Why Hitch Still Matters: On Christopher Hitchens's "A Hitch in Time"
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
Edit, the complete opening: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cRsaxXrjk3w&pp=ygUlY2hyaXN0b3B...
He reminds me of a half-baked and far less eloquent version of H. L. Mencken, a popular journalist and polemicist from a century ago. Both were good writers but both made elementary factual mistakes constantly.
Edit: apparently a lot of Hitchens’ fans seem to be unaware of this. Here is just one example of how ill-informed his typical book was:
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/xnt9gq/well_you...
The man was an entertainer who made controversial statements to sell books, full stop.
His support was always logical. He'd been to Kurdistan to see the devastation with his own eyes. Actually there—not simply another keyboard warrior throwing shade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre
Given that and a lot of other evidence, it was clear Hussein had ambitions to become Hitler Jr. and needed to be stopped. (Watch the Netflix series How to be a Dictator for more of the sobering scoop.)
Hitchens support was perfectly consistent with left-wing ideology; fascism must be fought hard. That liberals rushed to Hussein's defense demonstrated their herding instinct and lack of understanding. Imagine them rushing to defend Hitler and you'll get an inkling.
That I think the Iraq war was a total disaster today comes from the fact that the Bush administration was incapable of understanding the situation, and incompetent with its implementation—and not because Hitchens was "wrong" to call for it.
How anyone could think the invasion of Iraq and the (fabricated) support for it were anything other than disasters is beyond me. It has nothing to do with the fact that Saddam was a “bad guy”, and everything to do with basic geopolitical realities. Unless you also think we should invade every country that has repressive leaders?
You can call it anti-islamic rhetoric if you want. The reality is that religious nuts are a real problem, and Islam has its leading share. He was also anti-religion, which I respect to a point.
> we should invade every country that has repressive leaders
Not just repressive, combative to the whole region. Forgot WWII? It happened and worked twice. Why not this time? Well culture, history, and execution competence were totally different. Too many variables to consider, maybe in book form at the minimum.
You're also conflating the Bush admins desire to use 9/11 for their own ends. That happened but has nothing to do with Hitchens. As everyone who cares knows now, it had nothing to do with Hussein either. No need to bring it up.
He was pretty supportive of the Bush administration and visited Iraq with Paul Wolfowitz. He certainly "had something to do with it." Let's not forget that his books sold millions and he certainly did well financially.
He also wrote countless essays justifying the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Long_Short_War
As to the rest of your comment, I'm honestly not sure how to respond. What is your definition of combative to the whole region? Are you including Iran, Russia, or China in your definition? And so you'd support a global war to replace the leadership of those countries?
After the debacle of the GWOT, the failure of the Iraq War and of the recent Afghanistan retreat, I genuinely don't understand how someone even slightly pragmatically-minded could have this opinion. I only included the Iraq mention off-handedly because I assumed it was nearly common sense that the war was a bad decision.
My main criticisms of him are his sloppy arguments and lazy scholarship, which zero people in the academic fields of philosophy and philosophy of religion take seriously.
Yes, that's part of him supporting it. He was a DC correspondent, who else would he meet with but the current administration?
> What is your definition of combative to the whole region?
Hussein invaded Iran, Kurdistan, and Kuwait, three neighbors. Was probably active elsewhere westward. Saudis were certainly scared.
> Are you including Iran, Russia, or China ... global war?
Russia probably fits that right now. I think you know the answer but seem to be unsure for some reason, but no—no one is invading a gigantic country with a huge army and nukes.
No one influential is even contemplating expanding the war with Russia that I know of. So, let's keep this to the realm of possibility and not start imagining new world wars we could get into, please.
> was nearly common sense that the war was a bad decision.
This is the kind of lazy, comfortable "2000-era liberal opinion", for lack of a better term, I was writing about earlier and was Hitchens' main point.
You've forgotten how unfathomable Hussein was; tried to minimize it. Erased his genocide and chemical warfare from your mind. But if you're truly a liberal you should be willing to fight against these things, really f'ing hard.
Again, imagine its 1942. The holocaust is off to a fine start. You say, "well due to geopolitical realities, (nudge, nudge) starting a war would be a bad decision. Just give them Nazis a little lebensraum, that's all they want!"
We had a word for that not long ago, it was called "appeasement" and history does not look kindly on those folks. If we had lost WWII, I bet those appeasement folks would be feeling comfortable too.
Neocons planned the Iraq invasion out in advance; that’s well documented. The idea that Hitch had decision-making capability inside the admin several years later is not particularly credible.
> his sloppy arguments
I’ve not seen any compelling arguments here either, and those so far show a lack of research and/or thoughtfulness. One might uncharitably call them sloppy.
Against this background it should not come as a surprise that he is a highly divisive and controversial character. I don't think anyone should expect a reasonable and balanced discussion about him on the internet, as the thread here would indicate.
As for "why Hitch still matters" (for others than those who side with him in controversy): this is not entirely clear from The Fine Article. It likely should not be taken as much more than an eloquent blurb with the intent of selling the anthology.