>The new VF just came in the mail, and Hitch's piece is predictably
>self-righteous & more humanitarian than thou. History also repeats: "In
>fact," he writes, "what is happening in today's Iraq is something more like
>a social and political revolution than a military occupation. It's a
>revolution from above [he must like that], but in some ways no less radical
>for that. I haven't seen anything like it since the Portuguese Army
>overthrew the Fascist dictatorship in Lisbon in 1974 and sent what it called
>'dynaminzation' teams out into the countryside to try to dislodge the torpor
>and backwardness of decades."
>
>Hitch bears the Special Burden of being one of the few Western intellectuals
>to really "get it," and he handles the weight in typical fashion.
>
I finally got the article. Can't comment on Hitchens' comparisons to
political revolutions, as I haven't been in any. And I think I've
commented on Hitchens's compulsion to slam the antiwar crowd in a
previous post.
I'd like to know how _accurate_ Hitchens' piece is, as far as actual events in Iraq are concerned. On this list, we've been discussing the attacks on American soldiers, and the occasional fuckup or two. Most of the mainstream media's been focusing on the hunt for WMDs, the attacks on American soldiers, and the bill for 87 billion samoleons. But has there been any extensive coverage of, say, the disinternment of mass graves, which Hitchens describes? Seems to me that such things ought to be considered when forming an opinion on the war.
As for that bill of 87 billion... well, I'm upset about it, but there's actually a kind of justice to it. The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein for decades, and it seems right that the U.S. had to pay to take him out. Of course, this bill doesn't get charged to the people who benefitted the most from that relationship... but perhaps that's the price Americans wind up paying for letting creeps like the Bushes gain power. (After all, we are nominally a democracy. And if one argues that Osama's the blowback from this country's foreign policy, then one ought to consider that Bush is the blowback for our nation's collective ignorance and apathy.) Perhaps that's one argument that ought to be raised; get these creeps out of office so they can take some responsibility, and we don't have to pay their fuckin' bills anymore.