Christopher Hitchens takes a look at the thought that we're making the world more dangerous by our war in Iraq.
You may if you choose take the view that resistance to jihadism only makes its supporters more militant and, given the fact that all wars intensify feeling on both sides, there must be some truth to this. But the corollary is a bit disturbing: The most prudent course of action then seems to be compromise or surrender. This is a rather contemptible conclusion. And it also overlooks the unpleasant fact that the jihadists don't seem to be that much interested in compromise. Indonesia and Canada, to take two very different countries, both opposed the Iraq war. But both of them have been targets of vicious terrorist attacks, as have Turkey and Morocco, which likewise opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Speaking of the latter, he only ever made one self-criticism. Speaking after his expulsion from Kuwait, he admitted to his followers that he had made a mistake. He should have built his nuclear bomb first, and only then invaded his neighbor. In 1990, in other words, as the world was celebrating the end of the Cold War, a mad dictator had both a nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha and a plan to occupy another country by force and annex a huge quantity of the world's oil. And we did not know of either contingency. (The nuclear facility was not discovered or disarmed until after the war was over.) So, 1990, in retrospect, was a year of living safely.
Christopher Hitchens takes a look at the thought that we're making the world more dangerous by our war in Iraq.
You may if you choose take the view that resistance to jihadism only makes its supporters more militant and, given the fact that all wars intensify feeling on both sides, there must be some truth to this. But the corollary is a bit disturbing: The most prudent course of action then seems to be compromise or surrender. This is a rather contemptible conclusion. And it also overlooks the unpleasant fact that the jihadists don't seem to be that much interested in compromise. Indonesia and Canada, to take two very different countries, both opposed the Iraq war. But both of them have been targets of vicious terrorist attacks, as have Turkey and Morocco, which likewise opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Speaking of the latter, he only ever made one self-criticism. Speaking after his expulsion from Kuwait, he admitted to his followers that he had made a mistake. He should have built his nuclear bomb first, and only then invaded his neighbor. In 1990, in other words, as the world was celebrating the end of the Cold War, a mad dictator had both a nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha and a plan to occupy another country by force and annex a huge quantity of the world's oil. And we did not know of either contingency. (The nuclear facility was not discovered or disarmed until after the war was over.) So, 1990, in retrospect, was a year of living safely.
