Christopher Hitchens succumbed to cancer on December 15th. Hitchens was a prolific writer and polemical pugilist who angered many and wooed more. He possessed an acerbic wit and a taste for battle. Unfortunately, toward the end of his life, these hallmarks faded into a robotic defense of such luminaries as Paul Wolfowitz and noble actions as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, when he reviewed literature he was usually on point. That is why it was such a pain to read his political commentaries in later years. As Alexander Cockburn pointed out, Hitchens always had some opportunism about him, and he also wrote in favor of some horrific things while he was “on the left.” For example, his glorification of the Genocide of the Native Americans as having been done with “vim and gusto” comes to mind. (See Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide).
In today’s blog, I am going to turn back the clock and share an analysis that I wrote of an article that Hitchens published in Slate Magazine on the topic of Iraqi civilian casualties. It follows:
Who is the Real Moral Idiot?
Christopher Hitchens’ latest ink-letting in Slate Magazine entitled “The Lancet’s Slant: Epidemiology meets moral idiocy” is as dishonest and vile as they come. In it, he lambasted an anti-war movement of his imagination and a respected medical journal for daring to publish the harsh realities of Hitchens’ favorite war.
Epidemiological studies of war-torn countries are common these days. In fact, the Lancet has published such studies on Darfur, Sudan, which is widely cited by both critics and opponents of the Iraq War, including none other than Hitchens himself. In 2005, Hitchens expounded on the situation in Darfur and referred to estimates of 400,000 dead in Darfur as ‘reliable.’ While he did not cite any specific research, there are two groups which published those findings, and one of those was the Lancet.
While knowing little about epidemiology, it appears that the Iraq study is born of the same methodology and is judged as sound by those who are in the know. For example, Richard Garfield, a professor of Public Health at Columbia University told the Christian Science Monitor “There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s been involved in mortality research who thinks there’s a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there’s a better way to do it.” (Dan Murphy, ‘Iraq casualty figures open up new battleground,’ Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2006)” What then is the motivation for Hitchens’ latest screed? Judging from the snide tone and haughty nature of it, it is not just a political one but a personal one.
Hitchens begins his protest by asserting that the figures in the Lancet study are both precise and imprecise. He takes issue with what the authors deem as the cause of deaths, which are attributed to “the war”. In the same breath, Hitchens raises reports that a letter to the Lancet published in 1995 was guilty the same imprecision in citing the deaths of 567,000 children as a result of ‘the sanctions’. This is interesting considering that Hitchens often cited the deleterious effects of sanctions as a rationale for the war in Iraq even to the point of mentioning that as many as a half of Iraqi children had died because of them. Also curious is that he does not challenge the validity of the number but merely says that it is slightly subjective. Mind you, this estimate is similar to a UNICEF study published in 1999 claiming that the number of children who perished as a consequence of sanctions was at 500,000. So it is not the number Hitchens challenges but the conclusion as to who is responsible. However, this should not prevent us from discerning the reason he mentions the two together, namely, to score pot shots at his opponents in the anti-war movement.
Indeed, Hitchens uses the figure of dead Iraqi children not to raise concern but to smear opponents of the war. He writes “We haven’t heard so much about the massacre of the innocents by sanctions of late, because the sanctions were lifted since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But even before the invasion, the subject largely disappeared when “anti-war” forces suddenly decided that sanctions were permissible after all because they were helping to keep Saddam “in his box.” This is true only in the misleading sense that we would have to discount the majority of the anti-war movement. One doesn’t have to look very hard to find that there were a number of groups such as Voices in the Wilderness, who opposed both the sanctions and war against Iraq. This is truly a display of one of the hallmarks of the Stalinists whom Orwell skillfully exposed during the Spanish Civil War.
Carrying on in this fashion, Hitchens then grants the studies conclusion as true-for the sake of argument- only to go further in justifying what he deems the postponed liberation of Iraq. It is worth noting in this context that this moral idiot can waste column inches lampooning the authors of a serious study while simultaneously remaining silent about the morally frivolous comments of the President of the United States who when asked about Iraqi casualties a year ago insouciantly replied, “30,000-more or less”. That a so-called humanitarian should spend more time berating anti-war activists and those that raise the serious concern of the harmful effects this war is having on the people of Iraqis nothing short of wickedness and depravity. It recalls the words of Randolph Bourne who condemned John Dewey during World War I as a “A philosopher who senses so little the sinister forces of war, who is so much more concerned over the excesses of the pacifists than over the excesses of military policy, who can feel only amusement at the idea that any one should try to conscript thought, who assumes that the wartechnique can be used without trailing along with it the mob-fanaticisms, the injustices and hatreds, that are organically bound up with it, is speaking to another element of the younger intelligentsia than that to which I belong.”
Hitchens goes on complain of the reference to 45% of Iraqi deaths being attributed to ‘unknown’ causes and that 24% were caused by ‘other factors’. He states that since the study only attributes 24% of deaths to the coalition and does not distinguish between ‘unknown’ and ‘other’ causes of death that this is an example of moral idiocy. However, the study doesn’t do what Hitchens says it does. When the Lancet study attributes deaths to other causes it states they can be attributed to non-coalition forces, while ‘unknown’ causes refers to a case where they cannot confirm whether the deaths were caused by the coalition or not.
Not to be outdone, Hitchens invites us to join him in making light of dying Iraqis by asking us to assume that some percentage of those the United States is killing were mass murderers anyway. While it is of course true that some of those the US is killing are those whom Hitchens describes, this is just grasping at straws. It is the same argument trotted out by Likudnik’s to justifySharon’s collective punishment procedures in the West Bank and Gaza. And we all know what Hitchens thinks of that odious man.
Furthermore, to argue that despite the carnage the price is worth it because along the way the US got rid of some despicable men is to fall victim to a moral collapse. This is the argument that the ends justify the means. It is also the reasoning of every terrorist, whether in a cave or in Washington. So we must ponder upon reading this latest diatribe: who is the real moral idiot?
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