Christopher Hitchens, National Treasure

Posted March 21, 2006

Hitch shoots and scores. Today’s Stone Face of Zarqawi in the Wall Street Journal is Christopher Hitchens at his finest and gives lie to the comforting notion that “the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the fight against al Qaeda”.

Money shot:

“Knowing that their own position was a tenuous one (a fact fully admitted by Zarqawi in his report) the cadres of "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" understood that their main chance was the deliberate stoking of a civil war. And, now that this threat has become more imminent and menacing, it is somehow blamed on the Bush administration. "Civil war" has replaced "the insurgency" as the proof that the war is "unwinnable." But in plain truth, the "civil war" is and always was the chief tactic of the "insurgency."

From where I sit, Christopher Hitchens thinks more critically and writes more eloquently than any journalist today. He is possessed of an intellect honed by the circular firing squads of the partisan left and a bruising Oxford wit that leaves his targets cowering. You will almost surely disagree with Hitchens about something — and you will take little comfort from the experience.

Hitchens’ recent book Love, Poverty, and War : Journeys and Essays establishes him as our Orwell. He is not only Orwell’s most pointed biographer but he has taken up the Orwellian cudgel as a relentless critic of imperialism, fascism, and communism in any form. His critical style is the most witty, devastating, and literary since, well, Orwell.

Hitchens spares nobody — not Clinton, not Kissinger, not even Mother Theresa, each the subject of earlier book-length essays. He happily challenges your deepest convictions — and challenges his own as well. For those new to the cult, Hitch is a former Trotskyite who endorsed Bush in the recent election, a Brit who is a more patriotic American than most Yanks, a student of literature and history who frequently sends professors scurrying back to their notes, and a ferocious debater who humbles enemies left and right.

This book is a treasure of his recent essays — worth the cover price just for the hysterical and poignant story of his solo trip in a red Corvette along the length of Route 66.

I admit that I could not track every literary allusion or historical reference — the man has a dramatically better literary and classical education than I do. He frequently delivers a vicious right cross when a jab would knock the target over nicely. But he is informative, provocative, and funny. More than that, I do not ask of a book.