Chamblee54

As the saying goes, if you can’t say anything good about someone, don’t say anything at all. With that in mind, we will start this inquisition by saying that Christopher Hitchens is a good writer. He can choreograph nouns and verbs into chorus lines that are immensely entertaining, even when you want to slap his drunken face.
He also has the mixed blessing of working in the internet age. When Joe Blow says such and such, it is an easy matter to go to an archive and see what he said about this and that a few years ago. When you write a regular feature for Slate magazine, as Mr. Hitchens does, your searching is even easier.
The most recent bit of grandstanding by the drunken one regards the Catholic church. It seems as though the pedophile priest scandal has spread to Germany, and may involve Pope Benedict 16. ( PG is shocked, shocked I tell you, shocked.) Hitchens, who is a loud atheist, has a few choice opinions on the matter.
PG remembers a few things that Hitchens said about the war in Babylon. The idea at first was to build a case, using the rhetoric about Saddam, that the United States should invade Vatican City and implement regime change. This, of course, will not happen soon, any more than Germany will be punished for having 911 planned in Hamburg. There are different standards for Europe than for west asia. Nonetheless, it might be a fun bit of rhetoric, and a good excuse to show more pictures from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
The post was surprisingly easy to find. In the Fall of 2002, America was debating the concept of an invasion of Iraq. ( At this time the sister war, in Afghanistan, was a year old. Afghanistan was invaded, without discussion, as an act of revenge for 911. We are still there, with no hope of getting out in the near future.) Regardless of what some say, there was considerable opposition to the war in Iraq. (*PG raises hand*).
In may have been his first piece for Slate, Mr. Hitchens supported the invasion. A key paragraph:
However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi’a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.
Now, it is eight years later. The Sunni-Shi’a rivalry became a savage civil war, with thousands of deaths and over a million refugees. Meddling from Iran has become a possible union between the two states. Fluctuations in oil prices have been a factor in a near economic meltdown in the USA. The choices of “two and only two” became one….we saw the horror in Iraq unfold, with a costly American presence, and yet had to helplessly watch from a distance, as if it was none of our business.
PG was going to engage in a bit of internet mischief, and suggest that the Catholic church is on the verge of collapse. An American invasion of Vatican City was needed, to implement the inevitable regime change on a manageable basis. However, after seeing how this worked out in Iraq, PG doesn’t think the joke would be very funny.