A Long Short War The Postponed Liberation Of Iraq – Christopher Hitchens (1)

And some countries inflict torture or murder at random, since the pedagogic effect on the population is even greater if there is no known way of avoiding the terror. Caprice, also, lends an element of relish to what might otherwise be the bor¬ ing and routine task of repression. However, most governments will have the grace (or the face) to deny that they do this.

And relatively few states will take photographs or videos of the gang rape and tor¬ ture of a young woman in a cellar and then deposit this evidence on the family’s doorstep. Such eagerness to go the extra mile, as is man¬ ifested in Saddam Hussein’s regime, probably requires an extra degree of condemnation. And if we are willing to say, as we are, that the devil is in the details, then it may not be an exaggeration to detect a tinc¬ ture of evil in the excess. We could have a stab at making a clinical def¬ inition and define evil as the surplus value of the psychopathic—an irrational delight in flouting every customary norm of civilization.

Like everything else, including moral relativism, this would be subjective. Probably no journalist has had more fun denouncing Bush as a reactionary simpleton than Robert Fisk of the London Indepen¬ dent. His dispatches have an almost Delphic stature among those who decry American “double standards.” Yet I still have my copy of the ar¬ ticle he wrote from Kuwait City soon after the expulsion of Saddam’s forces. He described as best he could the contents of certain cellars and improvised lockups and the randomness of the carnage and de¬ struction and waste (remember that Saddam blew up the Kuwaiti oil¬ fields when he had already surrendered control of them), but there was an X factor in the scene that he could smell or taste rather than summarize.

“Something evil, ” he wrote, “has happened here.” I think I agree with him that we do indeed need a word for it, and that this is the best negative superlative that we possess. Prevention and Preemption January 8, 2003 It is said that during the 1973 Yom Kippur War—known on the other side as the Ramadan War—an Israeli military spokesman was asked for the fourth or fifth time whether the Jewish state would use nuclear weapons if its ground forces continued to suffer defeat.

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Books (N.Z.)

Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All essays in this book were previously published on slate.com, with the exception of the following: “Chew on This” originally appeared in The Stranger; “The Rat That Roared” originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal; “Twenty-Twenty Foresight” and “After the Fall.

..” are original to this book. First Printing, June 2003 13579 10 8642 Copyright © Christopher Hitchens, 2003 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK —MARCA REGISTRADA CIP data is available. ISBN 0-452-28498-8 Printed in the United States of America Set in Janson Text Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publica¬ tion may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmit¬ ted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is ap¬ preciated. BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

CONTENTS Preface v Introduction: Twenty-Twenty Foresight March 18, 2003 1 Arguments for war. Machiavelli in Mesopotamia November 7, 2002 17 The case against the case against “regime change ” in Iraq. “Armchair General” November 11, 2002 20 The ugly idea that non-soldiers have less right to argue for war. Terrorism November 18,2002 23 Notes toward a definition. Anti-Americanism November 27,2002 27 Varieties right and left, foreign and domestic.

Imperialism December 10,2002 30 Superpower dominance, malignant and benign. Multilateralism and Unilateralism December 18, 2002 34 A self-canceling complaint. “WMD” and “Inspection” December 26, 2002 37 Are Saddam’s weapons really so unconventional?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 560a195367bf27e8
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,906,155 bytes (3.725 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0452284988
• Pages: 117
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 195.03 minutes
• Total Words: 39,005
• Total Characters: 231,489
• Average Words per Page: 333.38
• Average Characters per Page: 1978.54

Most Frequent Words

saddam (169), war (162), one (149), iraq (121), hussein (88), time (82), regime (77), long (76), even (75), united (74), iraqi (74), states (69), people (68), many (64), american (64), say (63), now (61), way (59), well (59), first (55), against (52), hitchens (50), point (50), christopher (49), also (49), without (48), change (46), oil (46), still (44), short (43), much (43), right (42), like (42), make (41), case (39), kurdish (37), bush (37), since (36), french (35), new (35), made (35), forces (35), last (35), perhaps (33), it’s (33), policy (33), state (32), least (31), ing (31), word (31), idea (30), rather (29), never (29), take (29), true (29), know (29), weapons (28), intervention (28), day (28), baghdad (28), every (28), itself (27), kuwait (27), bin (27), good (27), seems (27), years (27), man (27), want (26), between (26), international (26), however (26), himself (26), military (26), side (25), world (25), another (25), saddam’s (25), con (24), two (24), said (24), see (24), british (24), really (23), al-qaida (23), always (23), government (23), order (23), nations (22), thus (22), administration (22), put (22), course (22), quite (22), though (22), get (21), think (21), peace (21), themselves (21), fact (21).

PDF Download