The new David Horowitz?

No, Chris Hitchens isn't quite so repugnant. He's correct to criticize lefties who "agitated" against the Taliban when women's rights and precious Buddhist statues were threatened, but who then "agitated" against Bush's intervention there. I also don't wholly disagree with Hitch's Wilsonian idealism. What I object to is his complete disgust--to the point of name-calling--with lefties who did not support the Iraq war. I didn't disagree with the war because I'm a pacifist or a moral pussy, as Hitch seems to think about folks who believe the way I do. I thought Bush's reasons for the war were bullshit, and were crafted carefully to hide his true reasons (money, resources, propaganda, distraction from corporate malfeasance at home, a crusade for the religious right, and coddling of rightwing Israeli extremists). Hitchens needs to acknowledge this. I also "agitated" against the war because I knew this crew of cowboy clodhoppers were going to do the mission on the cheap and stir up a hornet's nest of dissatisfaction overseas that would feed for decades the very medieval fundamentalist fascism Hitchens is so worked up about. I'm no expert in international affairs, but I thought more carefully about the consequences of having a Shia majority in such close proximity to Iran suddenly freed of its yoke, and a Sunni minority desperate to avoid Shia revenge running around in the desert, with a Kurdish population desiring exactly the opposite of what Turkey wants autonomous in the north then did that intellectual vacuum in the Oval Office. Hitchens needs to recognize that this Administration is exactly the wrong one to have running such a war. To do it right we need a call for sacrifice, rationing, limits on consumption, MUCH higher taxes, savings bond drives, perhaps a draft--and Bush is never going to do any of that stuff. Will Kerry do better? Only nominally, I admit. Bush has proved he can't handle the situation. Hitchens needs to stop calling lefties names, and point out what everyone else has: W. is fucking up the situation over there royally.

Speaking of experts on international affairs, ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI suggests a reason for the mysterious endorsement of Bush by Vladimir Putin. I'd puzzled over this for a couple weeks--what does Putin have to gain from another Bush term? More encirclement by US bases in the easternmost former Soviet states? A catastrophe on his southern borders? Here's Zbig:

In fact, in the Islamic world at large as well as in Europe, Mr. Bush's policy is becoming conflated in the public mind with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy in Gaza and the West Bank. Fueled by anti-American resentments, that policy is widely caricatured as a crude reliance on power, semicolonial in its attitude, and driven by prejudice toward the Islamic world. The likely effect is that staying on course under Mr. Bush will remain a largely solitary American adventure.

This global solitude might make a re-elected Bush administration more vulnerable to the temptation to embrace a new anti-Islamic alliance, one reminiscent of the Holy Alliance that emerged after 1815 to prevent revolutionary upheavals in Europe. The notion of a new Holy Alliance is already being promoted by those with a special interest in entangling the United States in a prolonged conflict with Islam. Vladimir Putin's endorsement of Mr. Bush immediately comes to mind; it also attracts some anti-Islamic Indian leaders hoping to prevent Pakistan from dominating Afghanistan; the Likud in Israel is also understandably tempted; even China might play along.

For the United States, however, a new Holy Alliance would mean growing isolation in an increasingly polarized world. That prospect may not faze the extremists in the Bush administration who are committed to an existential struggle against Islam and who would like America to attack Iran, but who otherwise lack any wider strategic conception of what America's role in the world ought to be. It is, however, of concern to moderate Republicans.

Zbig created the international mujahadeen/fascist Islamicist movement as Carter's National Security Adviser. His idea was to give the Soviets their own Vietnam by luring them into Afghanistan and bleeding them dry. Reagan's crew ran with this idea, pumping money and arms and training into the groups that later became Al Qaeda and the Taliban, all the while cynically criticising the Soviets for invading a sovereign country, when that was the desired result all along. So perhaps Putin's endorsement of Bush is along the same lines: his foolhardiness in the Middle East, coupled with reckless spending, might lead to a much-precipitated collapse of the "world's only superpower," again leveling the international playing field. The Soviet Union wasn't the first major world power to be broken in those deserts, and if Bush is re-elected, it might not have been the last.

(I apologize this is so poorly written, but I worked on it for an hour and Blogger ate my post; this is a quick attempt at reconstruction)