Status Updates From Christopher Hitchens and Hi...

The more I read of Hitchens the more I find fault

Making the case that the foreign fighters in Iraq are not religious 'radicals,'—'They went because they were angered by the US military occupation, as they see it, of a Muslim country'—Cole gives himself away by his final choice of adjective. Confessional imperatives were at the very heart of the insurgency: 'The United States has [not] killed [...] many of them, though hundreds have died as suicide bombers.'

Cole lists among 'the negative foreign-policy consequences of the war' (which Hitchens has not 'in any balanced manner addressed') 'the strengthening of the Iranian position when the Shiite religious parties came to power in the Jan. 30 elections.' Does he understand the implications of this line of thought, and does he know into which school it places him?

Cole defends the antiwar bearings of Schröder and Chirac on the grounds that 'the Bush administration failed to make a convincing case to them that Iraq posed an imminent danger to Europe or the United States.' This assumes they weren't convinced on their own accounts: German intelligence predicted in 2001 that Iraq would be nuclearised within three years.

Cole: 'In fact, the secular Arab nationalist Baath state had nothing whatsoever to do with any radical Islamist movements.' It sheltered Abdul Rahman Yasin and Abu Abbas; its leader had a Qur'an indited in his own blood; he added the words 'Allahu Akbar' to the national flag; alone even among Middle-East dictators, he publicly hailed 9/11.

Malone takes exception to Hitchens's scorn for 'the Iraqi resistance [sic] and the Iranian and Libyan regimes—all of whom are implacably opposed to US interference in the region.' I mark this without comment, and comment no further on the rest of this babble.

This man is an idiot. Quoting Hitchens on Bush's golfing gaucherie,—'If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm'—Malone despairs at 'the author's betrayal of his own writings on Bill Clinton: having devoted an entire book to pillorying the former President as a war criminal and a rapist, Clinton now apparently has "charm."' The literal-mindedness meets its match in the grammar.

Oh, I do love Malone's metaphors: 'The conspicuous controversies which envelop the President and his cohorts constitute the elephant in the room which Hitchens has to squeeze past virtually every time he defends the Washington hawks.'

Scialabba criticises Hitchens for criticising Sam Husseini for pretending to know the minds of the 9/11 hijackers. This he does by quoting Michael Scheuer doing exactly the same thing. (Scheuer, who hunted Osama bin Laden for the CIA, came away from the experience lauding the enemy as 'a modern-day Saladin.')

Scialabba: 'Naomi Klein opines that since most Iraqis agree with the insurgents at least in wanting an end to the occupation, the US should end it.' No, what she opines is that the 'peace movement' ought to be making common cause with the Sadrists.

And more: 'Even stranger, it sometimes occurs to me that if he changed his opinions again and agreed with me, all his qualities would once more reverse polarity and appear in their original splendor.' Does this, or does this not, rather cheapen the rest of the essay?

'How can you not admire someone like that?' asks Scialabba. In answer he makes a seemingly unconscious and unironic admission: 'Actually, it's not so difficult, I've discovered. All the someone in question has to do is begin thinking differently from me about a few important matters, and in no time I find that his qualities have subtly metamorphosed.'