Hitch on Baker & Kissinger

[Preechr]

http://www.slate.com/id/2154164/

(Last Paragraph)

"In 1991, for those who keep insisting on the importance of sending enough troops, there were half a million already-triumphant Allied soldiers on the scene. Iraq was stuffed with weapons of mass destruction, just waiting to be discovered by the inspectors of UNSCOM. The mass graves were fresh. The strength of sectarian militias was slight. The influence of Iran, still recovering from the devastating aggression of Saddam Hussein, was limited. Syria was—let's give Baker his due—'on side.' The Iraqi Baathists were demoralized by the sheer speed and ignominy of their eviction from Kuwait and completely isolated even from their usual protectors in Moscow, Paris, and Beijing. There would never have been a better opportunity to 'address the root cause' and to remove a dictator who was a permanent menace to his subjects, his neighbors, and the world beyond. Instead, he was shamefully confirmed in power and a miserable 12-year period of sanctions helped him to enrich himself and to create the immiserated, uneducated, unemployed underclass that is now one of the 'root causes' of a new social breakdown in Iraq. It seems a bit much that the man principally responsible for all this should be so pleased with himself and that he should be hailed on all sides as the very model of the statesmanship we now need."

[mburbank]

Hitch is a crazy ass muthafucka, but I don't always disagree with him. Case in damn point. On the other hand, just 'cause Baker is a lifelong sack of crap doesn't neccesarily mean that W is any better. After all, he's fucked up just as much with much more far reaching consequences AND brought old fuck ups like Kissinger and Baker into the Mix.

Hitch always wants to have his cake, eat it, and look down his nose at you while eating. He was an arrogant lefty asshole, now he's an arrogant righty asshole and by the way, he's never ever wrong about anything.

[El Blanco]

and by the way, he's never ever wrong about anything.

You must be unfamiliar with this thing we have called political pundits.

You know when you go to a bar and some asshole is drunk off his ass yelling and screaming about how this player or this team is the greatest of all time and this or that is the problem with sports?

Well, thats what these guys are. But, instead of players and teams, they refer to politicians and administrations. Instead of a sport, they mean America.

And, much like those raving assholes yelling about sports, they are abundant on AM radio.

[mburbank]

Yeah, but how many of them totally switch sides and insist the were right both times and none of their opinions have changed?

[derrida]

So Hitchens is saying that the problem with Iraq today is that it is scarred by the intra-war decade and is host to a "disaffected underclass." He also appears to scoff at the notion that a greater invasion force would have resulted in victory. Wouldn't a greater invasion force have provided enough initial internal security to quickly establish a co-operative government and begin the conversion of Hussein's army (the enlisted ranks of which having being comprised of that very underclass?