Christopher Hitchens : Fallujah – A reminder of what the future might look like if we fail.

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | April 2, 2004 | Christopher Hitchens

[quidnunc]

There must be a temptation, when confronted with the Dantesque scenes from Fallujah, to surrender to something like existential despair. The mob could have cooked and eaten its victims without making things very much worse. One especially appreciated the detail of the heroes who menaced the nurses, when they came to try and remove the charred trophies.

But this "Heart of Darkness" element is part of the case for regime-change to begin with. A few more years of Saddam Hussein, or perhaps the succession of his charming sons Uday and Qusay, and whole swathes of Iraq would have looked like Fallujah. The Baathists, by playing off tribe against tribe, Arab against Kurd and Sunni against Shiite, were preparing the conditions for a Hobbesian state of affairs. Their looting and beggaring of the state and the society — something about which we now possess even more painfully exact information — was having the same effect. A broken and maimed and traumatized Iraq was in our future no matter what.

Obviously, this prospect could never have been faced with equanimity. Iraq is a regional keystone state with vast resources and many common borders. Its implosion would have created a black hole, sucking in rival and neighboring powers, tempting them with opportunist interventions and encouraging them to find ethnic and confessional proxies. And who knows what the death-throes of the regime would have been like? We are entitled, on past experience, to guess. There could have been deliberate conflagrations started in the oilfields. There might have been suicidal lunges into adjacent countries. The place would certainly have become a playground for every kind of nihilist and fundamentalist. The intellectual and professional classes, already gravely attenuated, would have been liquidated entirely.

All of this was, only just, averted. And it would be a Pangloss who said that the dangers have receded even now. But at least the international intervention came before the whole evil script of Saddam's crime family had been allowed to play out. A subsequent international intervention would have been too little and too late, and we would now being holding an inquest into who let this happen — who in other words permitted in Iraq what Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and Kofi Annan permitted in Rwanda, encouraged by the Elysée.

-snip-

[stylin_geek]

Hitchens bump.

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[risk]

A part of me wants to take the kid gloves off the Kurds.

[Travis McGee]

Scott Helvenston, Navy SEAL. R.I.P.

[PhilDragoo]

Why, uh, no, Christopher, not a temptation to surrender to existential despair, that would be Jean-Fraud Keri.

No, our desire is a straightforward One Mob-One Daisy Cutter.

[risk]

No, our desire is a straightforward One Mob-One Daisy Cutter.

Or 20. The essence of terrorism is to disguise total war. We all know that's what this is. We all know how to win a total war. Lock and load.

[SpyGuy]

The Baathists Leftists, by playing off tribe Democrats against tribe Republicans, Arab Black against Kurd White and Sunni perverts against Shiite families, were preparing the conditions for a Hobbesian state of affairs. Their looting and beggaring of the state and the society — something about which we now possess even more painfully exact information — was having the same effect. A broken and maimed and traumatized Iraq America was in our future no matter what.

[calljack]

Remember the old Star Trek episode where war was fought with computers and the casualties went into disposal chambers to avoid the "horror of war" therefore removing most of the reasons not to fight war? We have removed the practice of waging the horror of war on our enemies while concentrating on their military targets while they have concentrated on inflicting maximum horror on non-military targets. They are giving us max reasons to stop while we are giving them no reason to stop. If this fundemental difference dosen't change I don't see how we can really win.
Israel has been doing this for 30 years and it has only gotten worse.

[Domangart]

We have by now made a stockpile of pictures of these creatures. Next the section and grid search. Bend over boys.

[lainde]

bttt

[Amelia]

Hitchens.

[dennisw]

WHAT'S AT STAKE

Fallujah
A reminder of what the future might look like if we fail.

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Friday, April 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

There must be a temptation, when confronted with the Dantesque scenes from Fallujah, to surrender to something like existential despair. The mob could have cooked and eaten its victims without making things very much worse. One especially appreciated the detail of the heroes who menaced the nurses, when they came to try and remove the charred trophies.

But this "Heart of Darkness" element is part of the case for regime-change to begin with. A few more years of Saddam Hussein, or perhaps the succession of his charming sons Uday and Qusay, and whole swathes of Iraq would have looked like Fallujah. The Baathists, by playing off tribe against tribe, Arab against Kurd and Sunni against Shiite, were preparing the conditions for a Hobbesian state of affairs. Their looting and beggaring of the state and the society--something about which we now possess even more painfully exact information--was having the same effect. A broken and maimed and traumatized Iraq was in our future no matter what.

Obviously, this prospect could never have been faced with equanimity. Iraq is a regional keystone state with vast resources and many common borders. Its implosion would have created a black hole, sucking in rival and neighboring powers, tempting them with opportunist interventions and encouraging them to find ethnic and confessional proxies. And who knows what the death-throes of the regime would have been like? We are entitled, on past experience, to guess. There could have been deliberate conflagrations started in the oilfields. There might have been suicidal lunges into adjacent countries. The place would certainly have become a playground for every kind of nihilist and fundamentalist. The intellectual and professional classes, already gravely attenuated, would have been liquidated entirely.

All of this was, only just, averted. And it would be a Pangloss who said that the dangers have receded even now. But at least the international intervention came before the whole evil script of Saddam's crime family had been allowed to play out. A subsequent international intervention would have been too little and too late, and we would now being holding an inquest into who let this happen--who in other words permitted in Iraq what Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and Kofi Annan permitted in Rwanda, encouraged by the Elysée.





Prescience, though, has now become almost punishable. Thanks in part to Richard Clarke's showmanship (and to the crass ineptitude of the spokesmen for the Bush administration) it is widely considered laughable to have even thought about an Iraqi threat. Given Saddam's record in both using and concealing weapons of mass destruction, and given his complicity--at least according to Mr. Clarke--with those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and with those running Osama bin Laden's alleged poison factory in Sudan, any president who did not ask about a potential Baathist link to terrorism would be impeachably failing in his duty.
It's becoming more and more plain that the moral high ground is held by those who concluded, from the events of 1991, that it was a mistake to leave Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait. However tough that regime-change might have been, it would have spared the lives of countless Iraqis and begun the process of nation-rebuilding with 12 years' advantage, and before most of the awful damage wrought by the sanctions-plus-Saddam "solution." People like Paul Wolfowitz are even more sinister than their mocking foes believe. They were against Saddam Hussein not just in September 2001 but as far back as the 1980s. (James Mann's excellent book "Rise of the Vulcans," greatly superior to Richard Clarke's, will I hope not be eclipsed by it. It contains an account that every serious person should ponder.)

I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?





I hope I do not misrepresent my opponents, but their general view seems to be that Iraq was an elective target; a country that would not otherwise have been troubling our sleep. This ahistorical opinion makes it appear that Saddam Hussein was a new enemy, somehow chosen by shady elements within the Bush administration, instead of one of the longest-standing foes with which the United States, and indeed the international community, was faced. So, what about the "bad news" from Iraq? There was always going to be bad news from there. Credit belongs to those who accepted--can we really decently say pre-empted?--this long-term responsibility. Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand.
Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. He is writing a study of Thomas Jefferson for the "Eminent Lives" series, from HarperCollins.

[ontos-on]

People like Paul Wolfowitz are even more sinister than their mocking foes believe. They were against Saddam Hussein not just in September 2001 but as far back as the 1980s. (James Mann's excellent book "Rise of the Vulcans," greatly superior to Richard Clarke's, will I hope not be eclipsed by it. It contains an account that every serious person should ponder.)

Can anyone help me with this passage? In an article that otherwise is strong and incisive about the Iraq War, he sticks this in! Maybe my sense of irony is not warmed up yet this morning. I guess he was complimenting Wolfowitz by his prescience going back to the 1980's, and taunting the opponents of hte Iraq War by saying "you may say he is wrong and evil ["sinister"] for seeking to deal with Iraq; he wanted to do this lonmg before you dreamed of, and this shows how wrong you are to carp about Wolfowitz."

Do others agree with this interpretation?

Does anyone know the tenor of this "Rise of the Vulcans" book Hitchens speaks about?

[dennisw]

People like Paul Wolfowitz are even more sinister than their mocking foes believe..........

That passage confused me too. The column is very well written but I can't suss it out, myself.

[safeasthebanks]

I haven't read either book in question, but, yes, I believe Hitchens means this as a compliment to Wolfowitz.

[safeasthebanks]

Imagine "sinister" in quotes.

[Southflanknorthpawsis]

Thanks, Amelia.

[jokar]

BTTT

[pittsburgh gop guy]

I believe that your read is correct. Hitchins is mocking those that mock Wolfowitz.