The War in Iraq: A final discussion with Christopher Hitchens

"I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators." -Christopher Hitchens in an interview with New York Magazine, after being asked if he was a hawk. Hitchens' is a self proclaimed "liberal socialist".

Hitchens may be the only self-professing liberal who offers even a glimmer of support for the conflict in Iraq. He argues in his book, "god is Not Great" that Saddam's regime was not secular, as an endless amount of talking heads in our media might suggest, but rather religious in nature. Granted that Hitchens is hostile to the philosophy of any religion (except of course his own- see my first post on this topic), I still don't think this is the sole reason for his support of the war. He talks in his book about being friends with religious people and also stated in the New York Magazine interview that he would not mind if one of his children "found God".

So, in other words, Hitchens is not Stalinesque toward religion where he supports attacking the faithful just for...well...being the faithful. His position on Iraq intrigues me as does the opening quote.

He begins a small case (this is obviously not the focus of his book) for his perspective on the war by explaining Saddams' "religious regime":

"I shall simply say that those who regarded his regime as a 'secular' one are deluding themselves. It is true that the Ba'ath Party was founded by a man named Michel Aflaq, a sinister Christian with a sympathy for fascism, and it is also true that membership of that party was open to all religions (though its Jewish membership was, I have every reason to think, limited). However, at least since his calamitous invasion of Iran in 1979, which led to furious accusations from the Iranian theocracy that he was an 'infidel', Saddam Hussein had decked out his whole rule- which was based in any case on a tribal minority of the Sunni minority- as one of piety and jihad...Saddam had inscribed the words 'Allahuh Akhbar'- 'God is Great'- on the Iraqi flag. He had sponsored a huge international conference of holy warriors and mullahs, and maintained very warm relations with their other chief state sponsor in the region, namely the genocidal government of Sudan. He had built the largest mosque in the region, and named it the 'Mother of all Battles' mosque, complete with a Koran written in blood that he claimed to be his own. When launching his own genocidal campaign against the (mainly Sunni) people of Kurdistan- a campaign that involved the thoroughgoing use of chemical atrocity weapons and the murder and deportation of hundreds of thousands of people- he had called it 'Operation Anfal' borrowing by this term a Koranic justification- 'The Spoils' of sura 8- for despoilment and destruction of nonbelivers." (pg. 25-26)

Saddam was a monster. Make no doubt about that fact. After switching his justification for the Iraq War several times, President Bush seems to have landed on the role of our country being to remove an utter madman. The trouble becomes if the United States should remove every monster in the world but a lot of this has already been discussed.

I will say this. I disagree with Bush on several issues and I have not supported the Iraq war from the beginning. However, Bush is not the ignorant or terrible person that many liberals make him out to be. True, he has staked the entire reputation of his presidency on the Iraq war which, in retrospect, certainly does not seem like the greatest move.

Fast forward 20 years or so. What if the nation of Iraq becomes more steady and is a key ally in the middle east for the United States and other countries? What if a pluralistic democracy begins to flourish in that region? What will people say of Bush?

Will he be the leader with balls of steel, defying public opinion polls, to hold true to his convictions? I have heard so many people from both sides of the aisle lament on politicians for being "wishy washy" and changing their minds at the slightest indication of a fluctuation in public opinion polls. People's complaint about Bush is that he does NOT change. Doesn't anyone else find this ironic?

I'm trying to be fair here. I could have written another article bashing Bush and his administration but what is the point? Everyone else does that and it is relatively easy to do. I look forward to how history will remember Bush...and my prediction is, it will not be as the worst president ever (sorry to disappoint MSNBC) but of course, it definitely will not be as the best president ever.

I wonder how much people have thought through what they really think American foreign policy should do. Where should we stand? How far should we go? I will admit straight out that I haven't studied or read nearly enough on American foreign policy. The invasion of Iraq did not make sense to me because we were not attacked by them and they had not attacked another country. However, the travesty of Saddam is well documented. One really does feel sick and saddened at what this guy did to his own people...and in some cases, his own family.

"At a minimum, it can be agreed by all that the Iraqi people had endured much in the preceding thirty-five years of war and dictatorship, that the Saddam regime could not have gone on forever as an outlaw system within international law, and therefore that- whatever objections there might be to the actual means of 'regime change'- the whole society deserved a breathing space in which to consider reconstruction and reconciliation. Not one single minute of breathing space was allowed." -Hitchens (pg. 26)