freecounterpoint: Hitchens Missing an Obvious Point

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Hitchens Missing an Obvious Point

Read the comments too. They manage to be stupider than Hitchens, except one that I copy into the comments.

14 comments:

Mr roT said...: Christopher Hitchen's piece decrying President Bush's analogy of a US withdrawal from Iraq to the US withdrawal from Vietnam is an interesting exercise in compare and constrast.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hitchens, whose writing I otherwise admire greatly, has completely evaded confronting President Bush's real point.

President Bush compared the aftermath of Vietnam to the aftermath of Iraq - if we were to pull out. Mr. Hitchens provides 13 numbered paragraphs of comparison, all of which focus on the conflict in Vietnam prior to U.S. withdrawal, and which fail to squarely address the comparison of the AFTERMATH of Vietnam to the potential aftermath of Iraq (if we pull out).

Mr. Hitchens briefly addresses the real comparison toward the end of his piece, but he glosses over the oppression and suffering that ensued from our withdrawal from Vietnam, and he fails to consider the possibility that the North Vietnamese might not have conquered the South if we had allowed Gen. Creighton's increasingly successful counter insurgency campaign to continue or even simply provided material support to the South after withdrawing our troops.

Mr. Hitchen's recounting of Vietnamese history prior to our withdrawal is a ridiculous whitewash. He blithely states that the country was trying to reunite, as though the US stood athwart reconciliation between North and South. The truth is that the North was a communist state seeking to conquer the non-communist South.

I wonder if Mr. Hitchen's pique at President Bush's use of the Vietnam analogy stems from Mr. Hitchen's position during the Vietnam era (and since). His lionization of the North Vietnamese and castigation of the U.S. role in that war was clearly wrong in hindsight. He doesn't want to admit that the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam resulted in catastrophic consequences not just for U.S. credibility in foreign affairs, but also the murder, torture, and repression of millions. So he glosses over the aftermath of Vietnam and doesn't like it when President Bush underscores just how murderous and evil the victors were in that war (the victors that he supported and now defends).

In any event -- this is all a sideshow. The fact is that Iraq is an important front in the overall war against Islamic Jihadis. We need to win it, and do so decisively.

The West needs to understand that the real analogy is that the Islamist fascists are similar to Hitler's minions during the mid 1930s and they need to be stopped now before they grow stronger or cause untold destruction with today's modern weapons. The Jihadist ideology is risible -- or would be so if these idiots were they not so murderous and evil in their actions.

I know Mr. Hitchens is on the right side of the conflict with the Jihadis. But I wish he wouldn't defend the North Vietnamese communists, who were equally evil and murderous.; 8/26/2007 1:29 PM
Mr roT said...: [LassieMan
August 26, 2007 2:18 AM]; 8/26/2007 1:29 PM
Tecumseh said...: Are you LassieMan, JJ? If so, good name, and good rejoinder to the Hitch. (Que pasa, too much Laphroaig on a empty stomach?) If not, good find, nevertheless.; 8/26/2007 2:20 PM
Mr roT said...: No, not Lassieman, but he's on target imo. How about a beer this week?; 8/26/2007 3:04 PM
Tecumseh said...: Sounds good. What's in style at this time of the year? Something wheaty?; 8/26/2007 5:45 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: I trained with Boulevard Wheat downtown Bismarck last night.; 8/26/2007 7:49 PM
Mr roT said...: I drink IPA regardless of the season. Gettin' too old to change.; 8/26/2007 8:48 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: I drink IPA regardless of the season. Gettin' too old to change.

So does that make you a beer biggot?; 8/26/2007 10:07 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: ...and taking it back to the Hitch piece, I thought of drafting a paper for the next history conference as drawing comparisons and contrasts with the Frontier Indian Wars (post-Civil War up to 1890) and the intra-tribal conflicts going on in Mesopotamia today.

Different agendas in both respective periods, but there's also some similarities (nothing of which i'll go into at this point).; 8/26/2007 10:09 PM
Mr roT said...: I read Caesar's Gallic War this Summer and I found too many similarities to Iraq. Must be why Chirac and Saddam were in bed together...; 8/26/2007 10:40 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Interesting, JJ. I've been a bit concerned with how several Anglo-Americans remark on how certain tribes are of the Noble Savage variety (meant in a positive light). Not long after, though, a group of soldiers are killed outside of the fort for one reason or another, understandable but super-charged paranoia sweeps through the ranks, and then all Indians across the board are considered savage beasts.

You notice anything similar in the Gaelic Wars? The last piece of Roman history I read was earlier this summer, Tacitus, "Germania."; 8/26/2007 10:49 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: I read Caesar's Gallic War this Summer and I found too many similarities to Iraq.

Don't stop there. Give us a run-down of the similarities. I'm interested.; 8/27/2007 11:52 AM
Mr roT said...: Main point that struck me was that he had to defeat a bunch of barbarians that sometimes fought together and sometimes fought each other. Sometimes they were noble savages and sometimes absolute disgusting terroristic cowards going after Roman noncombatants. Caesar took them apart methodically with some divide and conquer and some strength against strength. He was just cleverer than they were and had better soldiery. Incidentally, Caesar makes light of the Gauls mockery of the Romans' relatively small stature.; 8/27/2007 11:39 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Main point that struck me was that he had to defeat a bunch of barbarians that sometimes fought together and sometimes fought each other. Sometimes they were noble savages and sometimes absolute disgusting terroristic cowards going after Roman noncombatants.

Is it just me, or does this seem to be a recurring theme in the history of Europe, or even the History of War?; 8/28/2007 3:43 PM