Which Are You?
One of the readers at Andrew Sullivan's place e-mails him a passage from a Christopher Hitchens piece:
And Sullivan pens his response:
There are a million things I could say about running military policy by opinion poll, or the difference between destructive and constructive criticism, or whether democracies truly do better in wars but I'll bite my tongue and let this stand as the statements of the two honorable poles of American politics -- how ironic that both men were born and raised in England.
"If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat."
And Sullivan pens his response:
"I don't believe criticizing this administration's conduct of the war is contributing to our defeat. Democracies do better in wars precisely because we have more internal criticism and therefore more flexibility and capacity to correct error. Sadly, this administration seems to specialize in sticking its fingers in its ears."
There are a million things I could say about running military policy by opinion poll, or the difference between destructive and constructive criticism, or whether democracies truly do better in wars but I'll bite my tongue and let this stand as the statements of the two honorable poles of American politics -- how ironic that both men were born and raised in England.
