Mr. Hitchens,

Could you please tell me how my generous book donation will help the 4.7 million Iraqi war refugees, many of whom are in "dire need of humanitarian care."

Perhaps you could also explain how these donations will lessen the rampant acute malnutrition among Iraq's children; provide access to safe drinking water; or fix Iraq's crumbling sanitation infrastructure.

Perhaps if Iraq didn't have other, far more pressing issues with which to deal, I could appreciate your gesture.

p.s. a final question--how many average Iraqi's can read English? Hopefully their English skills are better than the Army translators the U.S. hired. Or perhaps many Iraqis have learned valuable English lessons from U.S. troops, like this fine example. Otherwise, your donations are for naught.

That's a good question. Are we supposed to send Arabic books? Other than a few English texts for language classes, why would a university in Iraq need books in English?

My current duty station recently asked for donations of school supplies to be sent to Iraqi schoolchildren. All well and good. So I bought a few small backpacks, some pencils, crayons, paper and other sundries and put them in the collection box. At a subsequent meeting, someone suggested writing notes to the children and putting them with the supplies. Ever the master of snark, I replied, "Dear Iraqi child, I'm sorry about all of the missiles I fired into your country. I hope they didn't kill anyone you knew. Anyway... have some crayons. Love, Sam". There was a brief silence, and the silly idea was dropped. Mission Accomplished. :-)

Why would a university in Iraq need books in Engish?

Same reason most of the books I read back at university in Sweden were in English. Because it's the only language with a substantial amount of good books to chose from.

Now I live in Spain and it's the same thing. Apart from the basic introductory courses, or "local" subjects like literature or history, all the books I see commuting students logging around sport English titles.

Does it ever occur to you that one reason millions of Iraqis didn't flee under Saddam was because they weren't allowed to leave Iraq?

By law, engineers and doctors were prevented from leaving the country. Indeed, Saddam prevented millions of people from leaving Iraq, for fear that they would defect or become spies.

And yet people like you still believe the dictator should be running Iraq. Astonishing.

Good point about the refugees GreenwichJ. To the original point, being made ad naseum on these boards about "why do they need English books?" most American Universities overseas have heaps of English books and English speakers, and are often taught in English. If people actually read the article, or had a worldly perspective, they'd have known this.

Hitch makes the point: "Nathan Musselman, the Prefect of the University who is teaching a class, wrote to me thrilled to tell me that the students were now writing their term papers in English and using many of these books as their main sources for research"

Somehow, making Iraq into India under British rule doesn't strike me as the best way to do this...

And I've spent the last six years abroad, so I'd hardly say my perspective isn't worldly. :-)

Are you honestly arguing that the 4 million Iraqi refugees from this war were just waiting to leave under Saddam but couldn't?

Moreover, are you saying (I know you really aren't I am just pointing out the absurdity of your claim) that these 4 million individuals are mostly doctors and engineers?

About half of these refugees, incidentally, are internally displaced individuals, meaning they were forced from their homes, but are still in Iraq.

Yes, there were some individuals that wanted to leave under Saddam, but not nearly in the droves that have been leaving since the war began. Last year, the UN estimated that some 60,000 individuals are forced from their homes each month due to continue violence.

Additionally, as the above links demonstrates, the number of Iraqi asylum seekers to industrial nations (e.g. your doctors and engineers) is actually lower now than it was pre-war. This again undermines your insinuation that these people were merely the trapped people under Saddam who are now fleeing. See the chart on page 2 of this document.

Hitchens' argument, as well as the POV of the Slate copy editors, is that these books are going to "SAVE IRAQ" (emphasis Slate) and will help "build democracy."

What utter rubbish. Iraq will not be able to "build democracy" until a relative degree of of stability is established and the damaged infrastructure is repaired.

Sending books that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis will not be able to read or, for that matter, won't even have access to even if they could read, will not do a damn thing to help buld democracy in Iraq.

If you actually followed the link that Hitchens, himself, supplied, you would see that the University is all English and offers only two undergraduate degree programs (Business Management and Computer Systems and IT) and three Masters programs (two MBAs and one Public Administration).

Some other finer points: the University if not in Baghdad, but in Kurdistan; the school just opened and only had about 20 students in 2007 and is projected to only have about 1,000 by 2011; tuition is beyond the reach of the average Iraqi; and there is general distrust of the university by some.

So, again, my point--the English language books in the English only school is a nice gesture and will help the few students that go there. It will not help build democracy in Iraq.

If you really want to spread democracy, it is going to take a lot more than a few English language books read by only a select number of Iraqis.

Pretty much completely wrong.

According to the UNCR, more than 1.2 million Iraqis fled to Iran alone after the first Gulf war. They were mostly Shias. I'd say that constitutes "droves", wouldn't you?

The people fleeing Iraq now - as opposed to the people who fled under Saddam - are overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs, the pro-Saddam community. So it's not surprising that they're staying in the Sunni Arab Gulf rather than heading to "industrial nations".

Incidentally, Sunnis probably dominate the small (28%) minority of Iraqis who believe the 2003 invasion was "absolutely wrong". According to the most recent poll, 49% of Iraqis believe the invasion was the right thing to do, despite their having suffered so much over the past five years.

Does anyone on this board, Slate, or Hitch think that a few book donations are going to suddenly turn the tide in Iraq? Absolutely not. But to read the posters in this forum, you'd think Hitch was advocating sending smallpox blankets.

Sending books to a developing university that is asking for them can only be a good thing. How can you be against this concept? Because you think it won't do an incredible amount of good it shouldn't be undertaken?

So, send books *and* food! There's nothing wrong with sending books to Iraq! I know I have textbooks from last year that my school wouldn't buy back and I'm sure the University would appreciate them. Sending my old text books isn't taking food out of anyone's mouth and being a law student, I don't have much cash to spare in terms of donations. So, why shouldn't I do what I can and send them my textbooks?

GreenwichJ quotes in black italics; UNRC only in italics

According to the UNCR, more than 1.2 million Iraqis fled to Iran alone after the first Gulf war.

Next, if stability and a welcoming government appear in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, UNHCR will be assisting the repatriation of some of the over 200,000 Iraqis who had found safety in Iran from conflicts stretching back to the mid-1970s. More than half of some 400,000 recognised Iraqi refugees worldwide live in Iran... (emphasis added)

Spruce: At the beginning of the U.S. invasion, there were 400,000 Iraqi refugees throughout the world, 200,00o of which were in Iran.

..That war also started an exodus to Iran of Arab refugees, mostly Shias from the southern and central provinces of Iraq. It culminated in the mass movement over the border of 1.3 million Iraqis immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam ruthlessly crushed rebellions against his rule in southern Iraq...

Spruce: comment: that is your 1.2 million, which is followed by:

Each inflow of refugees to Iran was followed by return movements: some almost total, others involving only a few people. ...

...When the latest war in Iraq started, Iran was hosting 204,000 Iraqi refugees who had been registered by the government in 2001. (emphasis added)

Spruce: All of this actually undermines everything you said. You attempted to dismiss the 4.7 million refugees caused by this war by claiming that Iraq, under Saddam prevented people from leaving Iraq.

Your own link shows that after the Gulf War, when the U.S. abandoned the Shiite and Kurds after encouraging them to rebel, that some 1.3 million Shia fled to Iran, only to return to Iraq under Saddam. At the time of the U.S. invasion, there was 400,000 Iraqi refugees. There are now 4.7 million Iraqi refugees, more than 10 times the number than prior to the war.

As for your assessment that most of the refugees now are Sunni, I would like to see the evidence of this. Here is an article of the International Herald:

Between January 2007 and mid-May, 41,000 Sunnis, 18,500 Shiites, 19,700 Christians and 5,000 members of smaller minorities registered with the UNHCR, says Sybella Wilkes, UNHCR information officer in Damascus.

The Shiites have surprised refugee officials, who initially thought they would flee into Shiite areas of Iraq. Shiite refugees say they are hunted down at home and their mosques are car-bombed. Syria, despite its 75 percent Sunni population, is the easiest and most accommodating place to go, they say.

"At this point, every group is coming," said Laurens Jolles, the UNHCR's Damascus representative. "Iraq is reproducing itself in Syria."

Additionally, we must remember that there are over 2 million internally displaced people. Many of these are Shiite. For instance, Shiite Refugees Feel Forsaken in their Holy City.

Finally, the poll: there are always counter opinions, such as:

Iraqis Pessimistic on War's Outcome

Majority of Iraqis Approve of Attacks on Coalition Forces

Polls Show Iraqis Live Surrounded by Violence, Distrust US

Seven out of Ten Iraqis Want Foreign Forces to Leave

Finally, the most sober analysis from Real Clear Politics, the polls are all bullshit because it depends on how the questions are asked.

I am not against sending books. Just be honest about the intentions of sending the books. Do not make it out to be a grand sacrifice that is enabling Iraqi democracy.

Slate editors entitled the article "Do your part to SAVE IRAQ" (Slate's emphasis).

On the page of the actual article, the article is entitled "Book Drive for Iraq--How You can do your bit to build democracy."

Hitchens himself goes on to say, "However, I do believe that many people wish they could do something positive and make a contribution, however small, to the effort to build democracy in Iraq."

He also calls this an act in the process of emancipation.

None of this is what the book donation is. It is a donation to a small English language, U.S.-backed university in Kurdistan. This university will educate a couple of thousand of Iraqis during the next decade.

Compare this to Baghdad University that has 70,000 students.

The donation is a drop in the bucket and does not come close to hyperbolic rhetoric of Hitchens. There is nothing wrong with the book donations. It is indeed admirable. Just call it what it is: a small donation to a U.S. backed, English language university in Iraq.

Just call it what it is: a small donation to a U.S. backed, English language university in Iraq.

Good point. To label this as any kind of sacrifice is beyond reason. Even the notion that American's have had to pay for the war through taxation is absurd seeing as this is the first war that was funded directly through debt - as Joseph Stiglitz points out, the American tax payer hasn't even begun to pay for a war that even were it to end today, will cost 3 trillion.

To label the sending of books as some contribution toward democracy about as significant as offering a bandaid to cure an amputation.