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Hitchens v Hitchens, but not what you'd expect in the battle over Iraq

By Stephen Barton - posted Thursday, 22 May 2003


Bush's call that day was no Gettysburg address but it served its purpose. In an era of carefully scripted phrases and considered rhetoric, it was both intensely powerful and moving. For liberals and neo-cons alike, it was firmly in the tradition of Kennedy's "bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the success and survival of liberty". It was an outburst of instinctive American idealism.

Jonathan Holmes' unfairly maligned Four Corners documentary of the neo-cons summed up this mood with the title, American Dreamers. Such idealism instantly arouses the suspicion of some conservatives. Peter Hitchens' opposition, like that of many British conservatives, seems to be the reflex revulsion at the vulgar American.

This idealistic American repels Hitchens. He instead believes in an alternative America with its "generous citizens in their quiet towns and peaceful suburbs which I love so much". One can't help thinking that Hitchens' preferred America is some idyllic New Hampshire village, perhaps the kind of place where a real life Jimmy Stewart character would make his dignified way through life.

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Other conservatives, however have taken a different view, just as Peter Hitchens did during the Cold War. They argued that we cannot stop all the evil men from doing evil but we should stop those who present a threat to our interests and safety. This has been the position of conservatives from the Australian Prime Minister, to Iain Duncan Smith. Above all, this has been the position of George W Bush, transforming him from a relatively isolationist President to the neo-con great hope.

The debate on the Right has produced some strange bedfellows. Who would have thought on September 10 2001 that Peter's brother Christopher would support military action led by George W Bush? Who would have thought Peter Hitchens would oppose it? How long these conservatives, neo-cons and liberals alike remain foreign-policy bedfellows is anyone's guess but we can say that it has been a productive alliance. Some evil men have been stopped and that others have had their days seriously numbered. And surely that is in everyone's interests.

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About the Author

Stephen Barton teaches politics at Edith Cowan University and has been a political staffer at both a state and federal level. The views expressed here are his own.

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