions would automatically result in regime change. Again, no examples provided. (Ironically, he argues that during the decade between Gulf Wars "a whole paranoid and wretched fundamentalist underclass was created and exploited by the increasingly Islamist propaganda of the Baath Party" - while overlooking the role of the sanctions in empowering Hussein to create that underclass.)
Hitchens' conclusion isn't any better.
When fools say that the occupation has "united" Sunni and Shiite, they flatter the alliance between the proxies of the Iranian mullahs and the Saudi princes. And they ignore the many pleas from disputed and distraught towns, from Iraqis who beg not to be abandoned to these sadistic and corrupt riffraff. One might have seen this coming with greater prescience. But it would have made it even more important not to leave Iraq to the post-Saddam plans of such factions. There was no way around our adoption of Iraq, as there still is not. It's only a pity that the decision to intervene was left until so many years had been consumed by the locust.His flawed reasoning is obvious at the outset: He posits that if you recognize the fact that Shiite and Sunni militias have been cooperating in taking up arms against "coalition" forces, you are a fool who ignores the fact that most Iraqis want peace. Surprise: It is possible to recognize both facts.
While I'll grant Hitchens the point that it is unfortunate that it took so long for Hussein's regime to be toppled, and extend it to argue that if we did have to occupy all of Iraq the better time to have done so would have been at the end of Gulf War I, that small point doesn't save him from himself. Hitchens apparently lives in a world of false dichotomies, where things either had to be exactly the way they presently are, or we would have had to do absolutely nothing at all. Even Brooks was able to recognize how mistakes and mismanagement have complicated the occupation and transformation of Iraq. Hitchens, obsessed with proving his critics wrong, seems to have lost any ability to reason.
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