Christopher Hitchens: To invoke Vietnam was a blunder

[major.tom]

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At first I thought he might be changing his tune, but sadly not. Hitchens still clings to the nobility of ousting a dictator and lauds the Kurdish "freedom fighters."

There's a better critique of the Iraq/Vietnam comparison here:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3352/

[Salim201]

how on earth is the war in Iraq not at best a "titanic blunder and at worst a campaign of atrocity and aggression", as in Vietnam!

[mickyv]

"Hitchens still clings to the nobility of ousting a dictator and lauds the Kurdish "freedom fighters."

Indeed, his Kurdish “freedom fighters” are seemingly his last fig-leaf in his justification for supporting the War Crimes against Iraq. Where is his support for the Kurds in Turkey; he was cheering the US planes flying out of Incerlik to bomb Iraq, bur oddly very silent about the Turkish planes flying out of the same Base, at the time time, to bomb the Turkish Kurds, and even actually making crossings into Iraq to bomb “PKK Terrorists”, which are of course the same people as his “freedom fighters” ?!

Indeed throughout most of the 1980’s when tens of thousands of Turkish Kurds were killed by the Turkish Military, including the razing to the ground of 30,000 Kurdish villages; oppression that easily matches if not out does Saddam’s own oppression of Iraqis Kurds; Hitchens was oddly silent then, as he is now about the plight of the Kurds in Turkey; it seems only Kurds in Iraq are worth lauding. He must be in a bit of a predicament now that Turkey is openly & regularly sending in their Army into Iraq to kill "terrorist" Kurds; so often so that even the Iraqi Puppet “Government” have complained about Turkey’s actions.

Still we cannot expect consistency from irrational moral bankrupts such as Hitchens, who seemingly because of one single act (9/11), have become the polar-opposites of everything they stood for before. What interests me is this; was Iislamophobia a latent deeply suppressed irrationality, which was sparked into life by 9/11; or did witnessing “Westerners” being murdered & leaping to their deaths that fateful day, really unhinged certain people’s minds, so that an irrationality such as Islamophobia became a necessary & psychological prop reaction; ie Did 9/11 cause Islamophobia in Hitchens case (& many others), or did it just provide an outlet for an inherent existing prejudice ? Perhaps his obvious hatred of Religion is an indication of the latter. Anyhow I wondered how he squares his hatred of Islamic “Extremism” with his lauding of his Kurdish “Freedom Fighters”, being as “Honour killings” & killing of atheist Communist converts are very prevalent within Kurdish communities.

[archie_f]

Hitchens is becoming a trifle nervous about his vociferous support for the neo-con inspired war in Iraq. He did not expect that Iraq would become the quagmire that it has become. His defence of Bush and co. is starting to waiver and therefore his first criticism of his hero, Bush. Like most even ordinary people he can clearly see the writing is on the wall-that the war is unwinnable and that history will be harsh in its judgement about his support f0r the Bush and Blair driven war. The deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis will come to haunt him very soon and his claim to fame will forever be his stance of support of the War in Iraq.
Most of his justifications for his support of this war are as hollow as the lies Bush and co. used to invade Iraq, a fact which almost the whole world now knows. I hope that this armchair warrior will have the decency to admit, even only to himself, that what has been done to the Iraqis dwarfs anything that Saddam Hussein ever did. I suppose that he can take some comfort in the fact that, being an atheist, he will not have to account for his deeds nor receive the punishment he deserves in any after-life.

"Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere" Martin Luther King

[Salim201]

hear hear, very well said!