How Hitchens Got Iraq Wrong
Christopher Hitchens explains how he got Iraq wrong. The answer may surprise some readers: he says he didn’t. Hitchens argues that the ‘war in Iraq’ was part of a bigger war, which went on for decades already when George W. Bush decided to send troops into Iraq in 2003 in order to overthrow the Iraqi regime.
Basically, Hitchens argues, the ‘war’ began in 1968, and especially in the early 1990s with the first Gulf War. The ‘war’ didn’t always entail fighting, but it did most certainly result in political clashes.
So that’s first and foremost: the occupation was, basically, not the start of a war between the US and Britain on the one hand, and Iraq on the other, it was simply an escalation.
Furthermore, Hitchens argues, Iraq wouldn’t have been better off with Saddam Hussein still in power. He was a (war) criminal, a brutal tyrant. Although the 2003 war and post-war Iraq as it’s called was mishandled (at first), this doesn’t mean that the fact that Saddam was removed from power was wrong; no, Hitchens says, no matter what you think of how the war was handled, the world became a better place at the moment US troops found Iraq hiding in some kind of underground bunker.
If Saddam were still in power, Iraqis would still be oppressed. Now, however, they’ve held elections and democracy is, basically, starting to feel at home in Iraq. He concludes: “But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.”
