Cause and EffectIt's time to stop blaming the good guys for problems in Iraq.
By Christopher HitchensPosted Wednesday, July 5, 2006, at 12:39 PM ET
Another obscene video from al-Qaida, this time showing the different ways in which abducted Russian diplomatic staff can be put to death. And, as one could well expect, feeling in Russia runs high. Against the United States, that is. A resolution in parliament and statements from Russian officials place the blame on U.S. authorities for not protecting Moscow's envoys. In advance of the Group of Eight summit (the G8 supposedly being a gathering of advanced industrial democracies, even though Russia, this year's host, is neither advanced nor a democracy), Putin's ministers split the difference between the actual murderers and those who recently put an end to the noisome existence of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As if perhaps sensing that this would not quite do, the Putinistas then issued a big-mouth statement, announcing that they had instructed their security organs to use all means to track down the murderers. The empty theatricality of the second declaration only helps to underline the petty demagoguery of the earlier ones.
Out of a thesaurus of possible nominations, one would have to select George Bush's remarks about Vladimir Putin as the stupidest utterance of his entire presidency. Impressed beyond words by the fact that Putin was wearing a crucifix that had belonged to his mother and was thus a man of faith, our chief executive then burbled like a schoolgirl and said that he had looked into the man's eyes and knew he was the one to trust. (I have not checked, but surely someone can discover how many times Putin has worn that crucifix since. It could be a sort of emblem of the fatuity of the "faith-based.") Since then, Putin has been noticeable for his efforts to protect Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, the Iranian mullahs, and the Sudanese racist cleansers from any concerted action by the United Nations and has instructed his troops in Chechnya to behave in a manner that would cause a storm of international outrage if emulated by coalition forces in Iraq. In response, Chechen insurgents have committed atrocities, such as the seizure of the Moscow theater or the Beslan school hostage-taking, which nobody would be so crass as to blame on the lack of vigilance of the Russian security services.
Related in Slate
Back in 2004, President Putin attempted to give Moscow's "cockroach capitalists" a run for their money when he took on billionaire businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Sidling up to Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, and the Iranian mullahs isn't what some predicted America's new best friend would do. Let's hope Russia's security forces have improved since David Plotz's 2000 "Assessment" of the Russian army. Putin and certain others, be damned: Click here, here, here, here, and here for reasons why Hitchens does support the Iraq war.
Until 2003, things used to be pretty tame at the Russian Embassy in Baghdad. The place represented a two-way understanding whereby one side winked at sanctions-busting and the other side paid lavish bribes—vide the Volcker report on oil-for-food racketeering. Security was provided by Saddam's secret police. Nothing to complain about, really. It is, of course, true that the Iraqi government (not the coalition) has legal responsibility for the protection of diplomatic immunity, but in all countries—even peaceful ones—embassies also make provision for their own security. Yet it had to be the United States that bore responsibility on this occasion. And the new Iraqi government could use some help, which Russia has coldly declined to provide.
One wishes that the Putinist mentality was confined to the cabal of cockroach capitalists and ex-KGB men who now hold power in Moscow. But I find that there is a general willingness to commit the same misattribution of blame. The other night in New York, I was approached by someone who is very well-known (and justly renowned) as a novelist and a critic. He mentioned to me the recent kidnapping and hideous mutilation of two young soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division. I was beginning to concur with his horror and disgust when he said abruptly: "How can you support a war like that?" For a moment, I truly did not understand what he meant. But in fact I knew well enough. It was just that the transition was so swift. In a sense, the subliminal message of every bombing and torture and beheading is—"nowhow do you like your precious regime-change?"
In this week's National Review, John J. Miller contrasts the current situation in Nicaragua with the Sandinista period and writes that Daniel Ortega "nationalized Nicaragua's economy, lifted its rate of inflation to roughly 30,000 percent, cracked down on dissent, inspired the Contra resistance movement …" Just hold it right there. I didn't much like Ortega then, and I like him even less now, but the contras were being organized by the CIA in camps run by the sadistic Argentine junta long before Ortega's Nicaragua had its first election. They were also led by elements of the previous dictatorship. I gave up my campaign to have the Iraqi thugs called contrassome time ago, but I still wish it had caught on. Of course, as well as drawing on former Gauleiters, their ranks also contain the elements of a future religious dictatorship. But that doesn't much alter the case. (I was amused to find, reading a history of the period recently, that Gen. Francisco Franco's Catholic fascist and Islamist Moroccan forces in Spain were blandly called "insurgents" by the New York Times.)
Semiconsciously, though, these tirelessly wicked forces in Iraq are denied any agency of their own, and by a none-too-clever elision, their horrific actions gradually become attributable to the presence of the very force that is fighting against them. This is both dishonest and dangerous. The U.N. office in Baghdad was hit far harder than the Russian Embassy, and the reason given for the attack was that the murdered U.N. envoy had been involved in overseeing the independence of East Timor (another sad disappointment, incidentally) from Muslim Indonesia. Was that a protest against "occupation"? Whatever its disagreements over the initial confrontation may have been, the international community has a moral and legal obligation, expressed in a major U.N. resolution, to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq and to support its elected government. This cannot happen while serious powers like Russia use even their own victims to make the wrong point. And it cannot happen while so much of the intellectual and media life of this country is infected with Putinism: a nasty combination of the cynical with the unrealistic.
Cause and Effect: It's time to stop blaming the good guys for problems in Iraq.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Photograph of Vladimir Putin by Dmitry Astakhov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
COMMENTS
Remarks from the Fray:
There it is: "Stop blaming the good guys for the trouble in Iraq." The essential, vintage, o-so-familiar Hitchensian theme. The war is a conflict between "good" and "bad" guys, and it is SUFFICIENT to be "good". Competence, responsibility, intelligence, or success are not needed. [...]
Apparently Old Hitch's qualification for being good is: Better than Saddam. Writing memos that seek to justify torture and other criminal actions is therefore OK --- as long as you are not as bad as Saddam. Wow.
I believe the US entered into war to remove Saddam from power and pull the covers off of his WMD program. We did not enter Iraq to stop a sudden rise of internet beheadings originating from within its borders. The brutality of the insurgents is a response to occupation meant to elicit feelings of terror. So then, isn't the rise of these radical behaviors a direct result of our occupation?
If Mr. Hitchens is arguing that Putin should spread the blame, okay. I can buy that. I'm tired of the United States getting hanged for every sin committed in Iraq. Still, we're the chief architect of all the events that brought us to the current state of affairs.
Better we should "take it like a man" and suffer the criticism, even if lopsided and not entirely deserved.
Yes, of course there are lots of Baathist dead-enders and jihadist crackpots. But is it inconceivable that there could be among the ranks of those who want to violently remove the American occupation those who are simply moved by national pride, perhaps adjoined to outrage over certain American crimes?
Thus, by Hitchen's own logic, if there are so many as a hand full of good insurgents, that justifies the insurgency per se, because all it takes is one hero with a good intention to justify a complex military movement. Yeah sure, Abu Ghraib and Haditha were disasters, but the other military actions pursuant to our invasion and occupation were good, well intentioned and justifiable. And if some of our actions are justifiable, then all of our actions are ultimately justifiable. The good wipe the bad off the moral scorecard. Voilà. Moral equivalence.
Hitchens invents the epithet of "Putinism" to describe "so much of the intellectual and media life of this country." By this he means placing the blame on the US for every bad thing that happens in Iraq. [...]
Lumping US critics of the war with Putin is pretty despicable. To blame domestic critics of the war for the failure of major powers to assist "in the reconstruction of Iraq and to support its elected government." is outrageous. While blaming everything bad in Iraq on the US may be illogical, even hysterical, it has no practical effect on the war effort. Putinism in anyone other than Putin is irrelevant. No, the real thing hampering the war effort is the lack of tangible progress in the face of mounting body counts, misery and tens of billions of wasted dollars - everything bad in Iraq flows from that fact.
Hitchens reduces everything about Iraq to some foundational principle -- something worth fighting for. And in that world, the people who fight (and die) just don't matter that much. Not when Hitchens measures their sacrifice against the Greater Good.
And the people who have been guiding this effort? They matter even less. Hitchens ridicules Bush for perhaps being seduced by Putin's crucifix. How about Cheney's intelligence briefs? Rumsfeld's excuses? Is Bush a simpleton only in matters of his faith? Are there no consequences that jeopardize our chances of success in Iraq?
Every Hitchens Iraq defense boils down to this: the end justifies the means. Now, he seems slowly to be coming to the understanding that the means prevent his desired end. You can see it the ultimate trajectory of his characterization of Bush: the idiot who blew Iraq. The pale outline is there, the first hint of tragic lament. [...]
Maybe someday, Hitchens will realize that he was as foolish to misjudge Bush as Bush was to misjudge Putin.
There's been a lot of attention to single incidents of atrocities by American troops lately, but there is a strong sense in which the American invasion visited a vast collective atrocity on the Iraq nation and the Bush administration is responsible for that mass atrocity. Taking control of another country entails enormous responsibility. The Bush administration has failed in that responsibility and every day reminds us of the magnitude of that failure.
While I agree with Hitchens that the insurgents can't be let off the hook morally for brutal and inhuman acts, there is also the matter of cause and predictable effect that really has to be faced head-on. When your companion pokes a stick in a nearby hornets' nest and you end up covered with painful stings, do you simply curse the hornets and let your buddy off the hook?
However horrible the acts of the "insurgency"--or whatever monicker Hitch would like to put on it--the inconvenient and regrettable fact is that without the invasion and occupation, there wouldn't be an insurgency, would there? Bush and Company [...] have at the least unleashed and inflamed, and quite arguably created, the very insurgency whose very acts the few remaining warhawks now like to use as justification for having invaded to begin with. Like it or not, virtually all the violence that has occurred in the last 3 years can be attributed directly or indirectly to the invasion and occupation. It would be nice to see a few warhawks admit this, then argue that it's worth it.
Not only is it hypocritical for Putin and others to criticize the U.S. of being irresponsible and inept, but it's downright ungrateful too. Because the U.S. under this administration has made such a spectacular show of violating our country's own supposed principles that they've created an international PR catastrophe for us and provided a huge gift to them and their ilk. In effect, they've given every tin-horn dictator across the world an iron-clad excuse to avoid accountability with their own people: blame the Americans.
Maybe it's unfair, but when set yourself up as "the world's only remaining super-power," declare that "you're either with us or with the terrorists," then proceed to fib your way into an unjustifiable war, kidnap and detain people in sovereign countries and torture them in secret prisons, spy on your own people in violation of your own laws, commit murder and rape on the people you're supposed to be liberating . . . under such circumstances, you have compromised your stated moral principles and opened yourself up to charges of hypocrisy and bad faith. And everyone in the world knows it. [...]
Sure, Putin is a disgusting hypocrite, and it's galling to hear the bin Ladens and Ahmedinejads of the world wag their fingers and lecture this country about moral principles. But who did practically everything they could to fan the flames of anti-Americanism around the world, and give at least sufficient credibility to allow these people to get away with their dishonest rhetoric? Yes, they are deeply indebted to the Bush administration, and they don't even have the decency to say thank you.
The essence of the process Hitch describes, in which the "wicked forces" are "denied any agency of their own," is part of the wider problem of determinism. [...] The proponents of determinism invert morality, and blame the bleeding victims. As we compile our lists of the perpetrators responsible for these horrors, let us also remember and hold morally culpable these Perpetraitors—this excuse-making industry, so eager to give intellectual aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization."
In the morally inverted world of the determinist, the barbarian is not only excused for the worst atrocities imaginable, but the civilized are held "responsible" for anticipating what to them are both unprecedented and previously unimaginable bestial horrors perpetrated by these monsters.
Another obscene video from al-Qaida, this time showing the different ways in which abducted Russian diplomatic staff can be put to death. And, as one could well expect, feeling in Russia runs high. Against the United States, that is. A resolution in parliament and statements from Russian officials place the blame on U.S. authorities for not protecting Moscow's envoys. In advance of the Group of Eight summit (the G8 supposedly being a gathering of advanced industrial democracies, even though Russia, this year's host, is neither advanced nor a democracy), Putin's ministers split the difference between the actual murderers and those who recently put an end to the noisome existence of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As if perhaps sensing that this would not quite do, the Putinistas then issued a big-mouth statement, announcing that they had instructed their security organs to use all means to track down the murderers. The empty theatricality of the second declaration only helps to underline the petty demagoguery of the earlier ones.
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
What Obama Meant—and Didn't Mean—About "Beginning" To Withdraw in July 2011
49 Million Americans Are Hungry. What Can You Do To Help? 
Admit It, Dems: These Reform Bills Won't Control Health Care Costs
Parks and Recreation Is Now Better Than 30 Rock and The Office
Lithwick: The Supreme Court's Best Beach-House Case Ever
The Economic Reports About Christmas Shopping Are Confusing, Contradictory, and Useless
Remarks from the Fray:
There it is: "Stop blaming the good guys for the trouble in Iraq." The essential, vintage, o-so-familiar Hitchensian theme. The war is a conflict between "good" and "bad" guys, and it is SUFFICIENT to be "good". Competence, responsibility, intelligence, or success are not needed. [...]
Apparently Old Hitch's qualification for being good is: Better than Saddam. Writing memos that seek to justify torture and other criminal actions is therefore OK --- as long as you are not as bad as Saddam. Wow.
--MutatisMutandis
(To reply, click here.)
I believe the US entered into war to remove Saddam from power and pull the covers off of his WMD program. We did not enter Iraq to stop a sudden rise of internet beheadings originating from within its borders. The brutality of the insurgents is a response to occupation meant to elicit feelings of terror. So then, isn't the rise of these radical behaviors a direct result of our occupation?
--Gradys_Kitchen
(To reply, click here.)
If Mr. Hitchens is arguing that Putin should spread the blame, okay. I can buy that. I'm tired of the United States getting hanged for every sin committed in Iraq. Still, we're the chief architect of all the events that brought us to the current state of affairs.
Better we should "take it like a man" and suffer the criticism, even if lopsided and not entirely deserved.
--Arlington2
(To reply, click here.)
Yes, of course there are lots of Baathist dead-enders and jihadist crackpots. But is it inconceivable that there could be among the ranks of those who want to violently remove the American occupation those who are simply moved by national pride, perhaps adjoined to outrage over certain American crimes?
Thus, by Hitchen's own logic, if there are so many as a hand full of good insurgents, that justifies the insurgency per se, because all it takes is one hero with a good intention to justify a complex military movement. Yeah sure, Abu Ghraib and Haditha were disasters, but the other military actions pursuant to our invasion and occupation were good, well intentioned and justifiable. And if some of our actions are justifiable, then all of our actions are ultimately justifiable. The good wipe the bad off the moral scorecard. Voilà. Moral equivalence.
--MarkEHaag
(To reply, click here.)
Hitchens invents the epithet of "Putinism" to describe "so much of the intellectual and media life of this country." By this he means placing the blame on the US for every bad thing that happens in Iraq. [...]
Lumping US critics of the war with Putin is pretty despicable. To blame domestic critics of the war for the failure of major powers to assist "in the reconstruction of Iraq and to support its elected government." is outrageous. While blaming everything bad in Iraq on the US may be illogical, even hysterical, it has no practical effect on the war effort. Putinism in anyone other than Putin is irrelevant. No, the real thing hampering the war effort is the lack of tangible progress in the face of mounting body counts, misery and tens of billions of wasted dollars - everything bad in Iraq flows from that fact.
--TychoBrahe
(To reply, click here.)
Hitchens reduces everything about Iraq to some foundational principle -- something worth fighting for. And in that world, the people who fight (and die) just don't matter that much. Not when Hitchens measures their sacrifice against the Greater Good.
And the people who have been guiding this effort? They matter even less. Hitchens ridicules Bush for perhaps being seduced by Putin's crucifix. How about Cheney's intelligence briefs? Rumsfeld's excuses? Is Bush a simpleton only in matters of his faith? Are there no consequences that jeopardize our chances of success in Iraq?
Every Hitchens Iraq defense boils down to this: the end justifies the means. Now, he seems slowly to be coming to the understanding that the means prevent his desired end. You can see it the ultimate trajectory of his characterization of Bush: the idiot who blew Iraq. The pale outline is there, the first hint of tragic lament. [...]
Maybe someday, Hitchens will realize that he was as foolish to misjudge Bush as Bush was to misjudge Putin.
--heel90
(To reply, click here.)
There's been a lot of attention to single incidents of atrocities by American troops lately, but there is a strong sense in which the American invasion visited a vast collective atrocity on the Iraq nation and the Bush administration is responsible for that mass atrocity. Taking control of another country entails enormous responsibility. The Bush administration has failed in that responsibility and every day reminds us of the magnitude of that failure.
--ElephantGun
(To reply, click here.)
While I agree with Hitchens that the insurgents can't be let off the hook morally for brutal and inhuman acts, there is also the matter of cause and predictable effect that really has to be faced head-on. When your companion pokes a stick in a nearby hornets' nest and you end up covered with painful stings, do you simply curse the hornets and let your buddy off the hook?
However horrible the acts of the "insurgency"--or whatever monicker Hitch would like to put on it--the inconvenient and regrettable fact is that without the invasion and occupation, there wouldn't be an insurgency, would there? Bush and Company [...] have at the least unleashed and inflamed, and quite arguably created, the very insurgency whose very acts the few remaining warhawks now like to use as justification for having invaded to begin with. Like it or not, virtually all the violence that has occurred in the last 3 years can be attributed directly or indirectly to the invasion and occupation. It would be nice to see a few warhawks admit this, then argue that it's worth it.
--O_Hellenbach
(To reply, click here.)
Not only is it hypocritical for Putin and others to criticize the U.S. of being irresponsible and inept, but it's downright ungrateful too. Because the U.S. under this administration has made such a spectacular show of violating our country's own supposed principles that they've created an international PR catastrophe for us and provided a huge gift to them and their ilk. In effect, they've given every tin-horn dictator across the world an iron-clad excuse to avoid accountability with their own people: blame the Americans.
Maybe it's unfair, but when set yourself up as "the world's only remaining super-power," declare that "you're either with us or with the terrorists," then proceed to fib your way into an unjustifiable war, kidnap and detain people in sovereign countries and torture them in secret prisons, spy on your own people in violation of your own laws, commit murder and rape on the people you're supposed to be liberating . . . under such circumstances, you have compromised your stated moral principles and opened yourself up to charges of hypocrisy and bad faith. And everyone in the world knows it. [...]
Sure, Putin is a disgusting hypocrite, and it's galling to hear the bin Ladens and Ahmedinejads of the world wag their fingers and lecture this country about moral principles. But who did practically everything they could to fan the flames of anti-Americanism around the world, and give at least sufficient credibility to allow these people to get away with their dishonest rhetoric? Yes, they are deeply indebted to the Bush administration, and they don't even have the decency to say thank you.
--Fingerpuppet
(To reply, click here.)
The essence of the process Hitch describes, in which the "wicked forces" are "denied any agency of their own," is part of the wider problem of determinism. [...] The proponents of determinism invert morality, and blame the bleeding victims. As we compile our lists of the perpetrators responsible for these horrors, let us also remember and hold morally culpable these Perpetraitors—this excuse-making industry, so eager to give intellectual aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization."
In the morally inverted world of the determinist, the barbarian is not only excused for the worst atrocities imaginable, but the civilized are held "responsible" for anticipating what to them are both unprecedented and previously unimaginable bestial horrors perpetrated by these monsters.
--Varian
(To reply, click here.)
(7/8)