Decision ‘08

Hitchens Chimes In

Our good friend Christopher is not saying anything we haven’t already been saying in these parts, but of course he says it with a good deal more style:

The critical thing about the much-bruited surge is that it, too, belongs in the all-important realm of the symbolic. A few thousand extra troops in Baghdad and in Anbar are of scant use in themselves, unless they in some way represent a commitment to stick to Iraq no matter what. And if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki’s surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it. The president conceded as much when he said that new patrols in Baghdad would not be determined by sectarian calculations: Such an assurance would not be necessary if the contingency itself—or the symbolic perception of it—was not so strongly present in people’s minds. In these conditions, it’s almost perfect that the Democrats have been discussing a symbolic vote against the surge (you cannot beat these people for moral courage), while our new secretary of defense seems to believe that what the surge really symbolizes is a renewed determination to hand over to the Iraqis and start drawing down—as near to a flat contradiction in terms as you could wish.

Ah, it’s a pity: pessimism is definitely in the air when even as staunch a supporter of the war as Hitchens is despairing…and it’s all Maliki, Maliki, Maliki…I’m beginning to curse the day I heard that name…