At Least He's Consistent

Back during the 2002 run up to the Iraq War, Christopher Hitchens penned an extraordinarily divisive piece in The Nation that ignited a firestorm of debate between conservatives and liberals. He announced he was firmly behind the Bush administration, could no longer count himself as a Liberal, at least as defined by his association with The Nation, and called his last piece for the publication.

I have a couple of very righteous, conservative right-wing, and "foward button" happy members of my family. One uncle in particular. The Hitchens firestorm was hilarious to him, as in his mind, it discredited everything people questioning the march to war were saying.

I will give Hitchens this: he was purely arguing, however, from a moral standpoint of "these people are maniacal religious fanatics who kill indiscriminantly so let's get them out of there" and I don't think he was really buying into the whole WMDs thing. Or at least he conveniently ignored it. Still a flawed argument of course, since:

1. There was no link to Saddam Hussein and ANY religious fanantics. In fact, he despised that kind of thinking and brutally suppressed any fanaticism. All you have to do is look at Iraq right now to see what's happened now that sectarianism has been allowed to flourish.
2. Did he really think the people who engineered this whole war actually care about people of Iraq since they were the one's who put Hussein in power in the first place?

Anyways, as much as I hate this Hitchen's opportunism and sycophantic cynicism, at least he's consistent with his new book. I don't have to time to rant and rave about religion - I could go on and ON about stem cell research and evolution and the oppression of women (and maybe when I have time tonight I will) but I will say this: Religion begins where science ends. And the recent efforts in the areas mentioned above to actually fucking roll back science are mind-boggling, and very, very sad.

Anyways, I've forwarded the interview and book info to the aforementioned uncle, and asked him if he's still on board with Hitchens reasons for supporting the war. Heh. No answer yet.