Christopher Hitchens' Unforgivable Mistake

[emcguffie]

9. One column?

He was a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, for many, many years. I myself am not aware of when or if he ever gave it up, because I stopped paying attention to him.

I couldn't for the life of me understand how he could do that. I could see where the impulse came from, but at the level of the reality of the war and the people who were running the war and what was happening on the ground -- can't see that his initial impulse had anything to do with reality whatsoever.

For someone who championed human rights as he did to champion an illegal, dishonest war of invasion in which innocent civilians were maimed and killed on a nearly daily basis just doesn't add up, in my poor, tired little brain.

Apart from that tremendous disappointment, his brilliance always astounded me. So it was doubly, triply, sad to see him go down that road. It was a tremendous loss, years before he died.