The difference with Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens never fails to provide an entertaining read, and we certainly all know his opinion on the war. He's in his usual rare form in this column.

But while I agree with his casus belli arguments I don't necessarily agree with all his reasons for fighting it. Let's start with his view of what the perfect response from the world should have been to Bush's pre-war speech at the UN:

Mr. President, in principle you are correct. The list of flouted U.N. resolutions is disgracefully long. Law has been broken, genocide has been committed, other member-states have been invaded, and our own weapons inspectors insulted and coerced and cheated.

Let us all collectively decide how to move long-suffering Iraq into the post-Saddam era. We shall need to consider how much to set aside to rebuild the Iraqi economy, how to sponsor free elections, how to recuperate the devastated areas of the marshes and Kurdistan, how to try the war criminals, and how many multinational forces to ready for this task.

Looks ok, but do any of those bullet points single-handedly justify a pre-emptive war? Not in my view, unless they represent a direct threat to America. And such illustrates the difference between the conservative and neosocialist approaches--the former believes in staying out of others' affairs to the extent possible, the latter in meddling in others' affairs as long as the intentions are noble. Our bombing of Serbia to free Kosovo is an example of the liberal vision.

More succinctly put, my argument is we've got no business rolling over Iraq without a direct threat to our own national security or to defend our allies from aggression. Hitchens was in favor of taking out Saddam in the 90s, but largely to stave off the growing humanitarian crisis along with beating down fascist despotism. No doubt he might also be in favor of similar forays in places like Sudan or North Korea, but our meddling there doesn't carry the same national security threat urgency.

Some might say, "AC aren't you one of those neocons who has expressed support for Bush's agenda of democratazation in the Middle East? Aren't you being hypocritical?" I don't think so. After watching terrorism escalate to the point of 9/11, my view was that whacking moles in Afghanistan and elsewhere was like putting a band aid on a broken arm. Since the breeding ground lies within the greater ME, our choice was to attempt social change there or put up the bigger wall here. The bigger the wall, the more vulnerable we become to oil and trade disruptions, and our allies are left twisting in the breeze to boot.

Bush touched on some of this in his press conference today, where he mentioned a nuclear Iran being able to blackmail the west. The only way Iran blackmails anyone is by grabbing a stranglehold on the region's oil in combo with acquiring those nuclear arms. If we leave Iraq the door will be open for this to occur. So in some ways this is a war for oil. Bush has already admitted as much when he said (which no one has denied) we're addicted to oil, and until we can find a viable scientific alternative we've no choice but to take actions to maintain a free-market supply.

Hitchens might not embrace that view, but in the case of Iraq the two philosophies at least temporarily line up as one. Now, can anyone tell me the mainstream democrat philosophy on this thing, other than "reteating to the horizon"?