Elsewhere in these pages, I commented on an article which discussed the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss. Hiss was convicted of lying to the Feds about having been a Soviet spy while serving in high levels of the State Department during WWII. (He was never charged with espionage because the statute of limitations had expired on the events which constituted the alleged espionage.)
Was Hiss really guilty? The preponderance of evidence is that he was, but evidence that he had done any serious damage to the United States doesn't exist. The importance of his conviction was that it enabled an attack from the right on the liberals who had been running the government for two decades to the general satisfaction of most Americans.
The Hiss conviction was used -- along with several other cases of lesser import -- to raise the question of whether or not those liberals were "soft on Communism." That those liberals had overseen a massive military buildup specifically to oppose that expansionsm, that they had successfully managed the Berlin Airlift when challenged by Stalin, and that they responded by going to war in Korea when the North invaded, was somehow ignored in all of this. After all, Alger Hiss was guilty, it was said, and the entire Truman and, by extension, Roosevelt administrations were tarred as a result.
You can still get up a lively argument among academics about whether or not Hiss was guilty, but it is my contention that this is irrelevant. If someone could have proven Hiss innocent THEN, of course, it might have shifted the political balance of power in the United States. If someone could somehow prove, NOW, that he was innocent, it wouldn't change the McCarthy period or the rise to prominence of Richard Nixon. NOW, it is relevant only to historians. Them, and a handful of Communist Party dinosaurs who, now that the dustbin of history has collected their Worker's State, still desperately cling to what remains of their cause.
Christopher Hitchens is today's Hiss defender. He will not let go of the idea that those who went to war in Iraq were right to do so, long after it became important. I think George Bush and Dick Cheney cooked up the Iraq War on exaggerated, if not falsified, premises. But suppose I'm wrong. Suppose these men, whose every political belief is diametrically opposed to those of Hitchens, BTW, really thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and that a mushroom cloud was on the horizon. Is it important -- NOW -- to accept that extremely contentious belief?
I would argue that it isn't. We are IN the Iraq War and we're losing it. We're losing it because Bush and Cheney have refused at every possible opportunity to alter their original strategy of trying to win the war with minimal force levels -- even counting the surge. Every general able to obtain permission to speak on the subject has said we need FAR more men than we have.
We have only three alternatives in Iraq -- the slow bleeding of our soldiers with no serious progress in the pacification of the country for an indefinite period (the present policy); a massive buildup of American forces sufficient to pacify the country; or a major push for an international force which can do the job for us. Those are the alternatives TODAY. Choose one as you wish.
Hitchens chooses none of them. All that interests him is that it was right to invade Iraq. He marshals facts to show that the UN and every major European leader is corrupt and was in league with Saddam. That's nice -- that's a GREAT way to start if you want to organize an international force to replace us in Iraq. And, while he's at it, he omits mentioning the many, many ways in which AMERICAN corporations -- including Cheney's Halliburton -- were ALSO in collusion with Saddam. What this accomplishes is to give justification to those who oppose internationalization -- after all, it was only FOREIGN corporations who were in league with Saddam. If AMERICAN corporations were, surely an honest man like Hitchens would say so. Wouldn't he?
It is, of course, legitimate to argue that an international force isn't the way to go. And the question of who did or did not have clean hands when Saddam was in power is quite germane to that discussion. Hitchens, however, opts out of the discussion completely. He's not interested in what we do NOW. He only wants to discuss what happened THEN. Like the Communist hacks who want to convince you that Hiss was framed by the Bad Guys and hope you don't notice that there were some seriously Bad, if not Worse, Guys on their own side, Hitchens marshals his arguments to defend his position and completely ignores the fact that it has no relevance to TODAY.
He also fails to note that the REASON we have to discuss internationalizing the struggle is that Bush and Cheney have explicitly rejected increasing the American troop commitment to levels sufficient to deal with the problem. It would be really, really nice if Hitchens would address this PRESENT important issue, but...sorry, Alger Hiss was innocent.
And so, as the bravest Americans die refereeing the civil wars of some seriously objectonable people, Hitchens ignores their plight, and seeks anew his justification for the start of the war. Like the pathetic Communist Party hacks of the last five decades, he bleats over and over...Alger Hiss was innocent. George Bush was right. Never mind that history has moved onto a new and qiute perilous page. Alger Hiss was innocent; I WAS RIGHT.
Pathetic.
