A War to Be Proud Of

The Weekly Standard ^ | Sept 5 2005 Edition of the Weekly Standard | Christopher Hitchens

[stylin_geek]

I know hardly anybody who comes out of this examination with complete credit. There were neoconservatives who jeered at Rushdie in 1989 and who couldn't see the point when Sarajevo faced obliteration in 1992. There were leftist humanitarians and radicals who rallied to Rushdie and called for solidarity with Bosnia, but who--perhaps because of a bad conscience about Palestine--couldn't face a confrontation with Saddam Hussein even when he annexed a neighbor state that was a full member of the Arab League and of the U.N. (I suppose I have to admit that I was for a time a member of that second group.) But there were consistencies, too. French statecraft, for example, was uniformly hostile to any resistance to any aggression, and Paris even sent troops to rescue its filthy clientele in Rwanda. And some on the hard left and the brute right were also opposed to any exercise, for any reason, of American military force.

The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting from that low, dishonest decade came from Tony Blair when he spoke in Chicago in 1999. Welcoming the defeat and overthrow of Milosevic after the Kosovo intervention, he warned against any self-satisfaction and drew attention to an inescapable confrontation that was coming with Saddam Hussein. So far from being an American "poodle," as his taunting and ignorant foes like to sneer, Blair had in fact leaned on Clinton over Kosovo and was insisting on the importance of Iraq while George Bush was still an isolationist governor of Texas.

[stylin_geek]

Key paragraph in article:

I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver.

[misterrob]

Great read. He places a context on the current war that few can.

[Restorer]

I really, really wish Chris Hitchens and/or Mark Steyn wrote GWB's speeches.

[.cnI redruM]

It's a shame were reduced to having an avowed socialist have to explain to 49% of our population the fundamental differences between right and wrong.

[steel_resolve]

Wow. He says it better than almost anyone. EVERY liberal should be forced to read this. Twice.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran------not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism.

As far as France & Germany go, I continue to boycott them. (I'm surprised that Rush went to France on his recent vacation.)

[MNJohnnie]

It shames me that a Leftist like Hitchens does so much better at explaining the war then so many supposedly "conservative" American pundits. Thank God Hitchens hasn't been infected with the "Why isn't Bush doing something" virus like so many American commentators are

[kellynla]

BTTT

[baseballmom]

BTTT

[Chena]

BUMP