Mercy Killing

David Corn euthanizes Christopher Hitchens.

For more than two decades, I have seen Hitchens weave facts and assertions into stylistically brilliant copy as he attempts to intuit great truths. But when he comes to believe that he can outthink the facts, he ends up enwrapped in creative conspiratorial fantasies. This past February, I participated in a radio debate with him on whether the Bush administration had misguided the nation into war. Hitchens largely avoided the question at hand and instead argued the necessity of the invasion. When he did address the issue of the absent WMDs in Iraq, he took a strange turn. “Doesn’t anything ever strike you as odd,” he said, “about the figure of zero for [WMD] deposits found in Iraq? … Isn’t it odd that none after all this? None? Doesn’t that suggest a crime scene that has been pretty well dusted in advance, the fingerprints wiped? Well, it does to me.” Read that quote carefully. It is revealing. Hitchens was saying that the fact that no weapons had been uncovered in Iraq (after nearly three years of searching) was evidence that there had been weapons. How can one argue with a person of such intellectual prowess that he can turn absence into presence by mere deduction?

Hitchens responds (appropriately, I think):

Incidentally, I begin to tire of this sickly idea that I used to be a great guy until I became fed up with excuses for dictators and psychopathic murderers (let alone for mediocre CIA fantasists). Alexander Cockburn is surely nearer the mark when he says that I was a complete shit and traitor all along.

I’ve been of the opinion that Hitchens was a complete shit all along, even if he did manage the occasional catchy phrase, but he’s surely correct that guys like Corn shouldn’t waste time mooning over what he once was and crying about what he’s now become, which is an apologist for torturers and psychopathic warlords (let alone for mediocre blogging fantasists).