Peter Hitchens on the war

Peter Hitchens on the war

Peter Hitchens, the Tory (and non-expatriate) brother of Christopher, has published an article in the Spectator opposing the war. I didn’t like the article and wrote a letter to the Spectator saying why:

Just like the antiwar right in America, Peter Hitchens opposes the war on general ideological and philosophical grounds—that war fosters the growth of government, that it overturns society, that it leads to utopian crusades for global democracy—while he refuses to address the actual argument for war in this case, namely the fatal nexus of (1) Hussein’s cruel and unrestrained tyranny, (2) his ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction, (3) the existence of anti-American terrorist groups alligned with Hussein, and (4) the demonstrated intent of these groups to destroy America. For the American government to have ignored these things and just let Hussein continue developing nuclear weapons and other WMDs, would have been an act of suicidal irresponsibility.
One does not have to like Tony Blair. He is a cultural Leninist with the announced aim of “sweeping aside all those forces of conservatism.” But in this case, unlike both the antiwar left AND the antiwar right, Blair has refused to ignore the reality of the specific physical threat that the West is under, and he has courageously committed himself to opposing it.
Peter Hitchens’s evasive article is a disappointment.
Lawrence Auster
New York City

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 01, 2003 10:57 AM | Send

Comments

I wonder if Hussein is as great a potential threat to England as he is to the US. What should a patriotic British conservative do in this case, given the fact that the Blairites have reduced the UK to a semi-totalitarian state? The fact that Blair’s regime was elected via a majority vote does not confer any moral legitimacy on it, any more than Hitler’s election conferred moral legitimacy upon the Nazis. It strikes me that the Tranzi/NWO is a greater immediate threat for the British poeple than Iraq. They are about to be sold out to Brussels - a thousand years of building a unique culture and civilization washed down the drain with a stroke of Tony Blair’s pen.

Posted by: Carl on April 1, 2003 4:51 PM

Fighting the Tranzis and Iraq are not mutually exclusive. The Tranzis oppose the war on Iraq. Take a good look at the positions of the EU and UN.
In this case, Blair is putting the Atlantic Alliance ahead of the Brussells regime. He may be triangulating, but that is no reason for British conservatives to oppose Blair in Pavlovian fashion. If they were smart, they would use the war to damage British-EU relations. Unfortunately, like their American counterparts, British anti-war conservatives rather complain about the war than actually defend the sovereignty of their nations.

Posted by: Ron on April 2, 2003 1:29 AM