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Losing the Iraq WarCan the left really want us to?

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 8, 2005, at 11:36 AM ET
Iraq: not a spectator sport Click image to expand.

Another request in my in-box, asking if I'll be interviewed about Iraq for a piece "dealing with how writers and intellectuals are dealing with the state of the war, whether it's causing depression of any sort, if people are rethinking their positions or if they simply aren't talking about it." I suppose that I'll keep on being asked this until I give the right answer, which I suspect is "Uncle."

There is a sort of unspoken feeling, underlying the entire debate on the war, that if you favored it or favor it, you stress the good news, and if you opposed or oppose it you stress the bad. I do not find myself on either side of this false dichotomy. I think that those who supported regime change should confront the idea of defeat, and what it would mean for Iraq and America and the world, every day. It is a combat defined very much by the nature of the enemy, which one might think was so obviously and palpably evil that the very thought of its victory would make any decent person shudder. It is, moreover, a critical front in a much wider struggle against a vicious and totalitarian ideology.

It never seemed to me that there was any alternative to confronting the reality of Iraq, which was already on the verge of implosion and might, if left to rot and crash, have become to the region what the Congo is to Central Africa: a vortex of chaos and misery that would draw in opportunistic interventions from Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Bad as Iraq may look now, it is nothing to what it would have become without the steadying influence of coalition forces. None of the many blunders in postwar planning make any essential difference to that conclusion. Indeed, by drawing attention to the ruined condition of the Iraqi society and its infrastructure, they serve to reinforce the point.

How can so many people watch this as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration? The United States is awash in human rights groups, feminist organizations, ecological foundations, and committees for the rights of minorities. How come there is not a huge voluntary effort to help and to publicize the efforts to find the hundreds of thousands of "missing" Iraqis, to support Iraqi women's battle against fundamentalists, to assist in the recuperation of the marsh Arab wetlands, and to underwrite the struggle of the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the Middle East? Is Abu Ghraib really the only subject that interests our humanitarians?

The New York Times ran a fascinating report (subscription only), under the byline of James Glanz, on July 8. It was a profile of Dr. Alaa Tamimi, the mayor of Baghdad, whose position it would be a gross understatement to describe as "embattled." Dr. Tamimi is a civil engineer and convinced secularist who gave up a prosperous exile in Canada to come home and help rebuild his country. He is one among millions who could emerge if it were not for the endless, pitiless torture to which the city is subjected by violent religious fascists. He is quoted as being full of ideas, of a somewhat Giuliani-like character, about zoning enforcement, garbage recycling, and zero tolerance for broken windows. If this doesn't seem quixotic enough in today's gruesome circumstances, he also has to confront religious parties on the city council and an inept central government that won't give him a serious budget.

Question: Why have several large American cities not already announced that they are going to become sister cities with Baghdad and help raise money and awareness to aid Dr. Tamimi? When I put this question to a number of serious anti-war friends, their answer was to the effect that it's the job of the administration to allocate the money, so that there's little room or need for civic action. I find this difficult to credit: For day after day last month I could not escape the news of the gigantic "Live 8" enterprise, which urged governments to do more along existing lines by way of debt relief and aid for Africa. Isn't there a single drop of solidarity and compassion left over for the people of Iraq, after three decades of tyranny, war, and sanctions and now an assault from the vilest movement on the face of the planet? Unless someone gives me a persuasive reason to think otherwise, my provisional conclusion is that the human rights and charitable "communities" have taken a pass on Iraq for political reasons that are not very creditable. And so we watch with detached curiosity, from dry land, to see whether the Iraqis will sink or swim. For shame.

******

Brief plug: The University of California Press has just published A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq. This book contains essays from the left, by myself among others, in favor of regime change and is edited by Thomas Cushman, himself editor of the Journal of Human Rights.*

Correction, Aug. 9, 2005: This article originally identified Thomas Cushman as the editor of the Human Rights Review. Cushman is editor of the Journal of Human Rights.

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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Photograph of U.S. soldier in Iraq by Muhannad Fala'ah/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

…What [Hitchens] fails to realize is that more of us might support the conflict had it not been sold under a different label ("weapons of mass destruction") and with a clear explanation of what was involved. He doesn't care that the administration lied to us, continues to lie to us, and is behaving in ways that make it clear that its real ambition is more about having power over here than freedom over there.

Shouldn't we be angered that there never was a plan for dealing with the likely messes that would come after the three-week blitz was over and the real work began? Shouldn't we be angry that there still is no such plan? Shouldn't we be appalled that the United States considers it OK to behave in ways that defy not only our own stated values (yep, it's a "values" thing) but convention as well—and by that I mean the Geneva convention. What kind of hearts and minds are we winning? Bush seems to feel it's his destiny to turn this conflict into another Vietnam.

I happen to agree that we can't afford to lose this war now that we're there. Remember Colin Powell's Pottery Barn warning [en.wikipedia.org]? But I don't see where that has to mean approval for or even support of every ham-fisted blunder this administration makes a lunge toward. Is Hitchens says that is what it takes now? Hey, I knew he liked to drink, but I didn't know Kool-Aid was his particular poison.

--rob_said_that

(To reply, click here)


Neatly put. The evil that is done in the name of bin Laden or some other Islamist leader is absolutely horrific, yet the Left (and I exclude many people on the Left who don't feel this way)absolutely ignores the impact of such violence on attempts to both build a better society and on each family of that who is blown into the next kingdom because Islamists wish to have it their way.

They want America out? If the Islamists would allow a level of peace to reign in Iraq the Americans would scoot as quickly as possible. But they don't believe we will leave and, more important, they don't want any kind of society in Iraq other than that of Baathists or fundamentalist Islamists, of which the Taliban were a good example.

Hitchens has it right. Think of what will happen if the Islamists win. Can you imagine the consequences?

--Smythe

(To reply, click here)


…Hitchens raises an interesting question about the lack of humanitarian aid there. The answer, however, is pretty straightforward. The security situation there is horrendous, and aid workers have been particularly targeted by militants. Therefore the important and greatly needed work of humanitarian groups is pretty much impossible. For instance, after a series of attacks on UN and Red Cross facilities, and repeated kidnappings/killings of aid workers, the ICRC and Doctors without Borders had to largely pull out of the country last year.

It is easy for Hitchens to sit in front of his computer railing about the absence of humanitarian groups in Iraq. Yet this absence is in no way a reflection of a lack of courage of groups such as Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross, who have for decades been in the thick of war-torn regions. It is also too dismissive to attribute this absence to political opposition of these groups. These groups have been scrupulous in avoiding political partisanship, which is essential to their operations. Both of these groups, and others I'm sure, would be there doing their important work if at all possible, and their decisions to pull out of the country were reluctant.

--Steve-R

(To reply, click here)


…Now comes Hitchens with the suggestion that so called "Leftists" don't really care about the fate of the Iraqi people, for, if they did care, they would be helping out with the environmental remediation of the Shatt al-Arab, for instance. Okay, so there's a bit of a security problem, and our great humanitarian triumph, deposing the dictatorship of Saddam, is looking more and more like the overture to the installation of a somewhat different form of tyranny, namely, Iranian-style Shi'a fundamentalism. Okay, great. I guess it's my responsibility as Leftist to help the Iraqi people obtain the Scandinavian style transparent social democracy with free cable tv and fourteen different kinds of philosophy being taught at Baghdad U. they so fervently need and desire (well, except for the whatever percentage of them who want all transactions governed by Shari'a, the institutionalization of the Burka, etc.).

Alright, fine, I'll pack up my earth mover and hop a plane to Basra, so I can start re-diggin some of those irrigation canals. Gosh, just hope I don't get arrested for violating some exclusive, no-bid contract held by Dick Cheney's pals at Brown & Root. And you can count on me, Mr. Hitchens, Yessir!, to start emailing Mr. Muqtada Al-Sadr about the importance of assuring Iraqi women the franchise in the current constitutional negotiations. Al-Sistani too! Is there a petition I need to sign? "Dear Most Reverend Imam, it has come to my attention that certain elements of the Shi'a community round about your lovely mosque in Najaf seem to be evidencing certain constitutional hesitations in connection with granting the franchise to women in your country. Well! Mr. Al-, let me just tell you how concerned I am . . . . ."

My point being: voila, the new Hitchensian/Naipalian literary paradigm -- where fiction and non-fiction have simply switched places. "Reportage" will henceforth be the genre defined by autobiographical fixations and a pure, if reasonably informed and therefore in some hypnotic way vraisemblable sort of fantasizing; and "fiction" (eg McEwan's Saturday) will become the locus of gritty-detailed, ideologically flinty or hard-headed expositions of empirically observed reality. All in service of the truth, of course…

--MarkeyHaag

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