Hitchens on Al Qaeda & Personal Notes

Christopher Hitchens has an excellent overview of the Iraqi situation and takes lessons from the new book, Cobra II, which details a lot of historically significant facts, such as the last minute sequestration of WMD and the failure to engage Uday's fedayeen mafia, thus enabling them to escape and regroup as the backbone of the insurgency [after L. Paul Bremer conveniently dissolved the Iraqi Army, enabling the insurgents access to a vast pool of jobless trained military dissidents].

Hitchens correctly notes that Al Qaeda and ObL's agent Zarqawi are fomenting a civil war, which they are counting on the defeatist American media to portray as another reason for losing nerve and withdrawing from Iraq. Like General Giap, ObL and his front office realize that the key to their victory and a new and burgeoning life for terrorism around the globe is a symbolic victory in Iraq, which their pro-terrorism and anti-American agents [Helen Thomas comes to mind] in the American media are all too eager to aid and abet. Obviously, the American MSM does not regard itself as pro-terrorism, just as chronic drunkard Helen Thomas [who consumed a third of a bottle of Scotch while a guest at a dinner at my house in the '90s] does not consider herself an alcoholic. But she and they oppose American policy when thwarting its goals would advance their political agenda, the election of the Democratic left and its multiculturalist relativist goals.

Europe's lack of what it invented in the nineteenth century, namely Realpolitik, was demonstrated in the Balkans in the 90's and more recently with Iran, where the Euros believe that jaw-jaw [which is better than war-war] would actually convince the hard-line Islamists in charge, who actually do want to destroy Israel, to forgo developing a nuclear weapon.

In the '80's when I still maintained a vestigial loyalty to the Democratic Party, I worked for the Mondale Campaign and introduced Christopher H. to my Dem colleagues and to some press corps stalwarts like Susan Spencer, now of CBS-TV.

I am happy to see that CH and I have followed the path that fatherhood and a strong family affiliation normally lead to, the re-adoption of conservative values, insofar as they reflect a more realistic perspective on the world-at-large.

Values are important; otherwise, as Hitchens notes, we re-enter the Hobbesian world of "all against all."