Hitchens Writes a Eulogy

Posted by Intrepyd
October 6, 2007

The reason for war did disappear -- WMD.

But "the war" debate is actually two separate arguments. The first is whether it was justified given the information we had at the time. I.E. evidence of WMD, 17 security council resolutions, etc. 80% of the nation and many of the current Democratic contenders thought, "yes, it's justified." Hillary even used to brag about her hawk status during the more celebrated moments of the war -- sovereignty handover, and later the capture of Saddam. I wish we had known better, but I do not regret being among the 80% given what we knew.

The second question is whether continuing the war is justified given the current situation. It's very important not to make an arbitrary amalgamation of these questions. Given our current knowledge, we should not have invaded Iraq. But that doesn't mean there are no reasons to fight, as Ana suggests. The fate of a nation and maybe a region hangs in the balance. The fate of America's international reputation is at stake. The prospect of a broken state fertile for extremism looms. If we stay, I believe time is more likely to temper the situation towards stability. If we leave, it's certain what would happen.

Posted by TomT
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is a drunken fool, albeit a talented writer.

My favorite Hitchens bumble was when he claimed Chalabi may have broken the Iranians' codes himself. What a moron.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006973.php

Posted by Jim
October 6, 2007

** 80% of the nation and many of the current Democratic contenders thought, "yes, it's justified."**

Most of the "80%"--74% is the figure I remember--believed in late 2002 and early 2003 that Saddam was directly responsible for the September 11 Attacks.

I do not regret being one of the 26% that knew George Bush to be a fool and a liar in October, 2002. And that was the argument that trumped all the others.

Posted by Intrepyd
October 6, 2007

"I do not regret being one of the 26% that knew George Bush to be a fool and a liar"

Your simple outlook is exactly the kind of paradigm for which the left criticizes Bush.

Posted by TomT
October 6, 2007

George Bush _is_ a fool and a liar, Intrepyd. You know who believes this more strongly than anyone else I speak to? Republicans who didn't fall for the brain-washing, or who got over their brain-washing recently. John Cole at Balloon Juice is a good example.

If you want to tie your party's future to George Bush's, go right ahead.

Posted by Carismar
October 6, 2007

Hitchens was probably the only real journalist who had the courage to dig into Clinton's Arkansas mafia connections...the amazing things that happened many who got involved, innocently or otherwise.

Posted by fight the theocracy!
October 6, 2007

I don't think Christopher Hitchens has any friends any more. He burned his bridges on the right when he dared to suggest that perhaps religion isn't good for society. And the ones on the left came down in 2002 when he backed the Iraq war. He is a man without an idealogical home at the moment.

Posted by Jim
October 6, 2007

**Your simple outlook is exactly the kind of paradigm for which the left criticizes Bush.**

Well.... except that my simple paradigm reflects reality, and Bush's reflects his narcissistic, religiose delusions, and my simple paradigm would have avoided the Iraq War, had more people like you figured it out, and George Bush's caused it.

But other than that, you're spot on.

Posted by wonkie
October 6, 2007

It wasn't a simple outlook for a person to have understood that Bush, and Republican politicians in general, were lying back in the day. On the contrary, it was a simple outlook to be a sucker for war fever, to believe that there was something noble about preemptory war against a country we assumed would not fight back. Bush predicted a quick, easy victory, a chance to wave flags and shout slogans, so everyone could feel compensated emotionally for 911. It was a simple, primitive even, appeal to the basest emotions.

Hutchins performed the same fuction as the school teacher at the beginning of All Quiet on the Western Front. May he rot in hell.

Posted by global yokel
October 6, 2007

Why did Bush and Hitchens and their ilk argue for the "liberation" of Iraq? There are at least 50 other countries with governments who are equally brutal and repressive.

So far as I can see, the only difference is that Iraq has significant oil reserves.

Posted by TomT
October 6, 2007

"May he rot in hell."

I think that's going too far. He's a drunken fool, not a monster.

Posted by Memekiller
October 6, 2007

You know, what I want more than anything is to move beyond the partisan warfare and to start some introspection. I have had to engage in some tit for tat in the hyper-partisan warfare of the GOP megaphone, and will continue, but it is always in an effort to neutralize that so we can move beyond it, and start something like this.

So, I'm not going to lay into Hitchens about this because it is the start of the healing that is needed to be able to move beyond blame and deal with the consequences. (Always wary that such opens us to be accused of the stab in the back). We start by moving beyond pins and MoveOn, and having articles like this from Hitchens.

This is the start of something, and if it happened to Hitchens, it could happen to anyone.

Posted by JJ
October 6, 2007

Begin rant/

I feel like the instinctually rebellious colonial when I read Hitchens. When you read about him in George Packer's *Assassin's Gate,* he sounds like the romantic. How wonderful it will be to have people dancing in the streets of Baghdad, etc. Kind of a nice little literary daydream, there, Hitchens.

How could he believe a dream like that so easily? Learning more about him, it made more sense. He's an Oxford guy who read lots of Trotsky. He comes to America where he can impress with his exotic manners and dismiss the rustic colonials who disagree with him. After all, these poor rustics believe in *religion* (gasp)! World weary liberals in England gave that up a long time ago. Hitchens has read his philosophes (as every serious Trotskiite does) and therefore knows that's all claptrap. He writes a book about Mother Theresa called *The Missionary Position*, reflexively calls the Dalai Lama a fraud, and takes his liberal faith up as a White Man's Burden which he can foist onto the poor rustic Yankees, who will be inevitably impressed with his accent and his ability to quote Voltaire.

Well does the ability to hang out with lots of Trustifarians at Oxford and spend lots of time with Trotsky and acquiring chainsmoking and drinking habits qualify you for making pronouncements about Iraq? It does in the showbusiness world of American cable television. "Even the liberal Christopher Hitchens" is for the War in Iraq! Screw Phil Donahue. Christopher freakin Hitchens!!

He probably drinks lattes!! He uses big words and is even European!! He read lots of books at that European place, Oxford!! Does he know anything about the military, or building a democratic state from scratch? No. But he practically wears a beret!! "Book him," says Hannity, O'Reilly, Wolf and Larry King!!

/End rant.

Posted by JJ
October 6, 2007

Coulter and Hitchens are both good reads, and correct more often than not in their assessment of national and world affairs.

Posted by mulwana
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is a ranter who never really gets to the point. Half the time he's not even making an argument at all. It's just all sneering and grimacing and condescension with him.

Every Hitchens piece could be reduced to: I am smarter than you but I won't say why, you'll just have to trust me.

Posted by Not Hitchens
October 6, 2007

Carismar: when you mention Hitchens and the Clinton mafia in Arksansas I have an idea that you are in to kool aid in a big way. We have had enough of the rubbish that passes for invetigative reporting by the likes of Hitchens, Scaife financed Robert Tyrell and assorted men and women who claim to know so much. We have gone beyond the fantasies of the 1990s.It's 2007. Our country needs us to come together. We can only begin that step together if stop using snide attacks as a substitute for a serious debate.

Posted by zota
October 6, 2007

> He's a drunken fool, not a monster.

A drunken fool who used his media platform and talent to scream for death and shout down objections. And then, five years later in the face of the death he wanted, he tries to end it with a pathetic parenthetical.

If there were a hell, I think hell would be the most just fate for this monstrous drunken fool.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg
October 6, 2007

This is a very good post, Ana. And thanks for the link, I hadn't heard about this.

Hitchens is entertaining, but he's a provocateur (read: "professional a**hole"). He chooses his positions not because the facts lead him there, but out of a determination to irritate people.

I mean, there may well be a compelling argument that Mother Theresa did some things that are worthy of criticism. But if you actually want to convince people, you don't title your book making that point "The Missionary Position."

He's just too wedded to agitprop to be taken seriously. And it's a shame, because he is a talented writer, although more or less everything he writes these days is buried in haze of contemptuous rhetoric.

What a waste. Same I used to feel about Bill Clinton, a talented guy who spend his presidency on scattershot, feel-good, piecemeal little projects. But he reduced the deficit.

That's why I voted against GW Bush in 2000-- I didn't trust him to be fiscally responsible, and I thought he left a lot to be desired in the "character issue." I lost sight of that when I supported the Iraq invasion.

JJ's comment is totally legitimate, Intrypyd. Engaging in a war of choice when you have a lazy, reality-averse, pandering leadership is a bad idea.

Hitchens froze when he realized that his son was the same age as Lt. Daily because the entire quixotic enterprise of invading and occupying another country to impose a democracy only makes sense if it's other people's children doing the imposing. Spain didn't like it when Napoleon tried it, Iraq doesn't like it now.

It's a good article, humble, thoughtful, respectful, and clear. It's a good tribute to a remarkable young man.

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is a irredeemable old sot. He is hopelessly and boundlessly corrupt. Even in his "eulogy" it's all about him, isn't it? What a disgusting, self-serving, contemptible human being.

Anyone who could read a daily newspaper in 2002 knew without the shadow of a doubt that George Bush and the Bush Administration were NOT ONLY lying and dissembling in making their case for war against Iraq re WMD, but also knew that *when* they DID go to war, they were profoundly incompetent and would surely and undoubtedly botch the prosecution of it.

So you had the Christopher Hitchens and Tom Friedmans of the beltway, "exhilarated" by 911 and with a big solid war hard-on, jumping on the bandwagon and waving the flag to make someone "suck on this."

And here we are six years later, and he writes a piece of crap like this and we're supposed to give him some credit? There were, what? 3,800 more where Mark Daily is. He'd better sharpen his pencil and write something for every one of them. for Christopher Hitchens it's always all about him. He flatters himself entirely too much.

Bah.

Posted by zota
October 6, 2007

"Abruptly dismissing any comparison between myself and one of the greatest poets of the 20th century..."

I changed my mind. Hell is too good for him.

Posted by Carismar
October 6, 2007

The truth sometime hurts, no?

Posted by Axelrod
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is a great humorist, although his dry wit and subtle style is often misunderstood. His tongue-in-cheek defense of Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz, who ordered a big pay raise for his girlfriend when both worked for the World Bank, was a real gut-buster.

Posted by JJ
October 6, 2007

OK, just read it. Good writing, but it looks to me like the soul searching was very carefully edited. To be fair, it's probably hard to balance the introspection with his treatment of his subject and still sound appropriate.

The thing I don't get is that Hitchens' ego somehow manages to stay the same size. If I had just come off drum beating for this war with its hundreds of thousands dead, I wouldn't have turned around and pumped out a book capitalizing on the New Atheist bandwagon. I would have taken a break from polemicizing. But Hitchens doesn't seem to pause, which seems strange and tin-eared (but probably good for his career as a celebrity). And I agree with zota, the sentence after the Yates quote just reeks of self regard.

Posted by boehlert
October 6, 2007

Profiling a family that just lost a son in Iraq, did Hitchens really write in VF:

"It was pretty clear [the family] could have done without the war."

y'think?

Posted by Steve K
October 6, 2007

This is really a perfect postcard:
A bunch of simps trashing a man whose boots they aren't even fit to shine, talking about a topic (the war) they really couldn't care less about, exchanging these smug, fragrant opinions, then - in a society in which the free-speech they so childishly take for granted is something for which they have never suffered or sacrificed a hangnail, let alone spilled their own blood. Talk about corrupt! While all you pretentious cocks are strutting about, sniffing each other's asses online, your far-betters are 6000 miles off - already in hell - making the real sacrifice. Shame on you c*nts.

Posted by Jim
October 6, 2007

**your far-betters are 6000 miles off - already in hell - making the real sacrifice. **

Sacrificing for what reason? Do you really think Saddam was going to conquer the United States and take away your freedom of speech?

We're the ones who didn't want to send to those kids to hell, for no good reason, in the first place.

Your anger is misplaced and misdirected. And misplaced, misdirected anger is why people like Mark Daily are dying in Iraq.

Posted by JJ
October 6, 2007

We've been trashing Hitchens, not the man he's writing about. I think all of us have respect for the man the eulogy is about. Are you over there, Steve?

Posted by JerryG
October 6, 2007

" . . . in the end, Hitchens praises the young man for having "magically" found "the noble element" in a war that now, by Hitchens' own account, "sickens" him."

The noble element of war. What is that?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gee/gee10.html

Excerpt:

When Charlie notices some photographs on the mantel, Emily explains that she has lost her father, brother and husband to the war. He responds by saying, "I’m not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows."

Emily warns him that her mother is a bit mad and has taken to referring to her fallen husband and son as though they were still alive. He does his best to charm Mrs. Barham (Joyce Grenfell), and then initially attempts to impart his views on war in a facetious manner:

War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best; the highest morality he’s capable of … it’s not war that’s insane, you see. It’s the morality of it. It’s not greed or ambition that makes war: it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It’s not war that’s unnatural to us – it’s virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

She is completely oblivious to his irony:

That was exalting, Commander … after every war, you know, we always find out how unnecessary it was. And after this one, I’m sure all the generals will dash off and write books about the blunders made by other generals, and statesmen will publish their secret diaries, and it’ll show beyond any shadow of a doubt that war could easily have been avoided in the first place. And the rest of us, of course, will be left with the job of bandaging the wounded and baying the dead.

His mockery unsuccessful, Charlie makes his point as clear as possible in one of the most pointed, devastating anti-war monologues ever heard in film:

Charlie: I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades … we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

Mrs. Barham: You’re very hard on your mother. It seems a harmless enough pretense to me.

Charlie: No, Mrs. Barham. No, you see, now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.

Charlie’s compelling speech is so stunning, so jarring, that Mrs. Barham snaps out of her delusional denial and admits aloud, for the first time, that her husband and son are dead.

Posted by tomboy
October 6, 2007

When are people going to stop looking for "noble" things in war?

Looking for and finding such "noble" things makes unnecessary wars all the more likely.

Hitchens should drink himself to death.

Posted by p_lukasiak
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is what happens to a narcissist as they age -- compelled to look in the mirror, and loathing the reality that he is confronted with.

The 'eulogy' is just more self-centered masturbation (only a showoff would use the word 'quotidian' in the first sentence of such a piece) -- more execrable exploitation of death in Iraq.

Let him be a lesson to you Ana....before it is too late.

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

Tomboy's comment begs for it:

Dulce et Decorum Est ~Wilfred Owen

"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."

Posted by CMike
October 6, 2007

Thank you TomT for the pitch perfect link you provided in this thread's comment #2.

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

And John Dos Passos had a similar take:

_________

The shell had his number on it.

* * *

The blood ran into the ground.

The service record dropped out of the filing cabinet when the quartermaster sergeant got blotto that time they had to pack up and leave the billets in a hurry.

The identification tag was in the bottom of the Marne.

The blood ran into the ground, the brains oozed out of the cracked skull and were licked up by the trenchrats, the belly swelled and raised a generation of blue-bottle flies.

and the incorruptible skeleton,

and the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled in khaki

they took to Chalons-sur-Marne

and laid it out neat in a pine coffin

and took it home to God’s Country on a battleship

and buried in a sarcophagus in the Memorial Amphitheatre in the Arlington National Cemetery

and draped the Old Glory over it

and the bugler played taps

and Mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brasshats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn

and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God’s Country it was go have the bugler play taps and the three volleys made their ears ring.

Where his chest ought to have been they pinned

the Congressional Medal, the D.S.C., the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, the Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania, the Czechoslovak war cross, the Virtuti Militari of the Poles, a wreath sent by Hamilton Fish, Jr., of New York,and a little wampum presented by a deputation of Arizona redskins in warpaint and feathers. All the Washingtonians brought flowers.

Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.
__________
Dos Passos, the Body of an American

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

This war's chief architects and propagandists, almost to a man, had not served in the military.

People who have fought say things like "war is a racket" and "to hell with war."
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

They say, "I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!"

They say, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross."

They say these things not because they are unpatriotic, not because they believe that nothing is worth fighting for, but because war is, in fact, a terrible thing, to be avoided if at all possible.

We rushed headlong into an unnecessary war for the vanities of weak men like Hitchens and Bush. God help our soldiers who don't come back, and those who do come back with physical and mental scars that will never heal. And the countless Iraqis-- is it two hundred thousand? Six hundred thousand? A million?-- who have died as a result of the chaos we unleashed in our hasty, poorly planned invasion and occupation.

Posted by fight the theocracy!
October 6, 2007

"in a society in which the free-speech they so childishly take for granted is something for which they have never suffered or sacrificed a hangnail"

Since when do you cons believe in free speech?

Posted by matt
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is hardly a "great read", as one commenter remarked. It takes thinking before you write to become great...

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by Riesz Fischer
October 6, 2007

Steve K, since you're fighting in Iraq right now and you don't have much time to read blog comments, I'll make this brief.

"...in a society in which the free-speech they so childishly take for granted is something for which they have never suffered or sacrificed a hangnail, let alone spilled their own blood."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Yeah, free speech is what you brownshirts are all about, isn't it? After your boy cheerleader let in the terrorists on 9/11 you brownshirts started crying and saying "You can take away ALL our civil liberties sir! Just save us from the terrorists, sir! You can listen in on my phone calls, sir!"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by Nick
October 6, 2007

Noble: 4. of an exalted moral or mental character or excellence; lofty: a noble thought.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/noble

How can anyone honestly call our invasion and devastation of Iraq noble?

We invaded on false pretenses which were easily recognized as lies by those of us who were paying attention and not blinded by nationalism.

We have directly or indirectly killed close to a million mostly innocent people, including many women and children.

We have caused the exodus of nearly 4 million people, fleeing for their lives.

The occupation has been characterized by gross incompetence.

We established the use of torture in replacing a torturing dictator whom we had previously supported with arms, money and diplomacy.

Shame is the feeling of the day, not nobility. It's absurd to be talking about nobility in this case. Shamefully absurd.

Posted by Tom
October 6, 2007

Remember this phony soldier who was also a darling of the Democrat party/treason lobby? http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7DB143CF93AA35751C1A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Posted by Beth in VA
October 6, 2007

Another great snark-free post, Ana. Thanks. A poignant piece of thought. How are we ever to really grasp the reality of what our beloved country has done?

Posted by linda
October 6, 2007

Hitchens views but can not comprehend
as he lives his life on sun warmed sand
near shallow water, seeing through lens of Rayban

*****************

As so many times before, he was back, seemingly whole.
I counted and waited as he stood in camo, all tan
Then I hugged my baby, my boy, my son, this man.
Over my head I could feel his eyes go far away.
I hugged harder, he bent and whispered a kiss to my soul.
"Thanks, Mom. I don't have to explain. You just understand who I am."

Posted by Jim
October 6, 2007

Gee Tom, that ten year old story about a guy no one ever heard of is certainly pertinent.

Why do all these liberal elitists keep saying guys like you are stupid?

One of life's great mysteries, I tell's ya!

Posted by TomT
October 6, 2007

The thing with Hitchens is this: he may be witty, he may be morally whatever, he may be courageous, he may have great empathy, but he's also WRONG. The things that he says will come to pass do not, in fact, come to pass.

That's the bottom line with him, with Broder, with Joe Klein, with David Brooks, with Cokie Roberts, with Fareed Zakeria. These are people who -- for all their charm and wit -- generally say things that are not true.

It's pretty simple.

Posted by Nick
October 6, 2007

If a soldier volunteers to fight in an unjust war, how should his or her decision to fight in that unjust war be judged?

Posted by Tom
October 6, 2007

Another (#1001?) phony soldier and darling of the Democrat party/treason lobby exposed: http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/atlantic-city-mayor-drops-out-of-sight/20071005174009990001 Please note that the Associated (with terrorists) Press conveniently fails to identify this elected official by party because he just happens to be a member of the Democrat party. Evidently, such failure to identify phony soldiers of the Democrat party is standard operating procedure for the Associated (with terrorists) Press.

Posted by Nick
October 6, 2007

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience.”

--Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal of 1950

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070619_fatherhood_muhammad_ali_and_moral_courage/

Posted by Nick
October 6, 2007

Posted by Tom
October 6, 2007

Another (#1001?) phony soldier and darling of the Democrat party/treason lobby exposed: http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/atlantic-city-mayor-drops-out-of-sight/20071005174009990001 Please note that the Associated (with terrorists) Press conveniently fails to identify this elected official by party because he just happens to be a member of the Democrat party. Evidently, such failure to identify phony soldiers of the Democrat party is standard operating procedure for the Associated (with terrorists) Press.

From the Link:

Last fall, The Press of Atlantic City investigated Levy 's accounts of his wartime service and used military records to verify that Levy was a 20-year Army veteran with two Bronze Stars and two tours of duty in Vietnam. But the newspaper found he was not a member of the storied Green Berets, as he had claimed.
---------------------

20 year veteran with two Bronze Stars and two tours of duty in Vietnam.

Yeah, that pretty much sounds like Limbaugh's description of a phoney soldier.

And where in Vietnam did Bush and Rush and Cheney serve again?

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

"That's the bottom line with him, with Broder, with Joe Klein, with David Brooks, with Cokie Roberts, with Fareed Zakeria. "

"...the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brasshats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn

and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God’s Country it was go have the bugler play taps and the three volleys made their ears ring."

Things haven't changed so very much in Washington and Washington Post from back in dos Passos' day, it appears.

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

These Limbaugh Loonies are grasping at any absurdity to avoid coming to grips with their own ignorant cowardice, aren't they? It's pretty funny, and pretty pathetic, in a clinical kind of way. Like you'd watch and record the desperate flailing of an upturned cockroach as he lies dying belly up on his dorsal exoskeleton. You have to kind of feel sorry for them, panic-strickenly googling, searching for anything, anything, that may ameliorate the drug-addled fatman's gaffe.

It's sad, really.

Posted by thisissad
October 6, 2007

Christopher Hitchens is not president. He's not a congressman, he's not a Senator, and to be blunt he's not even an American.

I might dislike George W. Bush but at least he IS president. Christopher Hitchens is an arrogant, egomanical journalist who's so full of himself he can't even see how unimportant he is in the grand scheme of things.

To the Republican talking heads and journalists out there, here's a wake-up call: You're just not that important. My advice to all is that you ignore Hitchens, Limbaugh, and the like. For that matter the same thing goes for the leftist journalistic elite who think they're somehow more educated and intelligent than the rest of us. The thing that has always made this country great is citizen participation and I suggest Americans get back to making up their own minds rather than letting these unimportant, wanna-bes tell us what to think.

Posted by patroclus
October 6, 2007

Thanks for posting this Ana - one of your best posts yet!

Quite clearly, Hitchens played a fairly significant role in leading this young heroic figure to his gruesome death. It's admirable that he at least owns up to it and at least shows some remorse. Given what others have rightly described as his addiction to gratuitous polemical agitprop, Hitch at least shows he has a conscience. He is not an utter monster; glorying in the wanton slaughter and the lost potential of life.

Others have come to terms with their horrific roles in leading this country, on the basis of baldfaced whoppers, into the madness of a never-ending disastrous semi-permanent invasion and occupation of Mesopotamia with far less grace. Still others have as yet even to admit their mistakes.

Except with respect to the Kurds, Hitch was horrendously wrong in the lead-up to the ruination of America's hard-earned world reputation and the rampant destruction of countless thousands of lives, and he supported Bush even through 2004 and beyond (as the situation was becoming ever more disastrous). Only recently has he returned to Planet Earth.

History will not forget what Hitchens said and when - he will never be able to live it down. Perhaps, however, if this essay is any indication, he can regain some needed lost dignity.

Posted by Riesz Fischer
October 6, 2007

patroclus: "Perhaps, however, if this essay is any indication, he can regain some needed lost dignity."

No, he can't. He repeatedly called anyone who argued against the invasion cowards and traitors. He is a scoundrel and he can never regain any dignity.

Posted by Carismar
October 6, 2007

And then there are those of us who believe in the justness of the war in Iraq, and the certainty of our ultimate victory.

Posted by Derek
October 6, 2007

"perhaps more strongly than I knew"

All you had to do was examine the evidence, and study the structure of their arguments, to know that they were stretching the truth. Hitchens wants to argue he didn't know what he was doing. He was unknowingly out of his control.

There is a difference between those who trusted their government to tell the truth, and those who were directly involved in the marketing of falsehoods.

Posted by Riesz Fischer
October 6, 2007

Carismar: "And then there are those of us who believe in the justness of the war in Iraq, and the certainty of our ultimate victory."

Yeah, but do you believe in evolution?

Posted by roger
October 6, 2007

I don't remember Hitchens supporting the war because of the WMD. He took, I believe, the classical liberal - or neo-con - position that the U.S. should depose Saddam because of his crimes against the Kurds in the 80s, and his crimes against the Shi'ites in the 90s. From this moral position, he then took the practical position that the U.S. should do this by invading and by - and here it gets a bit murky - putting his friend Chalabi on the throne.

Undoubtedly, Hitchens is right that Hussein was a great criminal. It is the rest of the packet that was wrong. Practically, Hitchens couldn't plan a birthday party, so his advice on that level was and always is abysmal. His knowledge of Iraq was that of a moral tourist - his support for Chalabi was not only tasteless, but morally offensive (Chalabi is a fraud). His inability to imagine that Iraqis might find the whole idea of putting an escaped convict like Chalabi on the throne morally repulsive, especially since they were just getting rid of another great thief, Saddam Hussein. Hitchens playing the nationalist card, and doing as much as he can to stir up xenophobia against Europe in 2002, was arguably the worst thing he's ever done in his life. On the whole, for this war Hitchens has sacrificed his writing style (he now writes like a man trying vaguely to imitate Robert Novak), his moral standing, and his integrity - after all, when your friends are Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, we can sorta tell the entitled assh#le circles you run in.

So I imagine he is not having a good war. Good.

Posted by ny nick
October 6, 2007

Hitchens is only interesting when he's writing vitriol. He needs an antagonist. Sadly, his talent was put to use attacking the anti war movement, giving name to every ugly and idiotic
strawman that caught his drunken eye. To Hitchens, there could not be a thoughtful, reasoned argument for opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We were the "fifth column", a dangerous, evil group who cared only about destroying the United States and doing harm to it's government. He is obviously bright enough to know better but he needed to have an enemy, a
dragon to slay. Sure, he had the terrorists but that was a one way argument. He needed a foe who talked back, who engaged him. Osama just would not do. So he choose us. His writing in the run up to the war is still used today to paint us who opposed the war as nuts who want the terrorists to take over the world and enslave us. His thinking has evolved since those heady days but the damage has been done. Now, after the death of his proxy warrior, he tries to reconcile his support for this debacle with the realities of it's execution and all he can come up with is the "nobility" of soldiers who fight and die for their country and their
brothers in arms. That story is as old as time.
His eulogy feels strained, constricted, as if he had more subjects the writer in him wanted to explore but the coward in him didn't dare. I feel for every soldier who dies in this nightmare of a war. They fight for their country and for the soldier next to him and will do so to the last man is standing. They are all heros. But we should understand the mindset. Soldiers will follow a failed policy right off a cliff if they are asked to. This is why we hold the civilians who send them to war responsible. We should also hold people like Chris Hitchens responsible for being the enabler he clearly was.

Posted by Derek
October 6, 2007

The fact that they chose character assassination as a central rhetorical technique, painting skeptics as America haters, gave skeptics even more reason to be suspicious.

I thought they reached a special moment when they said, if he says he has them, he's lying, if he says he doesn't, he's lying.

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

Well, Hitchens sacrificed "his integrity", if he ever did possess it, a long, long time ago on the altar of the Scaife-funded Clinton-hating. Just ask Sidney Blumenthal about that.

Posted by myshadow
October 6, 2007

This was one of the most disturbing responses here...: "And then there are those of us who believe in the justness of the war in Iraq, and the certainty of our ultimate victory."

After all we have been through, and to most of us who knew this whole misadventure was TOTALLY wrong.
Rare is the war that can have the word 'just' aligned with it. The rapacious criminality that this administration has found so easy execute has far too many accomplices from the press to the cheap petty politicians who spinelessly allowed bushco to shred the constitution and destroy Iraq. Further, 'victory' is impossible. Tell us Carismar, who will be vanquished that will sit at a desk and sign a surrender document that proves our 'victory'

Posted by THOMAS BILLIS
October 6, 2007

Would it not be wonderful if all the neo cons who cheered the boys and girls onto war had at least the momentary introspection that Chris Hitchens had.Of course he he puts the "the nobility of war"line which seems counter productive.But in not believing in eternal life I think he means that in his last moments on earth the boy was at peace with himself.I am not in any way a Chris Hitchens fan but to me when he can see the folly of a position he has taken makes him a human being I just disagree with.

Posted by Chris
October 6, 2007

"I would guess that almost every American soldier who is or has been to Iraq tries to find something there worth fighting for, the "noble element" that so stirs Hitch. It's not magic; it's human, and they have to, for the reasons the government -- and Hitchens -- gave us all for being there in the first place turn out to have "magically" disappeared."

But if smart young men in Iraq can look around and find something worth fighting for, beyond the disappeared reasons offered by the Presidency, isn't that a sign that we should fight? Isn't that the surest sign that we should fight?

Posted by Jim
October 6, 2007

**But if smart young men in Iraq can look around and find something worth fighting for, beyond the disappeared reasons offered by the Presidency, isn't that a sign that we should fight? Isn't that the surest sign that we should fight?**

No. However much you sentimentalize and romanticize the soldiers who are victims of George W Bush's incompetence and dishonesty, you can't undo the damage of the last five years, much less the centuries of history that Bush and Cheney sent those young men into without any knowledge of, or even interest in, the realities on the ground.

This isn't a Warner Bros B-movie from 1944. All the good intentions and gauzy sentimentality that Americans, a well-intentioned and sentimental people, can gin up can't rewrite the past, not the last five years, not the last thirty-five years, not the last fifteen hundred years.

Posted by Riesz Fischer
October 6, 2007

People, there's nothing to sentimentalize about it. We killed a half million civilians. Men, women and children. There is nothing sentimental or romantic about it.

Posted by Anonymous
October 6, 2007

What if they are fighting because they've been assigned the mission, and as professional soldiers they feel they owe it to their brothers to see the mission through?

Where does that scenario fit into your gauzy glory of war, Chris?

Posted by Mr. Poopypants
October 6, 2007

"But if smart young men in Iraq can look around and find something worth fighting for, beyond the disappeared reasons offered by the Presidency, isn't that a sign that we should fight? Isn't that the surest sign that we should fight?"

No.

As soldiers, their job is to fight when they're told to fight. I hope that they do feel optimistic.

But a soldier's optimism isn't the basis for strategic decisions.

The question isn't, "are the troops happy?", but "at what cost, and over how much time, will we be likely to achieve success, however defined?"

Morale is obviously relevant to this decisions, but it's not the only question.

As to the strategic question, we have spent vastly more money and lives than we expected to, for an ever-shifting definition of success, and we may need to stay for another decade for violence to die down to anything resembling stability. In fact, some believe that our presence, as a disliked occupier, prevents political progress.

What's more, I don't even buy the theory that morale is high. See the article linked at my handle.

Posted by the KOS KIDZ
October 6, 2007

IMPEACH
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Posted by linda
October 6, 2007

Random thoughts from someone who never thought the invasion of Iraq was justified or made 'good sense'.

Despite the rhetoric, this is the first preemptive war that the USA has engaged in. Sadly, since this action was taken, many now consider the threat of 'preemptive war' as always on the table.

I would have to say that the US no longer has the reputation as the negotiator.

Bush has declared Mission Accomplished and the Iraqi Government has been recognized as sovereign. Iran has closed their border to Kurds while Hunt Oil has signed an oil deal with the Kurds. Does no news from the Iraq-Syria and Iraq-Turkey borders mean good news or not? What does it mean that the US can not supply the 'weapons' that Iraq needs so the Iraqis are buying from China?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/05/iraq.main/index.html#cnnSTCText

Dubai seems to be the big beneficiary of all kinds of underground trade and investment capital.

Israel is thought to have 200 nuclear warheads, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and refuses AIEA inspection. Through aggressive action, Arab-Israeli War, Israel expanded its territory beyond that authorized by the UN in 1948.

I found this 'back story' about Burma to be very informative.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/4/235332/888

Posted by TomT
October 7, 2007

I read through the Hitchens piece and while he is certainly to be commended for caring about this young man (this places him several leagues above your typical Iraq war hawk in humanity), there is something awfully self-indulgent about it.

It seemed to me that he used tragedy as an excuse to show off his own erudition. I'm not sure I've ever read a piece outside of a poetry journal that contained such a high concentration of quotes set off from the main text.

That's typical, I'm afraid, of the Iraq war hawks. They use their knowledge of literature and the classics to distract us from noticing that they knew very little about Iraq when they were pushing for war.

This is part of what's killing our national discourse. We are ruled by a media elite, who, while sometimes erudite and always well-connected, know very little about the topics on which they expound. It's as true of David Broder's know-nothing sermons on the seriousness of the Social Security crisis as it was of Hitchens', Friedmans', and Krauthammer's sermons about the "moral clarity" of an unnecessary war in Iraq.

At a certain point, one runs out of ways to say this: our media elites have no idea what they're talking about. None.

It is an insult to idiots everywhere to describe their ranting as a "tale told by an idiot". Idiots, at least, are describing their own fevered imaginings, not something they heard at a cocktail party.

Posted by Hoplite
October 7, 2007

That was a "lovely piece"? Hitchens used it to attack everyone for the Iraq debacle except himself, tossed in the usual journalistic puff about how great the troops are, how worthless the politicians are, dribbled out the obligatory Shakespeare and Orwell quotations (anyone thinking person who knows the Orwell poem, and what led Orwell to write it, should *not* have used it in a piece like this), and even had some anti-Arab racism tossed in. If Hitchens had true respect for that kid and his family, he either wouldn't have written this piece of s h i t at all, or would have written it without all the little sideswipes at everyone, and above all, without the endless pandering to the common American. Despite his protestations to the contrary, this was about Christopher Hitchens, not the dumbass kid who went off to fight Hitchens' war, with one eye on a journalism career if he had survived.

"Lovely piece." Christ, we're in trouble as a society.

Posted by Beavis from Montana
October 7, 2007

Pretty fitting that article appeared in a publication with the word "vanity" in the title. Thanks for nothing, Hitch. Now please climb back in your bottle.

Posted by Acid
October 7, 2007

My God, if only Mark Daily's death could be romanticized. The sad thing is under the right circumstances, Daily could have been a Victor Lazlo, say (though Hitchens wants to cast him as Rick Blaine). But no: he was a great kid who was put into a deadly farce.

I suspect that the Daily family invited Hitchens along to see what he had wrought. Even if they genuinely wanted him there, he seriously (as is customary with him) missed the point. Instead of telling Mark's father that his cause of sorrow must not be measured by Mark's worth (something I'm sure his father already knew, and better than Hitchens) he should have been begging forgivness. Then he should have handed over his column for the week to Daily's family so they could say whatever they wanted to say. It surely would have had a "wider range of emotions" than Hitchens can muster, the arrogant blowhard.

Posted by linda
October 7, 2007

Speaking of self-serving arrogant panderers:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/06/novak-craig-secret/

and then scroll down to a little 'youtube' video here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/6/83254/9735

Posted by Christopher Snitchens
October 7, 2007

I can't be held morally responsible for the sad fates that befall those stupid enough to take the nonsense I write seriously.

Before I was a fascist, I was a trotskyite. After this phase, I'll enthusiastically espouse whatever cultish political philosophy best allows me to feel intellectually and morally superior to the masses. The fools and politicians who think I am an intellectual, rather than merely a vicious, glib drunk, deserve everything they get.

Posted by Memekiller
October 7, 2007

Holy crap:

One who shares that view is journalist Joe Klein. "There are a number of us who were friendly with Pete back in the day who think he drank the Kool-Aid," Klein said. In May, Klein used his Time magazine blog to directly challenge a Wehner essay on politics and the war, chastising his onetime friend for ignoring "the lives lost and shattered" and the "vast damage" to U.S. standing done by the Iraq war. "I have two pieces of career advice," Klein wrote to Wehner. "Stop writing this swill and think about penance. Take some time to clear your head, a lot of time, and pay for your sins by emptying bedpans at Walter Reed."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100601521_2.html?hpid=topnews

Posted by Florida
October 7, 2007

Hitchens is and always has been a drunken buffoon. And his writing skills have never been as good as the Beltway insiders insist they are. Never trust a Trotskyite.

Posted by Carismar
October 7, 2007

If we can't trust a Trotskyite, who can we trust.

Posted by Carismar
October 7, 2007

Look, while all you Times navel-gazers say we can't win....we are winning!

Isn't that interesting?

Posted by Anonymous
October 7, 2007

If you were a loud part of the gang who got us into the Iraq quagmire, to stop a future event from happening, and want to redeem yourself, I'd suggest a little humility.

I'd also recommit myself to reason and logic while ceasing to search for a legitimate reason for jumping on the Attack Iraq bandwagon.

Posted by Diogenes
October 7, 2007

Hitchens, like all the vocal supporters of the war, lacked one crucial thing; the guts to go and fight.

If the cause is not worth risking your own neck, then sit back down on your bar stool and STFU.

Posted by hum'n'mum
October 7, 2007

Christopher Hitchens, the bilious, besotted bully-boy of English letters, now engages in the most wretched exercise of all: lying to obscure or justify his prior lying. And, as has already been noted, his whiny mea culpa is ALL about him and the cracks in his smug self-regard; there is no real attempt to confront the monstrous consequences of his easy conceits about the war.

Armed with well-worn quotes and belligerent erudition, Hitchens employed the ad hominem polemics which suit the idealogue, but are fatal to any honest intellectual, to argue for American imperial policy. Even that deplorable sabre-rattling was mostly about his own bloated ego, and his need to be seen as historically heroic. But, in his rush to become Orwell, he became Orwellian. Having spent most of his public life defending moral clarity and the decencies of liberalism, he wound up sharing podia with the likes of Chalabi, Wolfowitz, Podhoretz, Libby, and other serpents.

There is nothing quite so dangerous and pathetic as an intellectual who mistakes an emotion for an idea. Full of righteous indignation at the real depravities of Saddam, stunned by 9/11, guilty over his prior embrace of Trotskyite philosophy, and agitated by the belle-lettrist's nagging need to appear manly, he twisted his feelings into an angry and dishonest rationale for a lawless foreign policy.

Now, of course, he is utterly discredited as an intellectual, notwithstanding his often brilliant literary criticism. Perhaps more to the point, he is utterly discredited as a person. Every truthful person, except Joe Klein, sees that.

Posted by Diogenes
October 7, 2007

Yes, all you neocon chickenhawks need to go enlist and I hope you don't come back. We don't need your kind in the new America we are going to get after 2008.

Posted by Anonymous
October 7, 2007

Surprisingly enough this link is not permitted to be posted on this blog but I think you need to check it out. You won't like it. Time sure doesn't.

www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/07/journalists-tell-howard-kurtz-why-good-news-iraq-shouldn-t-get-report

Posted by Anonymous
October 7, 2007

Hey Linda, why didn't you link this gem from the KOS?

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27390_Kos_Kid_Accuses_Bronze_Star_Winner_of_Being_Phony_Soldier&only

Posted by Anna
October 7, 2007

Every war is a con job, and the more gullible the people the better the con job works.

Every soldier who goes to war voluntarily signs a contract that he agrees to KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE if necessary. Sorry, I can't feel sorry for such individuals. Exceptions are the ones who fight to defend their country from an occupying force.

There is no such thing as defending your country by helping to occupy another country thousands of miles away from your home.

Many soldiers join the army out of boredom, lust for adventure, or because they had been lied to by books and Hollywood movies about what war is all about. In this sense, movies and books are to blame for the death of young people.

People must understand that there is no such thing as a good war. Every war is dirty and immoral.

As long as there is a crowd that is ready to go and kill strangers, there will be a lot of misery in this world.

Posted by Anna
October 7, 2007

Now is the time to convict the war criminal bush and betrayus, bring the army home and disband them. Only in that way can we have peace and morality again.

Learn more at www.moveon.org

Posted by JJ
October 7, 2007

Hear, hear Anna!

Posted by p_lukasiak
October 7, 2007

This is why we are trying so hard to get the republicans out of government forever! Bravo Anna!

Posted by JJ
October 7, 2007

This is why we need moderators and registration!
Please!

Posted by GeorgeK
October 7, 2007

Although Hitchens is clearly moved by the death of Mark Daily, I can't help but wonder: did it only occur to him now, now that he's actually face to face with it, that his words are (in part) responsible for a war? And that, in a war, people get killed?

I have news for you Mr. Hitchens. You are in possession of a dangerous combination of a very public voice, and a gift for persuasion. You are not shouting into a closet. Your words change what happens in the world, to real people, for better of for worse. You are responsible, not slightly, not a bit, but directly and completely, for their effect.

Posted by chhabili
October 7, 2007

Christopher Hitchens was all over TV spewing his brand of militarism in the run up to the war in Iraq. He should feel enormously guilty for influencing, however remotely, young men and women to pick up weapons and kill people in another country, and for what? Oil? Now that the shenanigans of the administration are in full view, Hitchens should be beside himself for ardently promoting a false premise that has killed scores of young US men and women, not to mention over 1 million Iraqis who have died because of King George's cold heart.

Using the same analogy he uses for fixing blame on either a drunken driver, bad brakes or a man given to cigarettes, I wonder where Hitchens finds himself in this equation. But knowing Hitchens his public mea culpa is despicable. He has no place to hide.

And while you are at it Christopher, do you feel anything for the over million Iraqi lives lost, or are they just a number because they happened to be Muslim, the group you are so prone to demonize?

It is a shame that a young man walked into his early death due to false assertions made by the Bush administration on why Iraq had to be invaded. As you may already know, it has been widely established that there was absolutely no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The majority of the American people now know that they were lied to, in the run up to the war in Iraq. This young man did not have to sacrifice his life for that lie.

Posted by anemic coward
October 7, 2007

Wow, that was an impressive piece of literary critique (honestly). Well done, Ms. Cox.

Posted by Paul is Thunderous Smart
October 7, 2007

Paul,

Please make me hot with ten cent words like execrable more often. You get a double bonus for using such fancy language after busting on someone else for using 'quotidian'. Don't ya think instead of hoisting your tight shorts up so high to use such a fancy word you could have resisted?

Then you peep out this little gem: "Let him be a lesson to you Ana....before it is too late."

You are a droopy swinging boob.

Posted by Derek
October 7, 2007

One of the more disgusting attributes of the pro-Iraq war faction was their constant questioning of the sceptic's patriotism. Those of us who sided with empiricism in the WMD debate or who wanted to fight a smart war against terrorism, consistently had our love of country questioned. One couldn't be opposed to the idea of acting against one possible future scenario, on a country that was not involved in any part of 9/11, simply because it was irrational. No it was only because you hated America, or you wanted the terrorists to win. There are few things more delicious than the irony of watching these same people moan about one MoveOn Ad for 3 weeks, and counting.