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A review by kevin_shepherd
Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why it Matters by Ben Burgis
3.0
ADMIRATION VS ACCOUNTABILITY
I can’t call this a love/hate compendium. What Ben Burgis has written here in this critical synopsis of the phenomenon that was Christopher Hitchens leans more toward love/disappointment. Burgis loved the pre-9/11 Hitch, the Hitch who took on Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa. He was disappointed in the post-9/11 version, the Hitch who supported both the US invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan.
“…a genuine desire—however horribly misdirected in this instance—to bring about a better world. That’s about the most generous [thing] you can (plausibly) say about Christopher Hitchens’s support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
THE RUMOR MILL
At one point Burgis writes that people close to Hitchens told him that Hitch’s excessive drinking “ate his brain.” Other sources allegedly attributed Hitch’s shift in political philosophy to Islamophobia that arose from “strident atheism” or from “plain old jingoism.” Burgis concurs by saying, “there’s probably a germ of truth in that one.” This is a rather backhanded way of implying that Hitch somehow devolved into someone who was either cognitively impaired or an Islamophobe or an extreme bellicose nationalist or maybe all of the above. What’s worse is that Burgis attributes these various speculations to unnamed sources without footnotes or citations. It is all, at best, malicious hearsay.
20/20 HINDSIGHT
To say that Christopher Hitchens was strongly impacted by the events of September 11, 2001 goes without saying. It would be foolish to think that his views on religion and politics would not be altered in some way. If Hitch was wrong to advocate for a military response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 then he was wrong in the company of millions. Response was inevitable, with or without Hitch’s support, and anyone who thinks otherwise wasn’t watching those twin towers fall. Were the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan appropriate and constructive responses? Absolutely not—but we sit in judgment with the advantage of hindsight. Burgis himself acknowledges as much:
“Bush and his enablers justified that intervention by (a) claiming that Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and (b) claiming to be worried that at some point in the future he might use them himself or share them with Al Queda . . . two decades later, the evidence for (a) turned out to be a hodgepodge of half-truths, outright lies, and nonsense whispered into the ears of neoconservatives by Iraqi emigres like Ahmad Chalabi who wanted the Americans to hand them the keys to their country—or whimpered into the ears of CIA torturers by naked and humiliated prisoners desperate to say whatever their captors seemed to want to hear.”
PERPETUAL RELEVANCE
Overall, there’s more deference here than disapproval. Ben Burgis is one of us, an ardent Hitchens reader and admirer. Hitch was not perfect and never claimed to be, but—as stated earlier—if he came down on the wrong side of history he did so with open eyes and a sincere desire to bring about a better world.
“I hated parts of his work and loved most of the rest . . . I can’t help but think that we need more Christopher Hitchenses . . . things have gotten bad enough that one won’t be enough. We need a hundred of him.”
I can’t call this a love/hate compendium. What Ben Burgis has written here in this critical synopsis of the phenomenon that was Christopher Hitchens leans more toward love/disappointment. Burgis loved the pre-9/11 Hitch, the Hitch who took on Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa. He was disappointed in the post-9/11 version, the Hitch who supported both the US invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan.
“…a genuine desire—however horribly misdirected in this instance—to bring about a better world. That’s about the most generous [thing] you can (plausibly) say about Christopher Hitchens’s support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
THE RUMOR MILL
At one point Burgis writes that people close to Hitchens told him that Hitch’s excessive drinking “ate his brain.” Other sources allegedly attributed Hitch’s shift in political philosophy to Islamophobia that arose from “strident atheism” or from “plain old jingoism.” Burgis concurs by saying, “there’s probably a germ of truth in that one.” This is a rather backhanded way of implying that Hitch somehow devolved into someone who was either cognitively impaired or an Islamophobe or an extreme bellicose nationalist or maybe all of the above. What’s worse is that Burgis attributes these various speculations to unnamed sources without footnotes or citations. It is all, at best, malicious hearsay.
20/20 HINDSIGHT
To say that Christopher Hitchens was strongly impacted by the events of September 11, 2001 goes without saying. It would be foolish to think that his views on religion and politics would not be altered in some way. If Hitch was wrong to advocate for a military response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 then he was wrong in the company of millions. Response was inevitable, with or without Hitch’s support, and anyone who thinks otherwise wasn’t watching those twin towers fall. Were the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan appropriate and constructive responses? Absolutely not—but we sit in judgment with the advantage of hindsight. Burgis himself acknowledges as much:
“Bush and his enablers justified that intervention by (a) claiming that Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and (b) claiming to be worried that at some point in the future he might use them himself or share them with Al Queda . . . two decades later, the evidence for (a) turned out to be a hodgepodge of half-truths, outright lies, and nonsense whispered into the ears of neoconservatives by Iraqi emigres like Ahmad Chalabi who wanted the Americans to hand them the keys to their country—or whimpered into the ears of CIA torturers by naked and humiliated prisoners desperate to say whatever their captors seemed to want to hear.”
PERPETUAL RELEVANCE
Overall, there’s more deference here than disapproval. Ben Burgis is one of us, an ardent Hitchens reader and admirer. Hitch was not perfect and never claimed to be, but—as stated earlier—if he came down on the wrong side of history he did so with open eyes and a sincere desire to bring about a better world.
“I hated parts of his work and loved most of the rest . . . I can’t help but think that we need more Christopher Hitchenses . . . things have gotten bad enough that one won’t be enough. We need a hundred of him.”