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kevin_shepherd's review
4.0
"...what if, just for a moment, one tried to classify something as anti-American for its own sake? My nomination would go to Pat Robertson, who appeared on television in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 atrocity and declared that the mass murder in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania was a divine punishment for a society that indulged secularism, pornography, and homosexual conduct. Here is a man who quite evidently dislikes his own society and sympathizes, not all that covertly, with those who would use violence and fanaticism to destroy it. He dislikes this society, furthermore, for the very things that it tends to advertise about itself, namely [freedom] and variety. If this is not anti-American then the term is truly meaningless."
A collection of more than twenty articles and essays written by Christopher Hitchens on the U.S. military involvement in Iraq, the first written in November, 2002, roughly four months before then President George W. Bush ordered the assault on Baghdad. The last essay was written in April, 2003 as the war was being (theoretically) concluded.
While I concede that it is almost impossible to write history in the present tense, even now with over fifteen years of accumulated hindsight, it's hard to argue with Hitchens' take on what transpired. His rationale was sound and firmly grounded - as it always was.
Beyond the bottomless pit of American rhetoric and controversial foreign policy, what A Long Short War highlights for me is the resolve that Christopher Hitchens had for going wherever his enormous brain led him, with little or no regard for political left/right. He confronted idiocracy wherever he found it and reminded us that the lesser evils are indeed occasionally necessary. Even when I disagree with his opinions (which is rare), I am fully cognizant of the high probability that I am the one who is wrong.
A collection of more than twenty articles and essays written by Christopher Hitchens on the U.S. military involvement in Iraq, the first written in November, 2002, roughly four months before then President George W. Bush ordered the assault on Baghdad. The last essay was written in April, 2003 as the war was being (theoretically) concluded.
While I concede that it is almost impossible to write history in the present tense, even now with over fifteen years of accumulated hindsight, it's hard to argue with Hitchens' take on what transpired. His rationale was sound and firmly grounded - as it always was.
Beyond the bottomless pit of American rhetoric and controversial foreign policy, what A Long Short War highlights for me is the resolve that Christopher Hitchens had for going wherever his enormous brain led him, with little or no regard for political left/right. He confronted idiocracy wherever he found it and reminded us that the lesser evils are indeed occasionally necessary. Even when I disagree with his opinions (which is rare), I am fully cognizant of the high probability that I am the one who is wrong.
lukeibaldwin's review
4.0
“The Almighty seems, if anything, to have smiled on Saddam Hussein for a quarter of a century. If we want to assure ourselves of a true ‘coalition of the willing,’ we might consider making a pact with the devil.”
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