# Hitchens' Opponents on Iraq **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 22, 2013, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073 "2013-02-22T13:45:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/41 "2013-02-24T03:38:01Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I cannot think of any topic on which Hitchens spoke with knowledge or authority, but I suppose if he had recommended a good restaurant I’d have considered it. Even when he came close to making a point, he generally overstated the matter to the point that he usually seemed to be a caricature of himself. Granted that he may well have been wrong on the subject of this thread, but can it be a coincidence that the biggest naysayers of Hitchens in this thread are both confirmed Christians? Yeah, we get it that you don’t like the guy because he gored your precious sacred ox. Some of us like him for that very reason. Should we discount your opinions because of your noted bias as you discount his opinion? Or, because of your continual belief in fantasies, should any of your opinions hold any weight at all? Assuming we wish to follow your example, that is. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/42 "2013-02-24T04:14:11Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > Granted that he may well have been wrong on the subject of this thread, but can it be a coincidence that the biggest naysayers of Hitchens in this thread are both confirmed Christians? Yeah, we get it that you don’t like the guy because he gored your precious sacred ox. Some of us like him for that very reason. > Should we discount your opinions because of your noted bias as you discount his opinion? Or, because of your continual belief in fantasies, should any of your opinions hold any weight at all? Assuming we wish to follow your example, that is. If you want to make up imaginary reasons to discount my opinion, I cannot stop you. Unless you can actually point to places where I have attacked every other opponent of Christianity or religion, I will have to conclude that you are simply making an unfounded _ad hominem_. There are many people who have criticized theism, Christianity, and Catholicism whose opinions I value on those topics. Depending on the topic and speaker, I have even agreed with many of them. I have found Hitchens to be a bit reckless regarding facts and to have been rather obnoxious in promoting his distortions, so him I dismiss. I find it amusing, (and telling), that you are willing to give him credence simply because he attacks things you would like to see attacked, regardless of the accuracy of his statements, whereas I prefer to form my opinions based on facts. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/43 "2013-02-24T05:08:34Z")
I honestly expected this thread to be a zombie. Why on earth, in 2013, would we care if a dead mysoginist drunk won or lost a debate about invading Iraq? Events have proven him spectacularly wrong; invading Iraq was a disatorous mistake and has weakened the United States. Whether or not Hitchens ‘won’ a debate ten years ago is the least of my concerns about Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/44 "2013-02-24T05:32:31Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > For the record, statistician and self-described “atrocitologist” Matthew White, author of [The Great Big Book of Horrible Things](http://www.bookofhorriblethings.com/), is mof the stated opinion that the Iraq war casualties probably have been overestimated. He puts the total at around 150,000 (civilians included). > > Not that that makes it any less horrible. But it’s important to try and be accurate. I would say 150,000 is “in the hundreds of thousands,” and I don’t expect that the real number will ever be known. I attempted to be as accurate as I could given the uncertainty among estimates from credible, but perhaps not authoritative, sources. ---
**Author:** ![Bpelta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Bpelta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bpelta)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/45 "2013-02-24T14:20:26Z")
Well, while we’ve clearly gone from my initial question of the skill of Hitchens’ opponents to discussing Hitchens’ view of the Iraq War per se, I’m actually happy to see this discussion. I see we’re also discussing Hitchens the man. Admittedly, I’m rather ignorant on foreign policy and international relations issues, albeit I’m attempting to fix that by reading and studying more (So why, I see the curious – e.g. madmonk28 — already asking, did I have an OP asking about Hitchens’ greatest debate opponents? Long story, but basically, I want to get a better perspective on the pro-war side of the Iraq debate and in the circles I travel, Hitchens was the most respected expositor of that POV). But I am quite familiar with the debates over religion…and while an atheist myself, and sympathetic to the arguments of Harris and Dawkins, I’ve always been wary of Hitchens. In fact, back when I was blogging, I wrote a small [critique](http://bpelta.blogspot.com/2011/01/christopher-hitchens.html) of him myself (note: blog was for Orthodox Jews to read, so some yeshivish terms in said article). So many of my fellow atheist cohorts idolized (for lack of a better word) Hitchens, and indeed even my thoughtful Orthodox Jewish friends were rather in awe of him, but I’ve never really found his voice quite compelling. On the occasion of his passing, thought the more negative pieces from the likes of [Kevin Drum](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/12/other-christopher-hitchens) and [Alex Pareene](http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/when_hitch_was_wrong/) captured him better than the hagiographic and admiring ones. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/46 "2013-02-24T16:51:39Z")
> [@black\_rabbit](#): > > Really? By that point, Arab Nationalists / Pan-Arabists / Baathist etc. and the various Islamist groups had been mortal enemies for more that fifty years. Anybody familiar with the assassination of Anwar Sadat should have dismissed the the Iraq-9/11 link out of hand. To do otherwise was, if not idiotic, then so profoundly ignorant as to be indistinguishable from the same. You’re making a few mistakes. For starters, Anwar Sadat was not a Pan-Arabist, Ba’athist or an Arab nationalist so his assassination by Islamic radicals is hardly proof that Ba’athists and Islamic radicals can’t get along. In fact, his assassination was cheered by various Pan-Arabists and Ba’athists because he’d allied with the US and, even worst, with the Israelis. Second, there’ve been plenty of occasions when Pan-Arabists, Ba’athists and other supposedly secular leftist Arab groups have allied themselves with Islamic radicals. To use a few obvious examples, Ba’athist Syria is closely allied with the Iranian regime, Hezbollah(Party of God) and Hamas(the Islamic Salvation Front), and the PFLP(Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), an officially Marxist group has been a long-time ally of Hamas. Politics makes strange bedfellows and one of the oldest and truest sayings in the Middle East is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Probably the best example of this is when during the 80s and early 90s, Iran and Israel, in secret collaborated because they both saw Iraq as a threat. Following Saddam’s getting defanged in the first Gulf War, the relationship fell apart. None of that is to say that there was an alliance between Al Quaeda and Saddam, but considering Saddam was happy to support Hamas, such an alliance is hardly “laughable” or “idiotic.” ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/47 "2013-02-24T17:51:23Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > There was a period of some years in which the words “Saddam” and “9/11” were continually included in the same sentence by Bush. The intention was plain then, as it is now. > > You just have to listen to the construction of speech after speeches to see the intent - it seriously contributed to, if memory serves - 69% on the US population believing Saddam was involved in 9/11. I do not deny that it was the intention of the Bush administration to deliberately frame the public discourse in a way that many people would casually infer a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. The claim made by \*\*Novelty Bobble \*\*was that it was not clear “from the public intelligence at the time,” e.g. such intelligence as was available to a person not availed of classified information, that Iraq was not involved in 9/11. I maintain that that statement is utterly false. In fact, it was clear from the intelligence information available to the public that Iraq was not involved in 9/11. Many people may not have bothered to find that out, but it was very easily found by anyone who did even a little bit of reading. I should clarify that I’m not really weighing in on the Hitchens issue. He was a fallible person like any other, who was right about some things and wrong about others. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/48 "2013-02-24T18:01:20Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > From the State Department’s Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism > (This was from the actual State Department web site that was still up in 2004, long after we had made hash of our invasion. It was later removed when it proved to be too embarrassing to the Bush administration: > [) > Now let’s examine this list of “support.” > > The PKK is one of several groups engaged in long-term power struggles over who will fight Iraq and Turkey to establish a new Kurdish state; they are not active in “international terrorism.” (In fact, U.S. agencies have reported that they foreswore violence, resorting to “diplomatic” channels in 2000, although I would not be surprised that they have been caught up in the current violence). It seems unlikely that they were being supported by Hussein, who would be as threatened by the Kurdish independence movement as Turkey is. What makes having the PKK on this list even more retarded is that they were not there at Iraq’s invitation, they were only able to operate from northern Iraq because of the power vacuum created there by the no-fly zone in [URL=“[Operation Northern Watch - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northern_Watch)”]Northern Iraq]([http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/html/10249.htm](http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/html/10249.htm)). Regime change certainly did nothing to stem the PKKs activities in Northern Iraq, Turkey bombed PKK bases in northern Iraq as recently as [this week](http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/129745). ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/49 "2013-02-24T19:32:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > However, knowing extensive loads of facts didn’t make him a great thinker. He didn’t have the intellectual honesty to critique his own thinking, evaluate evidence, and make good judgments. Instead he’s seize on one idea and then decide that all of the evidence supported him, that nothing could possibly contradict him, and that anyone who disagreed with him must be scum. Yes, but he was a brilliant rhetorician, which in his line of business was the bottom line. I honestly think that he took the stand which he took on the Iraq invasion because he wanted something to differentiate himself–he wanted the attention, more than he wanted to be “right.” (And this wouldn’t surprise me coming from someone with his kind of drinking history.) ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/50 "2013-02-24T20:15:46Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Yes, but he was a brilliant rhetorician, which in his line of business was the bottom line. > > I honestly think that he took the stand which he took on the Iraq invasion because he wanted something to differentiate himself–he wanted the attention, more than he wanted to be “right.” (And this wouldn’t surprise me coming from someone with his kind of drinking history.) Actually, his stance on Iraq was quite consistent with his call for intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/51 "2013-02-24T20:28:29Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Actually, his stance on Iraq was quite consistent with his call for intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. Not to differentiate from himself, but from others. He didn’t get nearly as much attention for that, and the Balkans situation wasn’t a question of mostly believing one administration. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/52 "2013-02-24T20:54:41Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > Granted that he may well have been wrong on the subject of this thread, but can it be a coincidence that the biggest naysayers of Hitchens in this thread are both confirmed Christians? Yes, it can. For example, I personally am a lifelong atheist, but I agree with pretty much everything **tomndebb** and **ITR champion** said about Hitchens, with a few minor caveats. I think **guizot** hit the nail on the head when he noted that Hitchens’ primary career and professional aim was to be a brilliant rhetorician, rather than a profound thinker or an honest debater. Yes, Hitchens said many things that were true in addition to being witty and well-expressed, and most of what he said was witty and well-expressed even when it wasn’t true, and he deserves admiration for that. But AFAICT he was not a _reliable_ authority on any subject, not by Straight Dope standards, at least. Hitchens famously said that he absorbed from his mother the dictum that “the one unforgivable sin is to be boring”. He certainly successfully avoided that “sin”, but at a price: he always wrote like somebody who was more afraid of being boring than of being wrong. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/53 "2013-02-24T23:23:32Z")
And I have to add that I’m mostly agnostic nowadays, but even in the past when I considered myself an atheist, I also thought that Hitchens was really wrong regarding Iraq; Oh, well, no one is perfect. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/54 "2013-02-25T10:34:49Z")
I’m a stone cold atheist and I think Hitchens was a pompous twit. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/55 "2013-02-25T10:53:17Z")
One reason why he stirs up so much ire is his refusal to accord religion the respect that adherents think it deserves. It is seen as impolite. He treated it the same way that he did political views, in that he saw fit to attack, mock and rebut. For some reason the same robust language used to criticise a political view becomes offensive when directed at religion. Personally I think it was refreshing to here him take that standpoint. People don’t like it because, as Douglas Adams famously said, you just aren’t allowed to criticise religion…why? you just aren’t. I don’t buy it. You choose your religion, you choose your politics, no reason why they can’t both be criticised in exactly the same way. I liked hearing him speak even when he was wrong. [One classic confrontation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLKQGwVkczg) was with George Galloway when, for once, Hitchens was not the most flowery person on the podium. Galloway went on a rhetorical trip of high campness evasion and non-sequiter as always, Hitchens just gently skewered him on pretty much every point. One of his more understated performances. It actually speaks to a lot of the points raised in this thread so I’d recommend you take a look. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073/56 "2013-02-25T11:04:31Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I’m a stone cold atheist and I think Hitchens was a pompous twit. I really don’t think you can call the man a twit with any seriousness. Whatever he was, he wasn’t dumb. But I do think he was a small man who wanted to be big. He seemed to have this marvelous mind and quick wit and this terrific sharp tongue…but he allowed the trappings of those things to convince him that he was better than other people. When it came to the war, he just seemed to start acting very childish. But, I wouldn’t tell him to his face. If he was still living, I would be afraid to go toe to toe with the man. He was just too damn smart for me. Here you go, OP. [Mr. Hitchens vs. Mr. Definitely.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsGUYnFAvdY) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchens-opponents-on-iraq/651073.md?page=2)