Hitchens = warmonger

It was disheartening to see the IU School of Journalism lionize Christopher Hitchens, who practices the ultimate form of "newspeak" by domesticating the iconoclasm of George Orwell into sycophancy for President Bush's "War on Terror."\nIn the Sept. 11, 2006, Wall Street Journal, Mr. Hitchens wrote: "'We' -- and our allies -- simply have to become more ruthless ... An unspoken advantage of the current awful strife in Iraq and Afghanistan is that it is training tens of thousands of our young officers and soldiers to ... 'turn,' isolate, and kill the worst imaginable enemy." It is an unusual truth-teller who uses the opinion page of the nation's leading conservative newspaper to call for ruthlessness, when the world is outraged at this administration's practice of torture and its contempt for international law.\nMr. Hitchens claimed that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was a supporter of terrorism -- despite all credible intelligence that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and minimal contact with al Qaida. He claimed that the American occupation has "liberated" Iraq and that Iraqi democracy legitimizes U.S. occupation -- although all major Iraqi parties campaigned for us to leave, a pledge they betrayed because the occupation tacitly supports the sectarian and ethnic basis for their power (Shiite and Kurd against Sunni Arab). He claimed that the U.S. military's greatest mistake was squeamishness in targeting, lest we offend -- although at least 43,546 civilians have been killed by U.S. military in Iraq and more than 100,000 have died in the chaos.\nMr. Hitchens said of the Islamists: "If they want a clash of civilizations, they can have one." This, in an Oxford accent, is George Bush's "Bring 'em on." It has turned millions of moderate Muslims (who after September 11th sympathized with the United States) into our reluctant but determined enemies. Mr. Hitchens claims that "our victory" and "our superiority" are "a certainty." The only certainty on this course is tragedy for all.\nAnother Oxonian, W. H. Auden, wrote in 1939:\n"Intellectual disgrace\n"Stares from every human face,\n"And the seas of pity lie\n"Locked and frozen in each eye."\nSincerely,