Also, the url of my post was wrong. Here is the right one.

And I would agree with you.

Except that the UN seemingly calls everything one of humanity’s worst (whatever)s.

I also think Publius minimizing of the importance of restoring the Arab marsh wetlands to be distasteful. The UN has called Hussein’s draining of the marshes “one of humanity’s worst engineered disasters.”

And the opposite is the argument made by the South African far right with respect to majority rule.

Face it, there are more people than there are arguments, some have to share.

soru

Publius says that he “predict[s] the power and influence attributed to politically impotent, liberal, anti-war interest groups will increase at the exact same rate that our prospect for success in Iraq decreases.” Publius therefore goes on and on about how it will be Bush’s fault, and not the fault of the left, if we lose in Iraq, but I think slocum (comment above) is correct: Hitchens is criticizing how these groups are using the power and influence that they have, not making any claims about how much power and influence they have.

Hitchens thinks liberals should use what influence they have in support of the war because “It is a combat defined very much by the nature of the enemy, which one might think was so obviously and palpably evil that the very thought of its victory would make any decent person shudder.” Whether Publius agrees or disagrees with this logic, I can’t tell.

Publius does confront one of Hitchens’ actual claims: Hitchens thinks Iraq was inherently unstable and Publius thinks it was stable. But no arguments are adduced by either and this seems like such an inherently difficult thing to be sure about either way – call me wishy-washy….

As usual, you are much too kind. I would like to point out some other blogs on LatAm issues:

Bloggings by Boz

Juanson World

David Holiday

Latino Pundit

Miguel Centellas

Plan Colombia & Beyond

Tim’s El Salvador Blog

This was the argument used against critics of the Afghan mujahadeen in the Eighties, right? It’s like everything’s recycled now.

The “display of solidarity” demanded for here has one sole purpose: to strengthen public support, or the appearance thereof, for the US administration and its policies. The impact of a bake sale or what-have-you on the lives of the average Iraqi is nihil. Such gestures of “solidarity” are purely intended for domestic consumption.

As for “feeling” solidarity with the Iraqis, the current war has long since turned into a proxy for domestic US politics. The increasing amounts of buffoonery emanating from the US chattering classes over Iraq illustrates this clearly.

I think that’s kind of missing the point of Hitchen’s piece—his criticism is of the refusal of progressives (so called) to embrace the Iraqi democrats. It is not that their indifference to Iraqi democrats is likely to be decisive in the outcome, but—I believe Hitchen’s point is—their failure to feel and show solidarity is appalling in any case—it is a betrayal of those values they professed to hold most dear.

And from a bit later in the same target article, this is just demented:

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that Saddam is a murdering bastard who should be shot in the head tomorrow. But just because Saddam was horrible doesn’t mean that Iraq wasn’t stable. Certainly, Iraq had some underlying ethnic and demographic tensions that would have eventually bubbled up one day, similarly to every other Middle Eastern country including allies like Israel and Turkey. But Iraq was stable.

Ugh. Iraq was ‘stable’ BECAUSE it was under the boot of Saddam’s brutally efficient police state, which used state terror ‘liberally’ to keep the country and its citizens under tight control. And we have ‘progressives’ arguing that, in such cases, it is best to leave well enough alone?!?

Make of it what you will.

(What is much more interesting, and completely outside the scope of a brief comment here, is the effect of their political allegiences on their fiction or philosophy).

Iraq isn’t so much Lord of the Rings as the Hobbit, not the War of the Ring but the Battle of the Five Armies.

The US(-led coalition), Kurds, Iranians, Ba’athists and Al Qaeda is probably a fair summary of the active military factions – every trained fighter will have been trained by someone on that list.

soru

So the primary message the anti-war side would take from such an outcome is not that it would be appalling for the people of Iraq, but that it would be a poke in the eye for Bush.

“Argument”? I don’t think so. I think we’re going to keep hearing the same absurd assertion from those who need to keep making that noise in order to drown out the sound of their own massive failure and guilt, but to call it an argument is just silly.

Think of it as a death rattle.
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