JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVERS. posted by Richard Seymour

The Late Christopher Hitchens has had a book published under two different guises. One, the American version, is a triumphalist neocon story of the West's civilising mission in Iraq. The other, although it has all the same words on the inside, is carefully prepared for the British market. So that while in America, his book is called "The Long Short War; the delayed liberation of Iraq", in Britain it gets the more neutral title "Regime Change". The blurb offers only hints as to what awaits the reader - "Christopher Hitchens cuts through the spin and slogans", "was Tony Blair really a poodle, or is he a principled man?" etc...

For some odd reason, which he has yet to satisfactorily explain, Christopher Hitchens does not read my online writings or consult me before unleashing another torrent of drivel on the world. So, being the helpful individual I am, I thought I would bring it to his attention that he has repeated several false arguments, 'casuistries' to use his favoured term, and also factual inaccuracies from a previously published essay for 'The Stranger', which I already pointed out. Tsk, tsk. If only the Bitchin Hitchens listened.

First of all, we are again treated to the glorious presumption, plastered up and down his essays and scribbled between the lines in demented prose, that the US means to give the Iraqis democracy. He doesn't make an argument for this, he just blandly asserts it.

He often argues that "if the counsel of the peaceniks had been listened to", some awful thing would have happened. In this connection, let us remember the warniks' path after a successful slaughter in the Gulf War which killed between 100,000 and 250,000 people depending which estimates you accept. The Shi'ites, heeding Bush's call to rise up against Saddam, took control of most provinces in Iraq, and were well on their way to a victory over the Ba'athist regime. The US and its allies decided to block this revolt, in various ways. The result was many of the 'mass graves' that are today being discovered perpetually by a fearless media as if to amplify the essential justice of our later intervention. I noted this before, but again Hitchens seems not to have noticed:

"Leaving such mundane considerations as the
motives of the United States aside - because,
remember, their motives may be blemished
even in 'good wars' - we might say a few words
about the likely result of any war. Presumably,
Hitchens would have us believe
that there will be a stable, peaceful democracy
in Iraq. Well, he restricts himself to the 'slim'
hope that the Iraqi regime
will be 'better and safer'. See, that's the thing
with these relative terms. Better and safer could
mean many many things.
It could, for example, mean a government of Tommy
Franks - why not? If the Kosovars can be run by Paddy
Ashdown, why can't
the Iraqis make do with Franks? It could mean a
coalition government of US proxies, it could mean
a protectorate, it could
mean a lot of things. Will it mean democracy?
Not if there is the slightest chance that a Nasser
will be elected and nationalise
the oil supply. Not either if there is a chance
that the Shia majority will vote for their own
Shi'ite parties and align with
Iran - itself, remember, a great prong on the
trident of evil. There would seem little reward
in store for the Iraqis for
their patience while being blown to bits.
And, of course, Brent Scowcroft admitted at the
time of the first Iraq war that when George Bush
called for 'the Iraqi military
and the Iraqi people' to rise against Saddam, the
US actually meant a coup, because it was presumed
that a popular uprising
would end with a pro-Iranian government:
'We clearly would have preferred a coup. There's no question about that.' (Interview
on ABC news 26 June 1997 quoted in Sarah Graham-Brown,
Sanctioning Saddam. The Politics of Intervention in Iraq
(London: I.B. Tauris,1999), p. 19.)
This would explain why General Schwarzkopf
allowed Iraq to fly helicopter gunships in
areas with no coalition forces, effectively freeing them
up to crush the uprising. And General Sir Peter de la Billiere
obviously understood
this when he said: "The Iraqis were responsible
for establishing law and order. You could not administer
the country without using the helicopters." (Ibid.)
John Major put the matter even more succinctly:
"I don't recall asking the Kurds to mount
this particular insurrection.We hope very much
that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein."
(John Major on ITN, 4 April 1991)

An important history lesson. The Iraqis have every reason to hate the Americans and the British. The Americans therefore have every reason to fear a state representing the majority of Iraqis because it would, it is now self-evident, align with its co-religionists in Iran. The story of liberation is proving to be another "quagmire" .

Another seminal moment of learning could have come for Hitchens had he taken my warnings about his assertions on Saddam's misadventures with oil and a box of matches:

"At any rate, one thing Hitchens does agree with
antiwar cynics on is this - the war is about oil.
"OF COURSE it's about oil, stupid." We are told.
And if you think we shouldn't have a war for the
defense of oil, Hitchens will want to know why you
think oil resources aren't worth protecting. Well?
Isn't oil something precious to be defended for the
sake of our futureand well-being? Particularly if its
under the control of a dangerous and unstable
despot? And don't we remember how cruelly
Saddam ignited the oilfields of Kuwait while
retreating during the last Gulf War and flooded
waterways with fire and pollution?
If you say that Hussein could well do all of
that if attacked again, then Hitchens has news
for you - he did it under an international
guarantee while retreating. So there. He was
out of the war and just did it out of spite.
Except that it is simply untrue.
If Hitchens were to read this, his ears would
bleed at the sememe carried in 'untrue'. This
is a man who, after all, knows
more about the state of the world than most of
us. How could he say something untrue? Well it
is. The first oil slicks were
reported on January 24th, day nine of Gulf Wars: Episode One.
By February 12th, officials had estimated that
the cost of cleaning
the slick that was by then licking the coast of
Saudi Arabia and causing serious problems would be
$ 1 billion. By February 22nd, Bush was condemning
Iraq's 'scorched earth' destruction of Kuwaiti oil
fields. On Saturday 25th February, Iraq announced
that it was withdrawing from Kuwait in accord with
the terms of a Soviet peace deal.

So, if Hitchens' point is that Iraq 'done it before
and would do it again' - they may do, IF ATTACKED.
And if his point is to say that oil is a material
worth fighting for - something he ironically denied
in the LRB debate - then perhaps he should
be honest and say that it is a material worth killing
for. "

Hitchens repeats his untruth, and supplements it with the thought that the Left were 'right' after all, but not in the way it imagined. There was no war!

Well, Mr Hitchens, you too are right, but not in the way you think. You see, to quote Bill Hicks , "a war is where TWO armies are fighting". So, strictly speaking, the war didn't began until after the occupation and the staged toppling of Saddam's statue.

He also repeats the claim that the Kurdish state was set up as a safe haven for the Kurds. He should have paid attention. This will bring his final grade down several notches:

"Would we leftists lift the no-fly zones which are there, apparently, to protect the Kurds? If we are against war, we must
surely oppose this war measure too? This point would be a good deal more impressive if the United States hadn't spent the
last decade thrusting billions of dollars worth of armaments at Turkey so that they could brutalise the Kurds - murder, rape,
gassing, shootings, torture, burning and dismemberment. 75% of Turkey's arms came from the US while it conducted this war.
Some smartass cynics have suggested that the real role of the no-fly zones was to keep the Kurds in Iraq, (not have them spilling
into Turkey), even if that put their safety in jeopardy.
'The logic of the longer-term response to the refugee crisis was largely dictated by Turkey. It wanted the Kurds off Turkish
soil as soon as possible, but not into a separate Kurdish state. The only alternative was some guarantee of safety for
the
Kurds within Iraqi borders, as [Turkish] President [Turgut] Ozal pointed out: "We have to get [the Kurds] better land
under
UN controland to put those people in the Iraqi territory and take care of them." (Lawrence Freedman and Efraim
Karsh,
The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991.) Well! Presumably we must support no-fly zones and congratulate the humanitarianism not only
of the US, but also of Turkey, whom we had mistaken for an enemy of the Kurds.

US Assistant Secretary of State Robert H. Pelletreau under Clinton, in response to the question "Has our policy ever
said
that we would create a safe haven in the north?", was blunt: "That has not been the policy of this administration.
There may
have been some statements in the previous one." (Quoted in Graham-Brown, op cit). One Pentagon spokesman insisted "The
purpose
of establishing a no-fly zone - and I would emphasise it's a no-fly zone, not a security zone - is to ensure the safety of
coalition aircraft monitoring compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 688." (Ibid.) And again, Brent Scowcroft
is there to set us straight - 'Without Turkey factored in, with just television pictures, I don't know what our response would
have been. We were very sensitive to Turkey's anxiety about allowing the Kurds to stay. That was fundamentally what motivated
us'. (Ibid.)

Perhaps we could cynically support these no-fly zones if it at least meant that there was a side-effect of benefitting the
Kurds. But since the Iraqi regime has effectively been able to re-take the South, and has operated successfully in the North
where it wants to, one wonders what effect it has had. Add to this the fact that Turkey itself conducted operations in the
northern no-fly zone in 1992, and it must be obvious to all except the most genetically myopic observer that there is no concern
at all for the Kurds in these no-fly zones, and no benefit at all to them. (Voices in the Wildnerness UK (VIWUK), Iraq Crisis
March 2001 http://www.viwuk.freeserve.co.uk/library/crisis2001.html)"

It seems the Late Christopher Hitchens has choked his liver on booze and his brain on 'contrarianism'. And, after reading his pitiful apologetics for the War on Terror, you will need a drink or two.