Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War
Entry 17:
Slate turns 10 this week, and to celebrate the anniversary, we've dug into the archives and resurrected a few favorite pieces. Some of the pieces come from The Best of Slate: A 10th Anniversary Anthology, which was published this month. Others, including this piece, we chose because they highlight what Slatecan do as an online magazine that print magazines, newspapers, television, and radio can't. These pieces mix media, promote interactivity, show off the conversational immediacy of the Web, or otherwise take advantage of the medium. You can see a list of all the republished pieces, as well as everything else related to the anniversary, here. This dialogue was originally posted Jan. 12-16, 2004.
Christopher Hitchens' historical analogy—Saddam is to Osama as Stalin is to Hitler (or should it be "as Hitler is to Stalin"?)—is more than a bit strained. But if the comparison is valid, then it follows that invading Iraq in response to 9/11 was like invading the Soviet Union in response to Nazi Germany's aggression against Czechoslovakia. Christopher also knows better than to accuse me of endorsing, as he puts it, "any policy that can be guaranteed as a painless victory in advance." As he well knows from our conversations at the time, I was (and remain) an avid supporter of the war in Afghanistan, which—given the Soviet and British experiences in that country over the years—was by no means foreseen (by me, him, or anybody else) as a sure thing.
Paul Berman is the author ofTerror and Liberalismand The Passion of Joschka Fischer. Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and most recently the author ofLongitudes and Attitudes. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a regular contributor to Slate. Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate and is the author ofThe Wizards of Armageddon. George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where his article about the occupation recently appeared. He is working on a book about America in Iraq. Kenneth M. Pollack is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. Jacob Weisberg is editor of Slate and co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, ofIn an Uncertain World. Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International and the author ofThe Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.