Shorter, Clearer Hitchens
Where to begin?
Hitchens says the Palestinians have suffered grievously for a long time; most of them did not support violence until very recently, if then; and they allow dissent within their ranks. Not the Sunni insurgents.
"Contrast this with Iraq, where the contras of the old regime, and their imported jihadist allies, went straight for violence as a first resort and behaved as cruelly and indiscriminately as they knew how."
Very clever. In a few short words, all the insurgents are somehow both contras and jihadists--two things Hitchens hates. Somehow he's trying to hang on to some of his old allegiances, such as to the Palestinians and to practically any Communist movement, no matter how carnivorous; while still giving voice to this new pro-Bush line of his on Iraq.
The insurgents didn't suffer enough before they started killing innocent people? No, probably not. But have they lost more than the Palestinians? At best the Americans are going to impose a system of majority rule in which the Sunni Arabs are always a minority of only about 20%. For the first time in perhaps 300 years, they are losers rather than winners. And of course there is the possibility that they will be actively oppressed by the Shiites, with support from the mullahs in Iran, and the Americans unable or unwilling to do much about it. Have the Palestinians ever lost all that? Isn't it true that they were never actually...sovereign...anywhere?
Of course, anyone who is nostalgic for Saddam must be a monster with blood dripping from their fangs. Haven't we been told repeatedly, by people who have had bar bills picked up by Ahmed Chalabi, that Saddam was a combination of Stalin and Hitler? (Of course, Hitchens might have a defence for Stalin). What if the Sunnis in general actually felt like top dogs in the old days?
I don't know who the insurgents speak for, and neither does Hitchens. He says they have had access to the "arsenal of a collapsed regime that had been found guilty under every version of international law." Again, very clever. It is not invading a sovereign country that has not launched any attack on the invader that violates international law; it is...what? Invading an Arab nation in order to control more oil? Well, we all know how wrong that is--and Saddam hadn't done it since 1991. Slaughtering the Marsh Arabs as soon as the U.S. ended the no-fly zone in the south? I guess so, but normally one would allow something even to a tyrant when he is fighting for his life--in 1993. In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone did. Gassing the Kurds in the 80s? Wasn't that at least partly a test--like the CIA tests of LSD, shock treatments and who knows what else in the 50s? Was Saddam a jihadist? Did he encourage jihadists in the territory he controlled? Er, no.
[UPDATE: Saddm violated international law by failing to prove, to the satisfaction of, er, the people who count, that he had no WMDs. That will teach him.]
This is a fairly old, stale pile of crap from Chalabi, which makes me think Hitchens hasn't actually had a check picked up for some time. Judith Miller, on the other hand, may still be on the gravy train. She's breaking a big story, with the help of a source who's deep, deep inside. It's called: "Oil for Food."
She must have decided after yesterday's story that it softens the message too much to say, every so often, "on the other hand." Paragraph 10 of the Jan. 9 story: "In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Volcker said that the internal audits 'don't prove anything,' but do show how the United Nations was urged to tighten up its supervision of the program. 'There's no flaming red flags in the stuff,' he said."
Just keep implying, from your vantage point with the newspaper of record, that everyone who works for the UN is a liar. "The United Nations, however, denied allegations that the audits showed that the United Nations did not adequately monitor the program. Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the United Nations, said the audits showed that 'this was a highly audited and supervised program.'"
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