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A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq | 
| Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
Buy New: $8.99
New (32) Used (39) Collectible (1) from $0.01
Rating:  37 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 112
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 0452284988
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.70443
EAN: 9780452284982
ASIN: 0452284988
Publication Date: June 2003
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Of course it's about oil November 18, 2007
Gord Wilson (Bellingham, WA USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
In the town where I live, I once encountered a senior- aged woman standing next to some Marines who were recruiting. She wore a crude mask likely meant to be George Bush or some political figure and had a sign reading something like "US Out of Iraq". Her mission in this vigil seemed to be to dispense little "facts" like this: "We've killed more people than Sadam Hussein ever did." Where to begin to tally the totals? One could start, Hitchens suggests, with the 50,000 strafed by helicopter gunships after Saddam had already surrendered in Kuwait. That doesn't include, of course, any of the body count from the actual Desert Shield/ Desert Storm war which ended in 1991. Nor does it include those within Iraq, many of them, like the Kuwaiti, their Muslim brothers, tortured and killed by the Baathist party. Then there are the surrounding nations.
I wanted to ask the protesting matron where she had gotten her information. CNN? Perhaps it was merely a rather prolonged senior moment. At any rate, the cure is this book by Chris Hitchens. Another who may benefit from glancing at it is H. Clinton, judging from her campaign planks.
This book, or at least my copy, dates from 2003, and runs slightly over 100 pages. Like C.S. Lewis and Neil Postman, I am a fan of the small book, and this one fits the bill. It also is what a lot of other books seem like they would be but never are, concise, pithy, polemical, reasoned, opinionated and supporting that opinion, and actually stimulating to the gray matter.
Mostly these brief essays are all of one opinion: that Regime Change was mandated in the nation of Iraq, read: deposing of Saddam. These essays, mostly written on-line, in Iraq in 2003, make the case point by point in a way that would seem invaluable for those considering the present war. The one exception to the blog- style essays is one written for the Seattle rag, The Stranger, which, to its credit, allowed Hitchens to express a viewpoint with which nearly none of its readers would agree.
I'm completely avoiding the obvious reason the name Hitchens may ring a bell: he's the author, after this book, of the best-selling God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Having not read it yet, I am in no position to comment on it, but he represents, in the present book, a small organization called Atheists for Regime Change, and when the conversation turns to religion, as it very briefly does in this book, his tone changes.
He feels very let down by Christian pacifists. He substantiates a claim that Jimmy Carter betrayed Americans (you'll have to read it to see how and why) in the matter of Iraq. He points out that many of the salvos thrown at Bush senior and junior better apply to Bill Clinton. He takes on Pat Robertson in a sentence (a sentence is enough for Hitchens' reasoned prose). But I sense he simply feels let down by the Vatican and its advisors who, like so many Americans, kept buying time for Saddam. If the vatican enlists Mother Teresa's most vociferous critics to make the case as a devil's advocate, as it were, against her being canonized as a saint, I hope they will also listen to this staunch opponent and consider his arguments and insights in the matter of fighting oppression and rebuilding Iraq.
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