"Lesser Evils Do Not Add Up To A Moral Good."

Ted Barlow emails to remind me that Christopher Hitchens has also constantly made Goldbergesque “Meaningless Horrible Baseline” arguments since he became an apologist for the Iraq war. A Frayster named Shrinking Shrieking Violet says all that needs to be said:

It’s always fascinating to observe the logical gymnastics that Christoher Hitchens must engage in to square his previous fondness for leftist terrorism with his current loathing of Jihadist terrorism.

Everyone makes mistakes, of course, and I think it can fairly be said that we should judge people not by their mistakes but by the way they respond to them. Many very smart people made the mistake of sympathizing with communist revolutionaries in the 1960s. Many very smart people made the mistake of supporting the invasion of Iraq. But it takes a very special person to unapologetically hold both views in the summer of 2006 and earn a living by rationalizing these views in a public forum.

Hitchens is certainly correct that the alleged events in Haditha were a less atrocious atrocity than My Lai. He is absolutely correct that the rules of engagement in Iraq are more decent than the free-fire zones and village razing in Vietnam. He is unquestionably correct that the current professional military is a more honorable organization than Westmoreland’s corrupt and morally bankrupt establishment in the late 1960s. He is also probably correct that the Vietcong were a more admirable band of torurous murderers than Al Qaida in Iraq, although I’d imagine there are plenty of surviving vets and POWs who would hesitate to praise them.

One could likewise argue that Brezhnev was more of a humanitarian than Stalin, Franco was more progressive than Hitler, the IRA is more admirable than the Mahdi Army, and Castro did more good for the Cuban people than Batista. And you’d be absolutely correct.

Unfortunately, lesser evils do not add up to a moral good. To defend the Iraq war, one must not only conclude that the Iraqis are better off now than they were four years ago, but one must also conclude that this “improvement” was worth the cost in lives and taxpayer dollars, and it was worth our diminished ability to contain Islamic jihadism where it actually poses a threat. Hitchens, to my knowledge, has never once even attempted to do so. Instead, he composes apologies for all the less atrocious atrocities that have stemmed from the decisions of right-thinking minds like his own

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Indeed.