[A-List] Christopher Hitchens on Iraq

[Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hawks in the dovecote

Henry Kissinger opposes an Iraqi war. So do the Saudis. And the Turks. With 
friends like these... Hitchens v Kissinger: talk about it or email 
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Iraq: Observer special

Christopher Hitchens
Sunday August 25, 2002
The Observer

It's important to beware of arguments that depend upon the mantra 'the 
enemy of my enemy', and it's likewise important to be immune to charges of 
keeping bad company. In the days of Vorster and Botha I didn't mind in the 
least working with Stalinists in the anti-apartheid movement (anyway, it's 
better to have them where you can see them), and when it came to helping 
imprisoned dissenters in Czechoslovakia I couldn't care less that Roger 
Scruton thought it was a good cause as well. If you pay too much attention 
to the shortcomings of your allies, or if you worry about being lumped 
together with dubious or unpopular types, you are in effect having your 
thinking done for you.
I must say, however, that Henry Kissinger has never let me down, as a 
person to consult before making up my own mind. Stepping lightly over his 
one-man rolling war-crime wave, extending from Bangladesh through Indochina 
to Chile and East Timor, I pause to notice that he was the man who 
persuaded President Ford not to invite Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the White 
House. He was the chief defender in the West of the right of the Chinese 
Communists to massacre their own students in the centre of Beijing. He made 
himself conspicuous on the American Right by being one of the few to argue 
that Slobodan Milosevic should be left alone.
A week or so ago I wondered when he was going to pronounce on the impending 
confrontation with Iraq. And I bet right. He is against it. So is his 
former colleague, and partner in the dread firm of Kissinger Associates, 
General Brent Scowcroft. The general is known to be a ventriloquist, or 
rather dummy, for George Bush Senior, who is now widely reported as being 
in the dove-camp, or dovecote. (This incidentally demolishes one facile 
argument, or taunt, about George W. picking a fight with Saddam Hussein as 
part of some Corsican conception of family honour.)
Those who don't want a 'regime change' in Iraq now include the Saudi royal 
family, the Turkish army, the more prominent conservative spokesmen in 
Congress and the Kissinger hawks. General Sharon, at least in his public 
pronouncements, appears to be against it as well. And somebody with a good 
contact among the Joint Chiefs of Staff seems to be leaking pessimistic or 
pacifistic material at a furious rate. Those who like to think of 
themselves as anti-war or anti-imperialist might wonder what there is left 
for them to say: all the war-loving imperialist hyenas are barking for 
peace at the top of their leathery old lungs.
It would be knee-jerkish to conclude merely on this evidence that there 
might be a respectable radical case for eliminating Saddam Hussein. But 
it's certainly worth examining the motives of the anti-war establishment. 
The Saudis do not want an Americanised Iraq because it might favour the 
Shia Muslim majority, which in turn might favour Iran, and they also know 
that with Iraqi oil back on stream their own near-monopoly position - the 
profits of which have been used to finance bin Ladenism worldwide - would 
be much diminished.
The Turks are hostile to the idea because it would almost inevitably extend 
the area of Iraqi Kurdistan that is currently ruled by its own inhabitants, 
who abut the restive Kurdish zone of Turkey. A sizeable chunk of the 
American military and business elite is peacenik as well, either because it 
fears damage to its polished and expensive arsenal or because it fears the 
disruption of Opec and the corresponding loss of business and revenue. 
Jordan's operetta monarchy thinks that it might fall if Iraq is attacked 
and - even though this collapse might give an opportunity for cleansing the 
West Bank in the confusion - the Israeli hard-liners are sceptical also.
Shall we just say that the anti-war position is the respectable status quo 
one? That's interesting in itself. Who would be the beneficiaries of an 
intervention, always supposing it went well and Saddam's vaunted army 
fought no better than it did the last time? Only the Iraqi and Kurdish 
peoples. Well, from the Kissinger-Saudi-Turkish viewpoint, and from the 
vantage of the Dallas boardroom, where is the fun in that? The consequences 
might be - if we employ the revealing word of choice among the 
conservatives - 'destabilising'.
I have spent a good deal of time over the past year in conversation with 
the Iraqi opposition factions and the Kurdish forces, who have misgivings 
of their own about the Bush strategy. They have been used as cannon-fodder 
in the past, sometimes for operations that were called off at the last 
minute. They are well aware that from the empire's point of view, the ideal 
government in Iraq is a centralised Sunni Muslim military regime, though 
one preferably not run by a homicidal megalomaniac. They know that the 
United States is perfectly capable of intervening in Iraq's internal 
affairs, as it did when it supported Saddam's invasion of Iran, or when it 
provided him with weapons and diplomatic cover during his genocide in 
Kurdistan in the 1980s. I have been in Halabja, the town that was 
annihilated with Iraqi chemical weapons, and I have read the Pentagon 
report that with a straight face blamed the attack on the Iranians. (Those 
Washington interventions did not arouse the moral ire of the usual anti-war 
forces.)
What the Iraqi and Kurdish democrats would like is American aid for and 
endorsement of their own efforts to replace the regime. And what they fear 
is what I also fear - a heavy-handed US attack which results in an Iraqi 
puppet government that is designed to placate the Saudis and the Turks. 
That, it seems to me, is where a principled critique of the war-planning 
might begin. But it's depressing to see the status quo Left preferring to 
parrot the arguments of pacifist realpolitik.
· Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair