So today
our least favorite ex-Trotskyite is apoplectic over an
"appalling article" by James Bennett in the NYT Week in Review, trying to figure out what motivates the insurgents in Iraq.
Bennett's excellent article dares to suggest that it's hard to figure the insurgents out, given that they don't appear to have a rational strategy for unseating the government or a positive program of governance if it does get chased out. The author does a terrific job of referencing both the strategic wisdom of successful revolutionaries of yore (Guevara, Mao) and of academics who've studied revolutions and guerrilla wars to sketch what makes the persistence of the Iraqi insurgents so puzzling.
Hitchens's idiotic response to this article is too full of inanities to refute in every instance. First he says Bennett is stupid to think it's hard to figure the insurgents out; then when Bennett does try to figure them out, Hitch says it's immoral to do so. But let's just focus on one of Hitch's infuriating bits of bullshit: "Having once read in high school that violence is produced by underlying social conditions, the author of this appalling article refers in lenient terms to 'the goal of ridding Iraq of an American presence, a goal that may find sympathy among Iraqis angry about poor electricity and water service and high unemployment.' Bet you hadn't thought of that: The water and power are intermittent, so let's go and blow up the generating stations and the oil pipelines."
What exactly is "lenient" about Bennett's description here? In any case, Hitchens's response reveals ignorance of the normal dynamics of guerrilla warfare. OF COURSE the lack of electricity and water service is due partly to the insurgency. This is what insurgents do: they destroy the government's capacity to provide services and security in order to sever people's loyalty to the government. Ever heard of the Viet Cong? First you show everyone that the government cannot protect them and cannot provide them with services. Then you move in and offer them those services - and protection - yourself. This is precisely what Bennett is saying. Then Bennett goes on to note the peculiarity of this insurgency: it has failed to go on to step two, to offer security and services itself. So, according to the textbook, it should be disappearing, abandoned and reviled by the population. Yet, for some reason, it isn't.
At least Bennet READ that school textbook. Hitch clearly didn't.