Reading through the most recent Fighting Words columns, one can be reasonably sure that the cancer hasn't got to Hitchipooh's brain yet, although the same cannot be vouchsafed for his best friend Martin based on that hideous heap of hagiographic hogwash that the Guardian saw fit to publish last week. And to think this is the same Martin who just ten short years ago published a reasonably lucid, erudite and, dare I say it, articulately worded collection of prose pieces entitled The War on Cliché. Reading Martin's recent drivel one can only ask "What went wrong?"
Meanwhile, Hitch is mighty unimpressed with NATO's latest feat of derring do:
"In effect, this half-baked approach leaves the initiative with Qaddafi. It also means that the mounting death rate, which recently included the lost life of my much-admired Vanity Fair colleague Tim Hetherington along with several others, is not justifiable by any commensurate military or political gains. These are lives that are being frittered away. Hetherington's last tweet described what he saw in Misurata the day before his death: "Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO." How shameful. What is utterly lacking in Libya, still, is an entrance strategy."
Besides putting Hitch squarely in the company of the next president of the United States Donald "we-should-go-in-and-take-the-oil" Trump — and before the trolls chirp in, I freely admit there is a sheet or two of toilet paper's difference in their respective positions - it also prompts the inevitable rejoinder, "Just like yours, Hitchens! Just like yours!" As plump and pampered as any Nero, Christopher has spent the last ten years frittering while the New Rome has been barbecuing itself, not to mention half of Ummah Wahida, to a crisp. What an artist dies in him? Let me give you a clue. It begins with a "P" and ends with soiled underwear.
In other news, could Hitch be implicated in that Arizona "honor killing"? Probably not, but the implications are traceable to anyone who cares to join the dots. Iraqi immigrant to Freedom's Shore Faleh Hassan Almalek apparently ran down his rebellious 20-year-old daughter because he couldn't accept her disgracing of the family by adopting licentious western ways. How shameful. And yet if Hitch hadn't launched the Glorious War in the first place, the Almaleks would in all probability be running their own kebab stand or selling trinkets to the tourists in Saddam City and young Noor would have been obediently espoused to her second cousin twice removed, as indeed she is in a parallel universe where Al Gore got elected and Saddam Hussein received a Nobel Peace Prize for not making war anymore.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.....
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Amis salutes Hitch's courage, his rhetorical genius, his indefatigability
Unless they know something we don't, the hacks at the Guardian appear to have run Martin Amis's obituary of Christopher Hitchens a little ahead of time. It's an interesting read, sort of, pervaded more by praise than burial, and with a delightful final paragraph that mixes one part Arabian Knights with five parts Carl Sagan, and with just a dash of Bladerunner in there for the real cognoscenti.
Anyway, we do know what is going to happen to you, and to everyone else who will ever live on this planet. Your corporeal existence, O Hitch, derives from the elements released by supernovae, by exploding stars. Stellar fire was your womb, and stellar fire will be your grave: a just course for one who has always blazed so very brightly. The parent star, that steady-state H-bomb we call the sun, will eventually turn from yellow dwarf to red giant, and will swell out to consume what is left of us, about six billion years from now.
Or, as Joni Mitchell, a true artist, once put it:
We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil's bargain And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, and Christopher Hitchens, the former man of principle, put Hitchens Watch to sleep with their theological debate several months ago. Despite their philosophical differences, Hitchens has continued to defend Blair for his participation in wars of imperial aggression in the Muslim world. Before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, Hitchens recently wrote, “the wealth and people of Iraq were the abused private property of Saddam Hussein and his crime family.” The contempt that the world has for Blair somehow escapes Hitchens’s comprehension, now that Hussein is gone:
“How can anybody with a sense of history not grant Blair some portion of credit for this? And how can anybody with a tincture of moral sense go into a paroxysm and yell that it is he who is the war criminal? It is as if all the civilians murdered by al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be charged to his account. This is the chaotic mentality of Julian Assange and his groupies.”
Putting aside the fact that no one at Hitchens Watch has slept with Assange, Blair should also be granted “some portion of credit” for what has gone wrong in Iraq. According to The Lancet, the esteemed British medical journal, more than 600,000 Iraqis died between the invasion in March 2003 and June 2006.
Compounding these horrifying statistics, British pollsters at Opinion Research Business calculated in 2008 that more than one million Iraqi civilians had died since the war began.
Even if the fanboys and Hitch hens accept these numbers, they may claim that these unfortunate Iraqis would have perished at the hands of Hussein, anyway. Notwithstanding the terror of the former regime, I would advise the fanboys and Hitch hens to consult the article in The Lancet: “From January, 2002, until the invasion in 2003, virtually all deaths in Iraq were from non-violent causes.”
Iraqis who have murdered their compatriots would never have had an opportunity to exploit without the destabilizing effects of the Anglo-American operation on their country. So, why did Blair join President George W. Bush in this destructive enterprise? Did he do so for moral reasons, as Hitchens claims?
I would like to thank Mark for sharing an April 19 article from the British newspaper The Independent. In the article, reporter Paul Bignell contrasted the public statements of the British government with the documentary record. Shortly before the war began, Blair officially commented:
“Let me just deal with this oil thing because…the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It’s not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons…”
British Petroleum, wildlife’s best friend, also denied a strong interest in Iraqi oil. Months before this official denial, however, the British Foreign Office met with BP at least five times. In the minutes of one meeting, the Foreign office noted:
“Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous…”
The memorandum from a similar meeting acknowledged that the Foreign Office “was determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq.”
Actually, it is not news that Blair participated in an unwarranted intervention under false pretenses. As an issue, weapons of mass destruction did not weigh on Blair’s mind at all. I would urge all visitors to Hitchens Watch to read Barry M. Lando’s Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, From Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush. Pages 220-221 covered the Washington visit of Richard Dearlove, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, in 2002. In his memorandum to Blair, Dearlove observed:
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy….It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capacity was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.”
Since Blair realized that Iraq presented no military threat to the international community, oil had to be his chief motivation. Hitchens must know this.
If anyone cares, Christopher Hitchens turned 62 on Wednesday, April 13. Once again, he has appeared on television to share his endless fascination with himself, this time with a British audience.
Despite the denials of the fanboys and Hitch hens, Hitchens Watch recently proved that Hitchens is a self-confessed neoconservative. Now, Hitchens Watch has proved it once again! In the British interview, Hitchens accepted the label neoconservative:
“If the majority of the left in the world, and actually the majority of liberals too, decides that they think Bush is a greater enemy than Saddam Hussein, well, that’s what the left now thinks. They can leave me out of that, completely. I won’t quarrel on that point. I’d rather be called a neoconservative at that stage.” (5:09)
We have all heard Hitchens’s political views before, but the final third of the interview was more interesting because he talked about his brother, Peter, who is a fascinating figure in his own right: “I am sure I can remember telling him he was adopted…with a reasonable chance that he might believe it.” I suspect that Peter wanted to believe it, for who would desire a blood connection to such a detestable figure?
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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