Today's recommended reading (especially for all of Sunday's anti-War celebrants of Neville Chamberlain Day) is by excommunicated radical-left enthusiast, but truth teller extraordinaire, Christopher Hitchens. This essay, addressed to his "dear brothers and sisters, boys and girls, comrades and friends," first appeared on Seattle's Stranger.com Web site and then was reposted on David Horowitz's FrontPageMagazine.com site under the title: "Chew On This My Leftist Comrades"
And if anyone knows the illusions, evasions and follies of today's Neville Chamberlain vanguard, it's Mr. Far Left, 'Henry Kissinger Is The Devil Incarnate!' Hitchens. Referring to the events of 9/11, Christopher Hitchens comments:
Now hear this. Ever since that morning, the United States has been at war with the forces of reaction. May I please entreat you to reread the preceding sentence? Or perhaps you will let me restate it for emphasis. The government and people of these United States are now at war with the forces of reaction.
This outcome was clearly not willed, at least on the American side. And everybody with half an education seems to know how to glibly dilute the statement. Isn't Saudi Arabia reactionary? What about Pakistani nukes? Do we bomb Sharon for his negation of Palestinian rights? Weren't we on Saddam's side when he was at his worst? (I am exempting the frantic and discredited few who think or suggest that George W. Bush fixed up the attacks to inflate the military budget and abolish the Constitution.) But however compromised and shameful the American starting point was--and I believe I could make this point stick with greater venom and better evidence than most people can muster--the above point remains untouched. The United States finds itself at war with the forces of reaction.
Knowing the blatant anti-Americanism and chronic identification of his audience with the "other" -- namely any malevolent Third World carrier movement dedicated to destroying the West and reaping mayhem in the world -- Mr. Hitchens proceeds to make his point about the forces of "reaction" (a very bad word in the left's lexicon) which America has been compelled to confront. Specifically, he reminds his audience about the Taliban's repression of music and culture, its misogynist "enslavement" of women, and the "massacre" of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan by the intolerant, ruling religious oligarchy. And for good measure, he reminds the left that they should be careful of the ideological company they keep or sympathize with, since the Islamist crowd is not opposed to "empire" (a terrible predisposition usually attributed to that contemporary colossus of imperialism, the United States of America). After all, the fanatical mullahs and pseudo mullahs of Islamofascism dream of nothing less than restoring the Golden Age of Islam when Muslims ruled a vast empire of subjugated European and Asian peoples.
Then naughty heretic that he is, cranky Christopher even reminds his ex-colleagues and comrades of the left about just how (gasp!) wrong they were about the Afghanistan War: "A year or so ago, the 'peace movement' was saying that Afghanistan could not even be approached without risking the undying enmity of the Muslim world; that the Taliban could not be bombed during Ramadan; that a humanitarian disaster would occur if the Islamic ultra-fanatics were confronted in their own lairs. Now we have an imperfect but recovering Afghanistan, with its population increased by almost two million returned refugees."
"Have you ever seen or heard any of those smart-ass critics and cynics make a self-criticism? Or recant?" heretical Hitchens asks. To the contrary, he asserts, the same useful idiots are now "lining up" to proclaim, "'Hands off Saddam Hussein,' and to make almost the same doom-laden predictions." Further, he reminds any left-leaning peace lovers still reading his long missive that:
If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the 19th province of Iraq (and based on his own recently produced evidence, Saddam Hussein would have acquired nuclear weapons). Moreover, Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority that surrounds those who intone the 'peace movement.'
Mr. Hitchens then articulately goes on to make the case for the use of armed force by the U.S. against Saddam, but I'll let you read that argument for your self..............