When trying to decide whether to take someone seriously, it can be useful to ask yourself what would count as a positive proof against their argument--not in your mind but in theirs. Suppose it is impossible to conceive of any event or observation or new evidence that would cause the person to sigh, "Ah, well then, I guess I was wrong." Then they aren't really saying anything and may be ignored. For if anything is really being asserted, then the opposite of it is being denied, and the occurrence of the opposite would cause them to recant.
With that we come to the case of Christopher Hitchens and his support for the war in Iraq. What would it take to make him admit he was wrong? Jonathan Freedland, writing in the current New York Review, points out just how ludicrously determined Hitchens is not to yield. Since the chief reason advanced for going to war concerned Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, you might think the fact that there were no such weapons, and that the UN inspectors who had been allowed into Iraq before the war could have verified this fact had they been permitted by the Bush administration to continue their work, might count for something. But, no. "Thanks to the intervention," Hitchens has argued, "Saddam Hussein has been verifiably disarmed, and a full accounting of his concealment and acquisition programs is being conducted. Where is the objection to that?"
Freedland dismisses with derision the "logic" of this case in a memorable sentence: "For Hitchens, invasion was the only way to establish the nonexistence of weapons whose existence was the chief justification for the invasion."
Freedland points out that, in trying to account for Hitchens's views on the Iraq war, his critics have often turned to psychology. It isn't hard to understand why. The arguments he puts forward are ludicrous, so it has to be something other than the merits of the case. There is, as Freedland also suggests, something in Hitchens of the clever schoolboy eager to display his powers by snubbing the cub scouts who are not so daring and smart as he. In this endeavor the aggressive sparkle of his prose is his ally and also his betrayer. Look at me! See how smart I am!
The great success of the Iraq war is so well disguised that only geniuses can perceive it.
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