I don’t see it that way. Yes, there’s an opening in the market, and Hitch can churn out books on demand, but he’s long been an equal-opportunities religion-hater.

It is as if he is reliving the Spanish Civil war, but since he never got to hang out with the International Brigade and shout out No Pasarans! and stand below balconies strumming guitar ballads to serenade La Passionaria, he projects it all onto the Fight for Freedom in Kurdistan instead.

Well, sorta. And the irony is that he’s apparently forgotten Homage to Catalonia and Orwell’s description of how the various anti-fascist orgs hated one another, to the bemusement of the foreigners who’d come along to join the fight. Hitch is like a Stalinist in May 1937, trying to mow down the fucking Anarchists and POUM.

But yes, he’s been waiting his entire life for a Spanish Civil War to support, and when he does it, he signs up with the bastards’ brigade.

You’re right, though, in terms of nuclear firecrackers nobody can touch us. Whether that will be a consideration in the next war depends entirely on the amount of loopiness present in the White house, and makes the next election a nail-biter even though most of the candidates are pretty lackluster (I mean, just imagine if we got McCain! Jesus…). Even there, though, the Russians can match us for world-ending potential.

From time to time I make a point of reading the last chapter of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, where he describes the state of affairs circa 1980, and marvel at how little has changed. In fact, next to nothing has changed beyond the identity of the political entity that controls the former USSR’s nuclear arsenal (except that India and Pakistan now both have nukes). You might give that a read, particularly the part about the “Richardson Curve,” if you want some idea of how much trouble we’re in. LW Richardson gave us about 300 years before the “world-ending” conflict, but Sagan seemed less optimistic.

But you’re right in that that’s not the whole story. The way the US government has been squandering the military, for example, weakens them considerably. It’s not a good idea to send soldiers out without proper equipment: depletes the numbers and discourages recruits.

Also, it’s probably not a good idea to give the military command the distinct impression that the CinC is a nutcase, along with most of his advisors. That way military coup lies.

There’s also the fact that the continued policy of attacking weaker countries is infuriating people across the globe, and sooner or later this fury will be greater than the fear of reprisals. Particularly since the most likely attackers will be non-state actors, who don’t have a home base that can be bombed. It’s like trying to kill a wasp when the only weapon you’ve got is a rocket launcher.

And finally, there’s the fact that the US armed forces have something of a reputation around the world, at least amongst army types. The more the US displays its astonishing military prowess, the more people will realise that, despite all that expensive hardware, the US military is known for being dangerous to all around, including allies, and is also renowned for a certain confident incompetence.

And that’s not the kind of thing that helps build an effective deterrent.

I was just about to say that Hitchens was good at spotting the romantic sentimentalism in other people’s behaviour. After the death of an over-privileged clotheshorse called Diana, when Blair and the Murdoch press decided to anoint her as the “people’s princess”, Hitchen’s response was — well, not exactly spot-on, but at least in the appropriately scornful direction.
However, as for recognising the black kettle in his own eye —
pills are kicjlinge in noer

Dirt’s a cash crop? Whuh-hey, I’m in the money!

Herr Doktor, Hitch probably listened to a little too much of The Clash. Get all sorts of romantic civil war notions from that, a young lad would…

Moxie, I think it’s pretty well established by now that the US possesses way more Stuff That Goes Bang than everybody else put together, spends more on Stuff That Goes Bang than everybody else put together, and has more bases for Stuff That Goes Bang than everybody else put together. More than 700 foreign bases, fer jeebus’s sake! And more than likely more than 1000, just that the US is rather coy about its homes away from home for the sojer boys.

You know, I wonder about this. I’m not about to argue that the U.S. military isn’t supreme in the world, it’s the “unquestioned” part I wonder about. It seems to me that the world has been thinking about the U.S. threat, witness, e.g. the Chinese quietly financing our debt and encouraging the erosion of our industrial base, the oil-profit fueled military buildup by the Iranians, etc. The U.S. won WWII because we were able to out produce everyone else by a large margin, and we were the world’s leading oil producer; neither of these conditions obtains today. I’m not sure we’re in a position to prevail in a world conflict, at least not with the ease we won WWII (and yeah, it was easy, largely because the Russians whipped Hitler and experienced most of the sacrifice that required, and there was no way in hell the Japanese were going to match our industrial output).

Even at the tactical/hardware/War Nerd level at which we are supposed to excel, I have my doubts. There’s a lot of scary stuff floating around out there, like the new Russian cruise missiles designed to destroy American aircraft carriers. You can throw in the Russian and Chinese research on EMP weapons and the Ukrainian developments in anti-aircraft radar, and it seems the world has not been idle. I’m not saying you’re wrong in the short term, as the U.S. will always prevail in these conflicts where we, as the man said, “take a little country and throw it against the wall to show the world we mean business.” But the unquestioned assumption of wingnut militarism, i.e. that the U.S. military is invincible, is probably incorrect over the long haul. Unfortunately, the only way we’ll find out is when we get an administration that is both ballsy and stupid enough to test the proposition.

The only negative statement here I’d take issue with is the idea that Hitchens rode Dawkin’s coattails into atheist celebrity. Hitch was writing for Free Inquiry long before Dawkins showed up and he took far more crap for his own atheist tract (about Mother Teresa) than Dawkins did his (although this probably has to do with Dawkins being an urbane, erudite scholar who advances his thesis with eloquence, and Hitch being a drunken asshole who blusters, but I digress).

In other words, Hitchens was a celebrity atheist before it was cool. The only thing I ever have/do now/ever will admire about the man. BTW, you might poke through Dennis Perrin’s old blog “Red State Son” for some amusing anecdotes about Hitchens. The one about Hitch the macho man was pretty funny.

I don’t know about your lot, but a lot of Commonwealth WW-II soldiers were introduced to tobacco by the army cigarette rations [I wouldn't be surprised if more veterans died of lung cancer than were killed during the actual war]. Hence the propaganda images of troops puffing away in the sands of North Africa or the jungles of Burma or on the North Atlantic convoys. From Hitchens’ perspective, these can all be recruited to his cause: iconic examples of the “British stoicism and enduranceâ€? heritage which the puritans are disowning when they ban cigarettes. Feel free, at this point, to imagine him pulling his dad’s old mothball-reeking uniform out of the cupboard and trying to squeeze into it.

What I like about his rhetoric is that along with the ciggies, the allied and axis armies were also handing out bucketloads of amphetamine pills. So when the health nazis take away my crystal-meth pipe, they are spitting in the faces of the greatest generation!

Mikey & Some Guy –

You’d be tickled, I think, to see all the Russian WWII movies that have been playing nonstop on Channel First and KRB for the last couple of weeks. It’s fascinating to reverse-engineer what was going on in Russia politically by observing the propaganda movies. In the old 50s-era Stalinist movies, the hero is always a heroically bearded partisanski clutching his MP-40 in one hand whilst inspiring the clean-faced young Red Army soldier who is staring up at him, enraptured. The bearded partisan even appears at the Metro stop dedicated to the heroes that turned back the Wehrmacht at what was then the Moscow city limits in ‘41: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hardnewsinc/464399897/

In Russia, they paid the price and then some. And down on their southern border, hell in Moscow city center, they are still paying the price of empire … the Chetniks are serious badasses and they are not giving up. Yeltsin, viewed here in the U.S. as a lovable red-faced drunk buffoon, screwed up the war in Chechnya at least as bad, if not worse, than Duh!bya has screwed up Iraq. And they are still dealing with the fallout from that.

The current crop of war-related movies has none of the uncritical adoration of the heroism of the military that gets foisted on us in crapaganda like J.A.G. or Blackhawk Down or in the fantasies of the chickenhawk bloggers. Because they know better. The one benefit of compulsory military service is that at least every person gets some kind of contact with military, and if they’re at all paying attention, figures out that it’s not all spit-shined boots standing at attention while Old Glory waves overhead… maybe if we gave Noonan and Pammy and Magalapagan (or whatever) a really really intense paintball training exercise and then pinned big shiny medals on them at the end and gave them pats on the head, they’d be satisfied with all the praise and attention they got, and they’d fucking shut up for a while.

Then again, the downside of compulsory military service is that the cretins, morons and petty mini-tyrants are given uniforms, weapons and theoretically at least, some authority by which to work out their raging penis envy/inferiority complexes on the rest of the citizenry. Which is why fragmentation grenades were invented, dear hearts.

I don’t pretend to speak for Dakota, but your question is both easily answered and utterly specious. Of course the world has that responsibility. The US is currently a rogue nation, and a threat to peace and stability.

There is also nothing the world can do. The US is highly militarized. America’s ability to project force and destroy foreign militaries is unquestioned. There is nothing the high-tech, cutting edge American armed forces can do against a local insurgency with extensive support, but there is nothing the world can do militarily against the US. They should start thinking seriously about this.

mikey

“Dammit. See? I missed the GOOD wars. Groveling in the Southeast Asian mud, slogging in rubble strewn desert towns or humping in the afghani mountains where the top cash crops are poppies and dirt, there’s nothing the slightest bit romantic about that.”

Yup.

I’ve said it before, a large part of this issues with pro-war hawks is that many of they are pissed that Daddy was a hero, and they are not. And we have to start shit to create that same feeling of Heroic Victory for ourselves, then by god, that’s what we have to do.

The US really, REALLY, missed out on the point of WWII, simply because we were never bombed. The war was always “over there”. Sure, the homefront was busying themselves with industrialism and war rations and bonds, but, really, when the GI’s came home, there were cities left to have ticker tape parades in.

For the last hundred years, war has always been an abstract concept for America. We send troops off somewhere, read about it in the paper, then they come back. Yay. Life at home goes on, nothing changes, no one has to worry about their workplace being hit today when the enemy bombers come in for their morning raid. Is it any wonder that warfare has once again resumed it’s pre-WWI status of glamor and heroism?

And his fetish about the Kurdish Peshmerga… It is as if he is reliving the Spanish Civil war, but since he never got to hang out with the International Brigade and shout out No Pasarans! and stand below balconies strumming guitar ballads to serenade La Passionaria, he projects it all onto the Fight for Freedom in Kurdistan instead.

Dammit. See? I missed the GOOD wars. Groveling in the Southeast Asian mud, slogging in rubble strewn desert towns or humping in the afghani mountains where the top cash crops are poppies and dirt, there’s nothing the slightest bit romantic about that.

Ahh, but the Spanish civil war, with the strumming guitars and the Hemmingway presence, the hard men with the courage and the beard and the booze – That’s for me! Let’s have one of THOSE wars right away!! Sign me up!

mikey

Bugger me if it doesn’t contain every sentimental WWII cliché except the one about plucky Londoners standing shoulder-to-shoulder during the Blitz to defy the Jerry bombers. You can practically hear the medley of Vera Lynn and Churchill’s “Fight them on the beaches” speech playing in the background while he was writing it.

And his fetish about the Kurdish Peshmerga… It is as if he is reliving the Spanish Civil war, but since he never got to hang out with the International Brigade and shout out No Pasarans! and stand below balconies strumming guitar ballads to serenade La Passionaria, he projects it all onto the Fight for Freedom in Kurdistan instead.