Hitchens and the War
Polemicist Christopher Hitchens has lost many friends over his recent and increasingly vocal support for all things war and Bush, but he has not lost his mind. In fact, he is perhaps the only person on either side of the debate whose position is morally clear, internally consistent, and well-informed as to the facts. This does not, unfortunately, mean he is right.
The essence of Hitchens’ position is that militant Islamist fundamentalism is a grave threat to practically everyone, but particularly to the ideals that liberals are supposed to hold dear. As such, it is an idiotic mistake to romanticize the terrorists as in any way sympathetic to the objectives of the revolutionary or anti-globalist Left, because even though both offer a radical critique of the current world political and economic order, their critiques are coming from diametrically opposed positions. This sounds right to me.
He moves into somewhat shakier territory with his support for the Administration’s policy on Iraq. This too appears to be based primarily on Hitchens’ visceral hatred of the illiberalism of Saddam’s tyrannical regime and the way that his militant secular pan-Arabism has destabilized the region. Saddam through his own actions has provided ample pretext for his removal by force, even absent a casus beli. He further argues that the consequences of this action, accomplished either by coalition or unilaterally by the US (and Britain), would be insignificant compared to the upside of a free and potentially democratic Iraq. Hitchens argues, and I agree, that striking Iraq would not only get rid of Saddam, it would also provide needed security for world oil supplies, intimidate other potential opponents, and lay the groundwork for subsequent actions against the Islamist heartland of Saudi Arabia.
So, you might be asking, if Hitchens and I agree on so much, why don’t I support the war as he does? Because, to put it simply, Hitchens isn’t the President. He does not even seem to be a likely stalking-horse for the Administration. And yet, he leaps to the conclusion that Bush and company share not only his strategic outlook, but also his ideological one. Or, if he is not quite that self-deluded, he clearly does not think that the differences matter. And that’s where he’s wrong.
Hitchens is a militant defender of atheistic rationalism. It’s this philosophy – out of fashion on both the right and the left these days – that enables him to identify and articulate the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, or, in his colorful coinage, Islamofascism, with such conviction and clarity. He recognizes in al-Quaida the closed-minded, intolerant, backward-looking traditional enemy of the Enlightenment, and he recognizes the Enlightenment as the fundament of his entire political and philosophical worldview.
To put it kindly, George Bush is not fighting to make the world safe for secular humanism. This is a man who was pleased and proud to tell the world that his favorite political philosopher is Jesus Christ. If he had been raised in a Muslim country, he may not have had the fortitude to be a militant, but he definitely would have allied himself with the conservative elements. I understand that he’s the man in charge right now, so there’s not a whole lot of choice about who to support, but if Hitchens’ basic gripe is with faith, ignorance and the instinct to repress, how can he place not only his confidence but also apparently his trust in a man like George Bush?
Second, Hitchens’ case for war makes a whole lot more sense than anything we’ve heard from the Administration. It’s as though the public were being asked to invest in Bush’s scheme on the basis of a very skimpy business plan, and Hitchens, rather than taking what he’s given at face value, rewrites the prospectus using all the eminently reasonable, well-grounded arguments that he can come up with. Perhaps his assumptions are correct, but that’s a big “if.” Since Bush won’t cop to any of the arguments that Hitchens makes, there’s no way to hold him accountable for delivering the favorable outcomes that Hitchens expects. Right now, all we’re being told is that we’re about to go to war over a few empty chemical missile casings and a truculent dictator acting the way he’s always acted for the past 30 years. Oh yes, and since we’ve repeatedly made loud and blustering threats, our credibility and that of the UN is now at stake if we don’t follow through with them. Even Hitchens’ position begins to look thin when that’s all he can lean on.
Finally, Hitchens has taken enough punishment from people who used to consider him an ally that one can almost excuse him for a few ad hominem attacks. Almost. But recently, Hitchens appears to have lost sight of the large number of people (like me) who support the war against al-Qaida to the fullest, but oppose a unilateral incursion against a sovereign state, even one as bad as Iraq, without evidence of a clear and present threat. His opponents have coalesced in his mind into one vacuous, morally-inchoate “peace movement” whose every participant is as infected with defeatist self-hatred as the most self-righteous Noam Chomsky follower. The growing intellectual rigidity of his position and his refusal to acknowledge a separation between a well-justified war on Islamist terror and an ill-timed, ill-conceived attack against Iraq are troubling, to say the least.
For all the problems with his position, at least Hitchens is not afraid to speak out clearly and often, and to answer his critics to the best of his considerable abilities at every turn. If I could be sure, or even a little bit confident, that the person who really is formulating the strategy and making the decisions were this rigorous in his habits of mind, and felt this clear a responsibility to the demands of reason rather than blind faith, I would be much more comfortable embracing the policies that Hitchens has.
3:35:35 PM 
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