The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #142154 Message #3277949
Posted By: GUEST,josepp
21-Dec-11 - 05:21 PM
Thread Name: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
///Hitchens supported Bush's sordid little war because he felt totalitarianism is one of the greatest threats to free thinking and personal liberty and he had no idea at the time how events were going to play out, the utter ineptitude of the US and UK's policy (what of it existed).///
You obviously don't get it: after all of that happened--the torture, the thievery--Hitchens would not change his opinion. He still favored what was going on in Iraq. IOW, he's just like Bush. Just like him.
////To Hitchens, the deification of Saddam within Iraq (the cult of the dictator - one we know so well) and subsequent oppression of his people represented a greater threat than Bush did////
Well, he was wrong. Not that he'd ever admit it. Nor would those who hung on his every word. No different than dittoheads. No matter what the guy says, they'll still love him. He's their hero.
////Bush doesn't present a long-term threat because the man is such a complete fool ////
Wow. When did being a fool preclude the ability to be a long-term threat?? And you're wrong, of course, what Bush did to Iraq and to the United States--and, really, the whole world, is going to last for years.
////So the Iraq war enabled one more totalitarian dictator to be hauled over the side of the good ship Personal Freedom. Of course, the real problems with the Iraq war was that Bush et al were as immoral and corrupt as Saddam, but that wasn't Hitchens point.////
Well, golly-gee, how convenient. So I could walk up to him and say, "Hey, dickhead, your support for the Iraq War was as disastrous as the war itself--which, by the way, was illegal and immoral and as totalitarian a move that there ever was."
And he just says, "Well, that wasn't my point." Oh, well, then excuse the fuck out of me, Mr. Hitchens, sir! As usual, you're right and everybody else with a differing opinion is wrong.
////Far from being a failure of morality, Hitchens viewpoint was the war could achieve a long-term moral victory, enabling ordinary Iraqis the freedom they lacked under Saddam.////
Once again, he was wrong.
////The fact the whole enterprise was so fucked-up by neocon maniacs with an insatiable bloodlust is not Hitchen's fault///
Never said it was. I said he had no morals for supporting the Iraq War not that he was to blame for the Iraq War.
///so you might want to apportion blame where it's due: with Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and Cheney and the torturers of Abu Ghraib and the people ordering bomb strikes that have killed 95,000 people.///
I blame them entirely and consider them war criminals. I've never said anything different. I direct your attention to my earlier posts where I called Bush a war criminal because when the shoe fits...
And when you support a war criminal, I don't regard you as any better than him even if you didn't commit his crimes.
///Hitchens was right in a sense, it was the people calling the shots who were so very wrong.////
They were all wrong. No one is right in a sense. He was either right or he was wrong. He wasn't sort of right.
He chose to get into bed with that crowd because he has no moral compass. Like many sociopaths, he had the ability to make those around him think he did but, like a sociopath, his actions spoke louder than his words. He was an irresponsible drunk, a misogynist, at least a borderline racist and a sociopath with no guilt or conscience. But like many people with those traits--Bush, Cheney, etc.--somehow they end up being worshiped by large numbers of utter fools.