Red Team, Pink Team

Andrew Sullivan has been linking to his friend Christopher Hitchens a good deal lately. Check out this link. There are many others, but it's best perhaps to focus on just one.

I'm aware that bloggers generally are prone to incestuous cross-linking of articles by friends and fellow travelers. But one wonders whether Sullivan is actually reading Hitchens' articles. It seems that Hitchens has succeeded in duping Sullivan into thinking that they agree.

In the link above, Sullivan remarks that "[Hitchens is] sharpest in pointing out how leaving Saddam in place was rapidly becoming a non-option, despite the Scowcroftian bromides." All right, fine. But what about Hitchens' feeble, dishonest attempts to justify the War? Sullivan has always bought the Bush line about WMD, a credible threat from Iraq, blah blah blah. Hitchens has paid lip service, and devoted some arguments to that same line of reasoning. But it's crystal clear that Hitchens' promotion of making war on Iraq stemmed from his pink roots, not from any newfound allegiance to neoconservatism. (See somewhat interesting pieces on Hitchens here and here.) Friend and colleague Gene (incestuous cross-link coming...) recently pointed to this recent jab taken by Hitchens' brother Peter:

"Many conservative Americans have accepted without question the support of Britain's Labor government for the Iraq war, and have likewise welcomed the unexpected endorsement that regime change has won from a number of the more intelligent radical leftists in the United States. It is as if a group of well-known arsonists had joined the Fire Department, and everyone was too polite to comment on it."

It seems Sullivan, too, misses the irony. In this interview, the writer explains Hitchens' support of the War thus:

Hitchens’ introduction to the questions posed by Islamic fundamentalism came during the Satanic Verses affair. Salman Rushdie was, and remains, one of his best friends, and “I’m sad at the way it’s receded. Most people [failed that test] one way or another, precisely because it was so simple. It also introduced me to the possibility of under-reaction to terrorist culture. People who wanted to give it another, kinder, name and invest it with a multicultural character.”

Toppling Saddam as part of a process of bringing liberalism to the Arab world is part of that same fight. “As an internationalist – which I will be until the day I f***ing choke – it was a betrayal of all the people in the Arab and Muslim world who recognised in Salman’s crisis their own. Though not a majority they are a significant force and solidarity with them was involved. Not to condemn it was to let down the best of the Arab world.”

That certainly doesn't much comport with Sullivan's own defense of the War. Much has been made of Hitchens' admiration for Leon Trotsky. Much has also been made of the fact that neocons generally come from the socialist Left. But that's not proof that Hitchens is now a neocon, whether he supports the War or not. In fact, Sullivan ignores the title of the above-cited Hitchens piece he linked to: "Restating the Case For War." Indeed, Hitchens attempts to justify the War using the prospective ends, not by presenting any convincing evidence that we needed to do so to defend ourselves:

"I have noticed lately a distressing tendency on the part of those who support the intervention in Iraq to rest their case largely on underreported good news. Now, it is certainly true, as I have said myself, that there is much to celebrate in the new Iraq. The restoration of the ecology of the southern marshes, the freedom to follow the majority Shiite religion, the explosion of new print and electronic media, the emancipation of the schools and universities, and the consolidation of Kurdish autonomy are all magnificent things."

Rest which "case"? The neocons never made the "case" for War by saying that we could restore the ecology of Iraq's southern marshes. But Hitchens goes on:

"The president has been widely lampooned by many a glib columnist for saying that increased violence is not necessarily a cause for despair and may even be evidence of traction. He is, in fact, quite right to take this view, which was first expressed, to my knowledge, by Gen. John Abizaid. Those who murder the officials of the United Nations and the Red Cross, set fire to oil pipelines and blow up water mains, and shoot down respected clerics outside places of worship are indeed making our point for us. There is no justifiable way that a country as populous and important as Iraq can be left at the mercy of such people. And—here is my crux—there never was."

So Hitchens was never motivated by the strategic claims (now widely spun) made by Bush, AEI, and the Weekly Standard. Hitchens stuck to what I thought was a consistent, modern socialist position: that the US's military power should be used for pet humanitarian struggles -- not to defend the US. Sure, sure, Hitchens does make a few clumsy assertions here and there about ties to terrorism, though mostly of the entirely unsubstantiated variety, and many from the time period before al Qaeda had stated any ill intent towards the US. Example:

"This already lousy status quo was volatile and unstable. Saddam Hussein's speeches and policies were becoming ever more demented and extreme and ever more Islamist in tone. The flag of Iraq was amended to include a verse from the Quran, and gigantic mosques began to be built in Saddam's own name. Even if, as seems remotely possible, he was largely bluffing about weapons of mass destruction, this conclusion would destroy the view maintained by many liberals that, for all his crimes, Saddam understood the basic logic of deterrence and self-preservation. (That he was "in his box," as the saying went.) Not only was he able to defy the United Nations, but with French and Russian collusion, he was also increasingly able to circumvent sanctions. The "box" was falling apart, and its supposed captive was becoming more toxic. As he became older and madder, there emerged the real prospect of a succession passing to either Odai or Qusai Hussein, or to both of them. Who could view that prospect with equanimity? (Qusai Hussein was at the heart of the concealment program, for centrifuges and other devices, that has recently been partly exposed by David Kay's report.)

Meanwhile, the no-fly zones managed to protect the Kurds and Shiites from a repeat performance of the mass murders of 1991 and earlier but did not prevent, for example, the planned destruction of the largest wetlands in the Middle East, home to the 5,000-year-old civilization of the Marsh Arabs. The smoke from this drain-and-burn atrocity was visible from the space shuttle. I shall leave open the question of whether "we" had any responsibility to prevent this and other mutilations and tortures of Iraqi society, except to say that the meltdown and trauma of that society, now so visible to all, were always inescapably in our future and would in any case have had consequences beyond themselves for the wider region. The continuation of this regime was indeed an imminent threat, at least in the sense that it was a permanent threat. (emphasis added)

Hitchens' "leaving the question open" pretty much gives us "case closed" on his real position. Anyone who's read the above paragraphs can see that Hitchens found his justification in humanitarian intent, not in necessary protective measures. If it isn't enough, take a look at any number of his dispatches from Kurdistan. Hitchens can be an incredibly lucid, incisive writer. And in truth, he's been relatively forthright in demonstrating that he didn't give a crap about the WMD/"we're all gonna die if we don't bomb Iraq" claims.

But does anyone on the Right recognize this? Is Sullivan, in fact, just too polite to comment on the fact that Hitchens advocated the destruction of American lives and treasure to defend the Marsh Arabs and Kurds from Saddam? Does Sullivan just look past Hitchens' argument, which really doesn't resemble his own, for the purpose of expediency? Does he just think Hitchens is really cool?

I'm aware that this post is late in coming, but I think the problem still exists and should be examined more closely. Red Team guys need to point out clearly when they're using Pinks as intellectual bodyguards. Hitchens, as an Orwell worshipper, would have established a more meaningful, credible legacy if he were to have headed off to Kurdistan to take up arms himself (as Orwell did in Spain) than tottering about in DC pubs, writing scathing letters to his former comrades. It's long past time for some honesty from both sides of the pro-war camp.