I really started to pay attention and watch his videos online a little over a year ago and agree with 90% of what he had to say. I'm not familiar with his stance on Mother Teresa or Iraq that well. But his main goal was wanting Saddam ousted right? Then I started to read his book of quotes on various subjects and so far agree with 90% of those too.
He was tenacious and to the point, blunt- that was what I loved. Dawkins comes close but still...who can have that same effect? There is a huge void now.
I think it would be worth finding out what Hitchens thought on Iraq.
It was a little unusual to say the least.
In 1991, he was vehemently opposed to the war to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There are still videos floating around of him saying that the US and UK forces perpetrated war crimes and that the US had, in any event, given Saddam Hussein the "green light" to invade as a reward for fighting Iran.
Then he was invited to visit the Kurds in the north of Iraq after it came under US-protected no-fly zones. From then on he did write pieces about "the struggle of the Kurds" and started hanging out with Iraqi emigres who were lobbying to see Saddam Hussein overthrown. One of these, Ahmed Chalabi, became quite notorious and was a good example of how his judgment could be a bit off. Another influence was Kenan Makiya's Republic of Fear which showed the type of country that Saddam Hussein presided over. In that sense, I agree with others who say that Hitchens had a
principled opposition to Saddam Hussein and that foremost was his belief that Hussein was simply evil and worth getting rid of.
The problem for me is that after dabbling with skepticism over Bush and his "Axis of Evil" and after publicly stating that he would need reassurances on a "million fronts" (IIRC) he suddenly lost all doubts whatsoever and began to
propagandize hard for war. Anyone who disagreed with him, even mildly, were savaged and denigrated and he started to argue that there were WMDs in Iraq and soon everyone would know it and then they would see he was right. Of course, such weapons weren't found and he seems to have allowed himself to be duped, once again over "yellowcake from Niger" which was based on forged documents. Again, the same pattern of abuse of any naysayer or advocate of caution while blustering away about how many Ba'athists and jihadists were going to be killed and what happy days these were. In short, I think he became a little bit deranged in the run-up to the war to the point were he could no longer climb down or admit he was wrong. So, he doubled down on it, urging more and more destruction and "endless war" - he literally did this! When he turned up to some atheist convention he said he wanted to piss the audience off and then started urging the bombing of Iran and killing of more jihadists. By this point, I think Hitchens was just trying to be consistent as he could no longer start saying, "well, hold on now. Let's slow down and think about this rationally" the logic of his Iraq War stance ruled this out. So, the guy who accused Bill Clinton of war crimes, for bombing al-Shifa in Khartoum, was demanding that the US start bombing the **** out of just about anything and everything.
he's not around to do the same for Iran.
