Not really, at least that's never quite how I saw it. What I get from Hitchens is a kind of "enemy of my enemy" embrace of the right, more than any serious belief in, say, prayer in schools, a ban on gay marriage, or even the complete dismembering of the welfare state. (Not trying to box Hitchens in here, he's always been an iconoclast. I think he's against abortion, for instance.) It's funny because when he left the Nation and lambasted "those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden," I actually related. But given our subsequent overreach, that remark is haunting now, and doesn't ring with the same old truth. Still there's a kind of arrogance that comes out of ideology---as a young(er) lefty, I thought I was on the side of science, truth, and honest inquiry. I actually believed that our side was not simply just, but more intelligent and more honest. Forgive me, I was in my 20s, and filled with the dumb zeal of a lover. It all came to a head with Bowling For Columbine, a "documentary," which didn't so much shift me rightward, as it made me wary of how easily the righteousness morphs into condescension.
I think when you realize your own are capable of being just as cowardly, just as dishonest as those you believe will bring about the Apocalypse, there's a tendency to turn your fire on them. You see in them, not just error, but hypocrisy. Not saying it's fair. But when the Iraq War started, I was working at the Village Voice. I wasn't a supporter, but I think a disproportionate amount of my scorn was directed at the people, nominally on my side, who I felt were pushing the discredited tactics of '68. But anger is blinding too, and thank God I had to fight with editors to get anything in the paper. One of the reasons I've gone easy on folks who were pro-war, is I know if had had my way, I would said my share of dumb shit.
I thought about this reading Hitchens' column today on McCain's houses and the distastefulness of populism. I agree with his basic point, and yet I was amazed to see him proffer this suspect chronology which features Obama supporters attacking McCain's houses and Republicans hurling the elitism charge in defense. It's true that hearing Chuck Schumer go on about McCain's $500 shoes is grating demagoguery. But if demagoguery inflames Hitchens--left-wing demagougery particularly gets him riled. I missed the Hitchens column protesting the GOP's unfortunate recasting of arugula, Honest Tea, and Hyde Park.
Look, like most journalists of my ilk, I have great, great respect for Hitchens. He was tackling Kissinger, when my only concerns were small feet, fat asses and tight jeans. And yet when I read him now, it feels like the chronicles of a jilted lover. He seems not so much a dude who believes in conservatism, as one who's deeply angry at the left. And yet anger can be as blinding as ideology. Indeed, even "the liberal who lives to expose other liberals" is a kind of ideology, no?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I think you're right. Hitchens comes across as an angry misanthrope these days. I think it didn't help matters much that few people took up his crusade against Kissinger (however, to be fair, you could turn phrase of his into "you're crazy if you think that Henry Kissinger is more dangerous than Fidel Castro (etc.)"...
I would love to read more about your particular issues with "Bowling for Columbine." I haven't seen the movie in a long time and I do remember finding the bit with Charlton Heston at the end to be a bit much. If I was asked to describe it now, I would probably argue that it made some fairly strong points about how our culture of fear drives so much of our social and political discourse.
I have certainly been critical of Moore. His sometimes gimmicky approach can certainly present the central issues debated unfairly. But I certainly have never thought of him as being any more or less guilty of such unfairness as most other political commentators.
I'm not so sure it's a move rightward, so much as it's a move toward sensibility.
It's not clear to me that Hitchens has ever really moved anywhere. He's always been a progressive,one-world interventionist. He doesn't really give a crap about domestic policy, which is why it's easy for him to sneer at populist attacks, I'd presume. He just wants everyone to shut up about the culture wars and go out there in the world and do some good. Good, in this case, meaning invading sovereign nations and dropping bombs on dictators. He's a self-righteous cowboy; always has been, always will be. Good prose style, though.
Your comments about being a younger lefty and being sure of what is right reminds me of Bob Dylan's My Back Pages:
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
"Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now."
Great. Really, really great.
The realization that the people who don't agree with your positions might actually have principled reasons for doing so is a huge insight, I find.
If it's followed by a realization that many fellow travelers might not have principled reasons, it's very easy to wonder if you're not, in fact, on the wrong side.
This phase passes, however. It's usually followed by a "pox on both your houses!" phase, which gets tiring after about a week, and then you normally end up where you began, except you argue against your opponents as if some of them might be principled.
This makes your work a better read, if you ask me.
His positions don't seem to have moved that much recently... it's just that with the Iraq war, he signed onto a foreign policy that Kissinger himself could have implemented. Much that he decried about Kissinger can be found in Cheney and Rumsfeld and it's that which is particularly odd, not that he supported ridding Iraq of Saddam.
This is an outstanding post. Every Kossack and dittohead should be forced to read it and understand it. To the point about Hitchens, he is a huge fan of Orwell and Orwell spent a lot of time criticizing his fellow leftists, especially those who supported Stalin and remained pacifist during WWII.
As a former fan, I’ve often wondered whatever DID happen with Hitchens? 'Good prose style' as NoahB says above, and erudite too!
Does Browning’s indictment of Wordsworth apply?
‘Just for a handful of silver he left us, / Just for a riband to stick in his coat.’
This (long) article from the April 26, 1999 New York Magazine is consistent with the 'deeply angry at the left' thesis: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/868/index.html
I actually believed that our side was not simply just, but more intelligent and more honest.
Well, hell, I'm almost 30 and I'm hardly convinced that isn't true.
I mean, what do we hear all the time except how liberal journalists, professors, teachers, and librarians are? AKA: the intelligent and informed?
How many studies have there been about how better informed listeners of NPR are, compared to viewers of Fox News?
Which, again, is the side that denies global warming and promotes abstinence-only education? Which is the side preferred by supply-side economists? Which is the side that tends to be more religious? Which is the side always leveling accusations of "communism" without ever having read a book by Marx?
Which is the side with open, well-adjusted gay and minority politicians, and which is the side where old men troll bathrooms for sex and molest Congressional pages?
When Bob Altemeyer developed his personality theory of authoritarianism, did he call it left-wing authoritarianism? No.
Sure, there's some bad apples on the left, too. On the left, though, they're betraying principles of liberalism. I don't understand how a perceptive person could examine the phenomenology of the American right and not see it as fundamentally malign.
The way to determine if another person is motivated by principle is to see if their actions are consistent with those principles. The right espouses personal freedom and snoops in your bedroom. The right espouses limited government and quadruples spending. The right espouses original intent and invents corporate personhood. There may very well be some on the right who are genuinely motivated by principle and not simply y list for power. But they represent a marginalized fringe group in the GOP. So why do anything but ignore them?
I'm with you on Bowling for Columbine. Never had much use for Charlton Heston, and probably disagreed with him on every issue of the day from the flag, apple pie & motherhood on up, but he came off from that exchange as a gentleman and Moore as an insolent punk. In Heston's place I'd have loosed the Rottweilers on him.
I actually believed that our side was not simply just, but more intelligent and more honest.
I know this is a periodic conversation topic on the lefty blogs, but maybe it's time to have it again: who on the right is intelligent and honest at the same time? Maybe Hitchens, but he's not a rightie down the line: sure, he might be a prowar misogynist, but he fails the God test. Who else?
After the post memory: maybe Robbie George?
Allow me to give some thoughts on Hitchens from a slightly different perspective. English is not my first language, so I may construct an odd sounding sentence here and there, and I apologize.
Also, Ta-Nehisi, I must say I really like your blog. And I enjoy your imput as an occasional blogginghead. I admire your intellectual honesty and your capability to put your fears and doubts about your blog on the line, so to speak. No need for you to be so apologetic about possible grammar mix-ups or other mistakes, and about being ignorant about certain things. You are not ignorant, other people are just hardwired differently. Let's embrace cultural diversity on many levels. Like you are hopefully embracing my input from abroad.
OK, so here's my point about Hitchens. I want to say that he's from Europe, and the left wingers of old, out of Europe, are a different story altogether. Hitchens is from Britain, and man... if you were a British lefty during the Seventies and Eighties, you were out on left field in a way that may not be conceivable to Americans. An American liberal is simply not drinking from the same well as a British, French or German socialist. Think: different paradigm.
Hitchens is not the only one who is so dismayed with the state of affairs in the world right now. Many of his contemporaries are in a state of shock about their youthfull folly, which was actually a rather grim, anti-democratic embrace of communist or Maoist totalitarian ways - if not in society as a whole, at least in their immediate surroundings. Many people in their fifties who used to be left wing ideologues loath the person they once were. Others are just uncomfortable that their former ideology has so totally gone out of fashion, but I think Hitchens' frustration and dismay are real.
This is not just a change of heart about certain ideas like public transport or big government or immigration, it is really a profound dismay at your most dearly held beliefs having been wrong and cruel all the time.
To understand this, is not possible to overestimate the influence that World War II has had on two generations of European intellectuals.(The English Channel is so narrow that I sort of lump everybody together. This may look weird from an English speaking perspective, but the differences between contemporaries across the Channel are not that big. Important texts were quickly translated etc. Also, people read texts in other languages here.)
The better world these people wanted to create has turned into a nightmare, at least in their opinion, and they are very aware of their role in the current European crisis of power and identity. Sometimes I think they are overstating their importance, but hey... they are boomers after all, right?
I sympathize with Hitchens' anti-liberal liberalism, though it definitely had more brio when it was about our response to Qutbist Salafism, than how many houses McCain has. The thing is, for an iconoclast, attacking the ideologue right is a boring, predictable, fish-barrel-bang sort of affair. What's more, if your readers skew liberal, it's the worst kind of pandering to their self-regard. On the other side, you have the unserious left of the Michael Moore variety, who somehow think their politics are entirely bulwarked by reason and refined feeling, but when you lift up the cover, you also find a lot of unexamined premises and failed ideas coated with contempt. Where's the sport in attacking members of the Christian Coalition when you can go after people with equally self-satisfied, intolerant, indefensible beliefs?
"our" side is not more honest than honest conservatives; "our" side is absolutely more honest than the right-wingers who pretend to be conservatives.
and hitchens chose to cast his lot with those clowns: because he has no sense of moderation, no judgement, no ability to clarify fine points, he joined in with the thug caucus. i will never, ever read another word that he writes and i have no respect for him, because he's smart enough to know better and chose to act out instead.
Re: he might be a prowar misogynist, but he fails the God test.
Belief in God do not a righwtinger make (see: Barak Obama, among many others).
also, atheism is not a halmark of leftwingery-- otherwise are we to claim Ayn Rand as a letist?
Nice post Daphne, thanks for sharing.
It not so odd to see a Trotskyite transmogrify from a left wing know-it-all into a right wing know-it-all.
The surprising thing is that so many on the Right would embrace a man who has written books lambasting Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa and God.
It is worth mentioning that Hitchens is a pretty spiteful atheist. I'm not a religious man, but I find his diatribes against religious institutions beyond the pale. It shows a fundamental lack of empathy, which I have always held to be the source of goodness.
"He seems not so much a dude who believes in conservatism, as one who's deeply angry at the left."
Of which he was a more-or-less-extreme member up into the Clinton-Gore years and the 2000 election, when he supported Nader. For anyone who voted for Nader to turn around and claim that liberals who disagreed with the hyperbolic, bullshit case for invading Iraq are weak on national security is like the McCainiacs claiming that Palin has a stronger national security brief than Obama because her state is near Russia.
I still enjoy reading Hitchens on literature occasionally, but this guy - while very smart, great with a cutting phrase and a fountainhead of observations and opinions on English literature - who hasn't really had a credible argument on much for most of his life. I mean, who sold a book on the Clinotn's under the title "The Worst Family" ? Jerome Corsi or Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is a career intellectual of the worst sort. Lots of folks love to hear him talk, but no one more than Hitchens himself. Norman Mailer was a more serious political analyst than Hitchens. The tell was when Hitchens started being courted as a public intellectual by the NeoCon AEI crowd.
hitchens has always been very smart and entertaining, which is a helluva lot more than i can say about most of the schlubs out there who are always dribbling on to hear themselves speak.
i stopped giving ideological labels any currency when i came back from vietnam in 1969. the anti-war dweebs and their 86 deferments gave me a hard time. the rednecks and crackers gave me a grief about vietnam vets being potheads [instead of alcoholics?] or too bad we had our hands tied. when i told them in vn i had a .50 cal for discretionary use and could call in an arty or cobra willie peter strike on where i thought there 'might' be some nva, the cracker necks said we wuz pussies, not like in ww2.
Daphne, I'm from the UK originally and I agree with your view on the European left of the 70's & 80's. When I moved to the US and began to discuss politics with my father-in-law I told him as much, that the US doesn't have a political left in comparison to Europe, all they have are centrists and extreme right wingers, the only battles are over how far to the right (of center) the country will be dragged.
Also, excellent comment and an excellent post. If only more blogs were like this one.
"I was working at the Village Voice. I wasn't a supporter, but I think a disproportionate amount of my scorn was directed at the people, nominally on my side, who I felt were pushing the discredited tactics of '68. But anger is blinding too, and thank God I had to fight with editors to get anything in the paper. One of the reasons I've gone easy on folks who were pro-war, is I know if had had my way, I would said my share of dumb shit."
So, you were unfair against the people against that opposed the war, and to make that right you overcompensate towards the people who were completely wrong on that subject.
I'm sorry but that sounds really perverse. I was against the war. Had a history based in international politics, based my arguments on the facts at hand and unfortunately I turned out completely right. I much, much rather would have been completely wrong on this subject.
However people like me were dismissed by people like you and the actual supporters. And now after years and years the people who gotten it absolutely wrong to the detriment of several millions of people including up to a million deaths are still respectfully listened too because people like you are afraid to hold them responsible because you were in the wrong as well.
If you want to atone for your avoided "dumb shit" you should not go soft on those who got theirs published. You should push harder against them to make sure that these people will never say such "dumb shit" again.
That has nothing to do with partisanship, with being blind or angry to your own side, it only has to do with not owning up to your mistakes and allowing others to continue theirs.
Cristopher Hitchins gets my blood boiling. Not only do I think he's possibly the most over-rated writer in the English language, not only do I think he's a talentless, opportunistic lush, NOT ONLY do I think he's a career embracer of bad ideas and wrong politics (a communist in 1989, a NeoCon in 2008, a Nazi in 1946?) but I think he's a cancer in political discourse. I'm pretty sure he's the first nitwit to use the phrase "existential threat" to describe Iraq prior to the war he loves so much. His imbicilic diatribes against Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa, his now completely laughable case for war crimes charges against Henry Kissinger; And the icing on the cake, his most recent anti-god screed which he's pimped mercilessly on the bombast faux-news shows. Of course there's the fifty or so articles a month he writes on such varied subjects as the martyrdom of Paul Wolfowitz and the history of the blow-job. I'm all for Obama but if McCain wants my vote for president, all he has to do is promise to revoke C-Hitch's visa and kick his ass out of the country and I'll be on the straight-talk express in a heartbeat. Cristopher Hitchins - what happens when Douche meets bag.
The thing about Hitchens, it seems to me, is he's first and foremost a polemicist. He's always looking for an intellectual fist-fight and he's not afraid to throw the first punch(admittedly sometimes below the belt --- he really, really, really wants to win).
He makes some good points (as noted in your post) he argues in good faith --- he's hardly, say, Bill Kristol. If he's now quarreling almost exclusively with the Left, and people are actually arguing with him (instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks) and considering and sharpening their thought and positions, I don't see how that's a bad thing.
We are usually smarter and more honest. That is what makes the failures more glaring.
For me was the Lamont loss in 2006. Fire Dog Lake especially was saying almost up until the very end that Lamont would win flying in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. It was after that I became more critical to the blogosphere.
Even as someone with strong left-wing sympathys, who found Hitches because I was looking for fellow lefty Clinton-haters and interventionists I'm a bit concerned that he's drifting towards the right. For me it's not in his support of the war, but his reactionary defense of the other causes of those who advocated for regime change.
I'm pro-Iraq but hat doesn't stop me from seeing how everything Bush touches turns to manure.
I also noticed at the bottom of this article that Hitch is now a Hoover media fellow....
(along with Renata Adler? wasn't she a fairly left wing New Yorker writer?)
As for liberals being the more intellectual... I wish this was true, but I've come a cross so many great conservative writers (fiction and non) and seen many well written conservative magazines over the past few years that I'm beginning to doubt that this is the case.
BTW: Growing up I always thought The Atlantic (Monthly) was a fairly liberal rag, but it's shifted to the right recently as much as Hitch (supposedly) has, has it not?
You are the f**king man, and everyone should know about it.
That is all.
No, actually, there's more.
I'm really glad to see an honest, young liberal read Hitchens on his own terms. Hatefulness and all, the man has always impressed me with his honesty. He's written a hundred times why he made every lurch and burned every bridge he did.
Respect or hate it, the man knows who he is. And that's a secular humanist who hates his enemies in the cloth more than his bad neighbors in Washington.
I think he gets it wrong about Obama. But then again, a lot of smart people over 50 do. And Hitch is one of the few who makes me question my own assumptions.
Thanks TNC, for approaching him critically, but with respect for truth.
As usual.
I just re-read a collection of Hitchens' columns and reviews from about 15 years ago called For The Sake of Argument. Amazing and powerful. The guy's brilliance and turn of phrase is literally awe-inspiring. I've also seen him address the general question this post raises head-on, and his position (notwithstanding stupid missteps like his recent Wolfowitz-praising Fighting Words entry @ Slate) is that he's hitching his wagon these days to Christianist/Israel-Uber-Alles, rogue-state rollback Neoconservatism merely as a stalking horse for his own anti-theocratic, anti-Islamocratic, anti-authoritarian purposes. I might not agree with that, and it may be that he's turned himself into a "useful idiot" for PNAC/AEI types (at least from those types' perspective), but that's his prerogative, and I'm not about to deny it to him. He's manifestly smarter than I am, after all.
Still: there's a particular brand of former "liberals" (Dennis Miller and Ron Silver are two famous examples) whose conversions are easily explained by the fact that 9/11 broke their brains. Along similar lines, Hitchens' brain seems to have been at least partly broken (perhaps sprained) by the Clintons, and it's led him to become a fellow-traveler to policies that are pretty much just fine with some of his biggest targets (Kissinger, Clintons, etc.). It's too bad, but I think it's also too early to write his obit as someone who used to be on the right side.
Finally: Nathan @ 9 pm 9/1? Your comment is stupid, stupid, stupid - even without the spelling errors. His "case" for labeling Kissinger a war criminal is not "laughable" but airtight based on publicly available information. Also, he has no "visa" to "revoke" - he's a naturalized American citizen. And Mother Theresa's opposition to family planning and willingness to accept money from the likes of Charles Keating is, in fact, morally reprehensible. Time to STFU, buddy.
For me, Hitchens will always be the guy who opposed the first Gulf War (you know, the neccessary one where Saddam had invaded Kuwait, amassed chemical weapons and nearly had nukes, and was a multilateral war with unambiguous international legitimacy) and supported the second (the unneccessary and disastrous one).
Sure, he writes well, makes some good points and has genuine principles (namely secularism and human rights), but damned if i'm ever going to trust his judgement.
Hitchens seems warped by what I believe is an over-magnification of the threat posed by Islamic extremism. (People act as if 9/11 was something new in kind when it was only unprecedented in scale* ... as if the spate of terrorism plaguing the world during the late-60s/early-70s never happened.) A small minority of minority populations who perceive themselves as unendurably oppressed will always lash out violently. But it is folly--is as idealistic as his former Nation colleagues ever were--to attempt to restructure the world socio-political order to thwart what is, and is likely to remain, a marginal threat. There are better, smarter ways (like pursuing al Qaeda, for example!), and each of them begins by being honest about its actual size.
*The wmd-terrorist link risk is an appropriate focus. (It is notable that Obama emphasized nuclear material containment immediately upon entering the US senate.) This is the kernel of truth around which neocons pursue a fantasia of their bloated, ineffectual, highly antagonistic and dangerous worldwide war on terror.
(And though Ashcroft may not be a greater menace than bin Laden, an argument could be made that overall the Bush administration's DOJ is. Do you prioritize each individual's personal safety or the freedom of the citizenry?)
Just got around to reading the Hitchens column, and I'm not sure why you claim this as evidence of a "rightward lurch". Hitchens criticizes both parties for populist attacks against the wealth of political candidates. As he says, lefties had no issue with Teresa Heinz Kerry's houses and money (and she was the second heiress Kerry married), so why the issue with Cindy McCain's?
As he says, lefties had no issue with Teresa Heinz Kerry's houses and money (and she was the second heiress Kerry married), so why the issue with Cindy McCain's?
Cuz it highlights the shamelessness of the right, to hammer a guy for marrying a rich heiress in 2004 and then, in 2008, run a guy who married a rich heiress?
Is "hoist by your own petard" a phrase that has no meaning for you and Hitchens, or something?
Chet,
Nice to see you're back after I schooled you on your misunderstanding of the Senate and the V.P.'s role in it. Since you misunderstand the point of my comment, let me try again in slo-mo for you:
If a guy criticizes both the right and the left for something (as Hitchens does), it's hard to see how this is evidence of the guy's "rightward lurch".
Nice to see you're back after I schooled you on your misunderstanding of the Senate and the V.P.'s role in it.
LOL! Is that what you think you did?
If a guy criticizes both the right and the left for something (as Hitchens does), it's hard to see how this is evidence of the guy's "rightward lurch".
Is it just that you don't understand how words like "left" and "right" specify both absolute and relative positioning?
Is it just that English isn't your native language?
I thank Hitchens for proving that the left can be just as monumentally stupid and condescending as the right when it comes to tactics and even policy. I'll even give him credit for highlighting a real alternative to the prevailing intellectual thought regarding the war on terror and some of the White House's policies.
However he's just reaching now. His role as contrarian has taken over. Comparing Obama and his wife to the racist union thugs that used to run Chicago in one of his most recent articles proves this.It seems now he just looks for arbitrary matters to make his points. He's tired. Hitchens will never be as much fun or fulfilling to read.Let's find the new Hitchens.
Thesis is right on, Hitchens' may find something of a moral alliance with neo-conservatism, and may do so for difference reasons, less for the "god is on our side" crap and more for humanitarian and political reasons; if the post-modern Left has abandoned International Liberalism and a sense of global Human Rights, then screw the contemporary Left; what's important is to not equate the custodians of Western Liberalism with Islamic fascism; the dogma that stones women, burns homosexuals, eye-for-eye Shari'a justice. Nor defend despotic regimes over decades at the expense of their secular populations, both of these key rationales of the Left deserves at least our deepest contempt and scorn. This is why I left the contemporary Left; I'm still a Liberal, a freethinker/Atheist, in short, I share the same enemies as Christopher.
By my following of Hitchens post-9/11, he seems to have been most appalled by three things from his old comrades.
1. Hitchens sang the praises of extreme leftists such as Noam Chomsky as recently as in his book "Letters to a Young Contrarian." When 9/11 hit, however, and he saw so many of these people instantly reacting to this atrocity against the West as "chickens coming home to roost," he was repulsed and realized many of the people he had thought highly of were actually rather morally repugnant.
2. When America and its coalition decided that it would no longer abide Saddam Hussein's regime in the wake of 9/11, Hitchens was appalled by how many leftists seemed most concerned about American power being dealt at least a blow if not a defeat. Hitchens wondered why leftists didn't not appear to be in solidarity with those in Iraq who wanted liberation. It often appeared (and still does appear) that many on the Left want the worst things to happen in Iraq so it makes America (and Bush) look bad.
3. Hitchens is repulsed by how many on the Left do not take Islamo-fascism (or whatever label you wanna put on it) as a serious enough threat. Hitchens champions people such as Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, who is largely ignored by the Left (why is that?). To the American Left, you'd think that Christians in the Bible Belt are the biggest threats in the world. They seem less concerned about fundamentalist Islamic extremists, who are actually trying to destroy the West and kill as many people as possible while doing so. Sometimes, Leftists seem sort of turned on by radical Islamic terrorists, not because they agree with their views but because of the "enemy of my enemies" thing.
Addtionally, I believe Hitchens understands how partisan Americans can be on both sides about military missions. Many Republicans were clearly hoping for the wrost, for example, when Clinton went after Milosevic. Just because it was a Democrat Commander in Chief! Similarly, there are a whole lot of people who seem to view the whole Iraq mission from a domestic partisan agenda.
Hitchens is not a right-winger. He's very disgusted by what he's seen from the American and European Left since 9/11. And he's wondering why they appear to want America to be dealt a defeat more than they want the IRaqi people to have a new future or the forces of Islamo-fascism to be decimated.
I guess people describe where Hitchens sits on the political spectrum in relation to his position on the Iraq war. Although I opposed the war in Iraq I do agree with Hitchens that the evil that Saddam and his ilk personify has to be confronted and somehow overthrown. One has to distinguish between the evil intentions of the Neocons, which were not concern over the welfare of the Iraqi people, and people like Hitchens who were genuinely distressed at seeing the Iraqi people under the thumb of a tyrant. I guess Hitchens felt that the only way to stop the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis by inhuman sanctions and Saddams exploitation of them was to support the neocons as they were the only people in the the world advocating Saddams removal. Im sure if people with better intentions and more concern for the Iraqis had also been advocating the overthrow of the Saddam dynasty then Hitchens would have supported them wholeheartedly. I dont blame Hitchens for the outcome of the war as he has been very critical of the tactics and policies of the neocons in their plundering of Iraq and has admitted that things were going wrong when they were. I believe it is unfair to label Hithchens as being on the right as it has always been a left wing ideal to try to make the world a better place for as many people as possible and not just a few as those on the right do. If people on the left had put forward a viable alternative to deposing Saddam over the last 3 decades as the horror unfolded under his rule and not just voiced opposition to his rule then it may have negated the need for an invasion by a criminal reckless Bush administration. I suppose in conclusion I would describe Hitchens as being very much on the left, thank evolution for that.