Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Hitchens: Comparing 'Nam to Iraq

Not one to mince words:

I, for one, will not have them insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge. They have two methods of warfare. One is the use of random murder to create a sectarian and ethnic civil war—perhaps the most evil combination of tactics and strategy it is possible to imagine. The other is the attempt to alienate coalition soldiers from the population.

Even before the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Saddam's foreign minister, Naji Sabry, wrote a memo about how to combat the increasing fraternization between advancing Americans and Iraqi civilians. Send some suicide bombers to the scene, he recommended, and force a wedge between the two. The Americans would then learn to distrust anyone who approached. As with the foul policy above, the awful thing about this charming policy is that it works.


And, of course, the media and the anti-war movements plays along perfectly. The term "useful idiots" comes to mind.