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July 12, 2005

The root cause

Though I think Ron Reagan has his heart in the right place I wish he would make more use of his head. Christopher Hitchens makes short work of the idea that "cause of terrorism is fighting against it."

Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

Update: The Political Teen has the video (via INDC Journal). I believe it is an all too common mistake to describe someone like Christopher Hitchens as a "conservative" on the grounds he believes it is important to defend the freedom of Salmon Rushdie or oppose the evil of a Saddam Hussein. Maybe it is because Hitchens sounds like Stewie. He has never disavowed, for example, his efforts to have Henry Kissinger tried for war crimes. The other Hitchens' argument with which I am more familiar is in favour of sending the Elgin Marbles back to Greece. There is nothing conservative in such a policy.

To describe him as "convervative" because of his position in a specific case is just as intellectually lazy as Ron Reagan, and all too many others, so fixated on the supposed injustice of toppling the dictator as to ignore reason, the facts or the evidence of their own senses. None of this was to say the liberation of Iraq was necessarily justified on the grounds that were presented to the United Nations (I believe it was justified on other, much simpler grounds), by the revelations after the dictatorship was defeated or in the handling of the occupation since then. But it is a grotesque equivocation to devote one's life to arguing a minor point that is beside the point and in error besides. I wish we could stop thinking in talking points and have a proper debate but apparently this is a bit much to expect of cable news on this continent.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 12, 2005 08:00 AM

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Comments

I saw that and it was a bit of a rout. Its too bad Ron Reagan Jr was spouting the same old stopper crap. Alas what he said was completely untrue.

Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2005 06:08 AM

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