What a strange bird the Brit emigrant - Christopher Hitchens is! He is, undoubtedly, a talented wordsmith, yet he continues to waste his assets defending the indefensible - the Iraqi War! On Aug. 31, 2005, he wrote a very long, I mean a very long, probably 3,000-word rant, which was published in Rupert Murdock’s rag, the NY Post. The spiel, full of ad hominem attacks, and even had a drawn out title to accompany it: “A War to be Proud Of: The Case for Overthrowing Saddam that the Bushies Can’t Seem to Make.” (1)

Hitchens has been acting as an insufferable pimp for the Bush-Cheney Gang, and particularly, for George W. Bush’s poodle, the UK’s Prime Minister. What he is attempting to do is to legitimize the Iraqi War by proving that Saddam Hussein was a thug and deserved to be deposed by a military invasion. Really!

Poor Hitchens! Didn’t he know that the world has long since conceded that Hussein was a thug! In fact, for many years, he was a “thugee” for the U.S.! I mean, who do you think helped to arm Iraq in its costly and bitter eight-year war (1980-1988) with Iran? The good old USA, that’s who! What the deluded Hitchens overlooked is this salient fact: Regime change is not a legal cause for war under International Law. Period! (2) And, this is why the Downing St. Memos, which Hitchens deliberately failed to mention in his pitiful apology for the conflict, are so important. They prove beyond cavil that, “The intelligence and the facts were being ‘fixed’ around the policy,” in order to justify a blatantly unlawful U.S./UK military conflict with Iraq. In short, the immoral and unjust war with Iraq was based on a pack of rotten lies! (3)

Hitchens declared, as only an ex-Lefty, Neocon and true Struassian (4) believer could: “The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting from that low, dishonest decade (he’s talking about the 90s) came from Tony Blair in Chicago, in 1999...So far from being an American ‘poodle,’ as his foes like to sneer, Blair had in fact leaned on President Bill Clinton over Kosovo and was insisting on the importance of Iraq while George Bush was still an isolationist from Texas.” The groveling continues with this woozy observation: “Notwithstanding Blair’s prescience and principle...I am one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden did us all a service, and holy war a great disservice, by his mad decision to assault the American homeland four years ago. Had he not made this world-historical mistake, we would have been unable to add a Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to our list of threats we failed to recognize in time...The great thing about Blair’s 1999 speech was that it asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the added reason that such coexistence is not desirable either,” Hitchens solemnly pontificated.

When I got done laboring through Hitchens’ polemic, the thought struck me that maybe he got paid by Murdock for his onslaught by the number of words in it! Otherwise, he may have honestly believed that if you pen a piece supporting the war in Iraq, like Henry “Iago” Kissinger often does from time to time, that the length of the article will compensate for the lack of any fact-filled arguments to support it. Then, I had another brain storm! Just maybe, Hitchens was trying to slime his way into a British knighthood and/or a royal sinecure of some kind by shamelessly pandering to Bush’s poodle - Blair? It wouldn’t be the first time a writer of note whored himself!

A 54-year old chain smoker, Hitchens’ main claim to infamy is that he once wrote an extremely controversial pamphlet, “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice,” in which he denounced the highly-revered nun as a pious fraud. For that alone, he probably bought himself a one-way ticket to hell. Hitchens, a devout atheist, accused her of running a “cult,” which promoted suffering, but did little to help those truly in need. The Vatican, ignoring his vicious indictment, has since seen fit to label Mother Teresa of Calcutta as “Blessed.” This is one of the first steps in a long process towards her being officially named as a saint of the Roman Church. (5) To be balanced, Hitchens, has also written, at least, one excellent tome. It’s entitled, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” In it, he accused Richard Nixon’s ex-Secretary of State of being a “war criminal.”

Naturally, Hitchens wouldn’t be the loathsome Hitchens that we have all come to so roundly despise, if he didn’t take another cheap shot at the growing influence of the Anti-War Movement in this country, and at its leading symbolic figure, the gutsy Cindy Sheehan. After going on, ad nauseam, about the importance of the 9/11 tragedy to the evolution of his half-demented psyche, he pathetically whined, “It is exactly this point that makes nonsense of the sob-sister tripe pumped out by the Cindy Sheehan circus and its surrogates.” What, Hitchensian rubbish!

But Hitchens wasn’t finished. He actually tried to justify the sadistic torture that had occurred post-Saddam Hussein’s regime at Abu Ghraib by arguing that it was worse before March 20, 2003. He wrote, “Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad.” Isn’t this like saying because Torturer “A” regularly put his victims’ eyes out, that Torturer “B” is a much better fellow, since he limited his cruelty to only degrading his chained victims by parading them around naked before growling, salivating dogs? Of course, Hitchens wouldn’t dare make such a spurious defense, if he, or a member of his immediate family, were one of those post-Saddam victims at Abu Ghraib.

I sense a desperation in this latest prose offering of Hitchens - a lackey for the U.S.’ and UK’s War Parties. Maybe, he should try again? How about a 6,000-word rant? If he does, at least, percentage wise, he might get one or two points right in the process. In this effort, however, the only thing that Hitchens has proven is that he’s a very windy guy, with a pro-Iraqi War ax to grind, but without anything of real substance to say to the readers. (6)

Notes:

1. New York Post, 08/31/05, “A War to be Proud Of” by Christopher Hitchens.
2. www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1592724,00.html
3. www.afterdowningstreet.org/
4. www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo80.html
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa
6. The splendid British MP and anti-Iraqi War activist, George Galloway, will debate Christopher Hitchens, in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24, 2005, at 7PM. Details TBA.

© William Hughes 2005.

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘’No’ to the War Party” (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes-AT-comcast.net.