Hitch slap

Never mind every thing else, over 1 million deaths have been attributed to the war in Iraq so far. And the best that can be said is that we got rid of an awful unlawful dictator. There is no argument to the contrary that anyone can make that would convince me that that as Americans we must also bear some of this shame.

Christopher Hitchens has written eloquently (and when does he not?) about the solid reasons for taking out the Butcher of Baghdad, the man famous for gassing his own people, conducting a losing eight year war with Iran, torturing, murdering and every other thing that he has been rightly accused of.

There are over a million reasons why we should not have invaded, unprovoked, a sovereign nation no matter the desire to right wrongs and vanquish evil. If we are to stick by America even when it makes bad decisions we have to be careful to not blithely dismiss the consequences with alternative logic that wipes out the rule of, in this case, international law.

And if you buy the argument that some good has come out of our nation building, can you agree to the price paid thus far, over 4,100 dead Americans? More than 16,000 severely wounded, including those who will never recover from traumatic brain injury or grow back missing limbs or see again. It would be unseemly to talk about the financial cost when we consider this tragedy but there is a sobering clock on www.zFacts.com.

There are no figures for the Iraqi wounded but one can extrapolate and wonder how many of them went into the dead column for lack of adequate hospitals, electricity, clean water or even ambulances to get them to an emergency facility.

Hitch is pleased with the success of the “surge” and how it has in part helped to reduce violence and make some neighborhoods somewhat safer. But it has taken seven years and the bloody toll above just to reach this fragile state. In his self serving sado-cynicism he does not write about the costs of war although he did write about one moving memory of going out to visit the family of some young lieutenant who was killed and had mentioned the author in emails to them.

We all agree that Sadam was insane psycopath but not all of us felt he had to go. After all it was none of our business unless it turned out that we had proof positive, before invading, that the foul son-of-a-bitch had WMD. But we were told by world experts who had been vetted and trusted before, that there was no evidence to conclude what the Cheney-Bush axis wanted so much to believe so that W could take revenge on “the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

Oh my dad! How in the name of all the Allahs everywhere could we have been led into this behemoth blunder by such an ignorant little shit? It was up to him. The president cannot be superseded when he says “no.” They could have come to the very brink with tanks and troops locked and loaded and at the very last minute he could have said “wait.”

Was it possible that he thought maybe only a couple hundred Americans would have to get killed so that he could show his dad how tough he is? Having never gotten too close to military combat he likely didn’t calculate the number of wounded and the devastation to all the families. Maybe he thought that paltry loss was absorbable. Maybe he just didn’t do all the thinking that needed to be done before he said, “getter done!”

It will stay with me all my days that this country elected a known bozo, unqualified to lead a brownie troop, because he seemed like “a guy you could have a beer with” (not withstanding that he is what is known in AA as a “dry drunk”). Soon he will scoot out the back door, leaving all his messes, and the only thing I can hope for is that he lives to a 113 with a viciously vivid memory that will remind him every day of the unhealable suffering he has caused to so many innocent people. Hitch can go on living as long as he wants. It’s still a thoughtful provocative read.