What Do You Think of Peter Hitchens?

Typical...well I suppose he did kick off the new wave of Atheists, so now typical Atheists arguments.

Christopher likes the sound of his own voice quite a bit, one feels.

I can't stand him. He's an extremely superficial thinker, not one-fifth the writer his brother was.

He's "right-on" from a right-traditionalist perspective. He says things he thinks people will find shocking because he enjoys being thought of as an old curmudgeon. It's a psychological crutch, not a serious intellectual/political position. He enjoys being thought of as a bete noir, an enfant terrible. As a result he always seems to be scrabbling around for the most controversial and shocking thing he could say from a hard-right-traditionalist perspective.

Many of his proposed policies are completely idiotic, like his claim that if only we would "properly" punish drug users and dealers then we could win the war on drugs. First, we already punish them pretty harshly; anyone who cares to spend the time to read the caselaw will see that people are regularly put away for a term of years for possessing with intent to supply merely a few hundred pounds worth of heroin and crack. Two years for having £200 of crack is a bloody harsh sentence, and it's one that was imposed by an English court only a few years ago.

Second, there are plenty of countries that do impose the "proper" punishments for which he calls (Singapore, China), where people are executed for drug offences. And yet, those countries still have drug problems; how can this be? Well, it can be because Peter Hitchens is clueless on drug policy and has applied his evidence-free, superficial thought processes to that as to pretty much every other issue he writes about.

He also adheres to the scummy, anti-British / anti-Western alt-right foreign policy inclination (like Peter Oborne) that impugns the motives of the war in Iraq, that lauds Vladimir Putin as a visionary and generally demands an isolationist foreign policy that is completely at odds with this country's traditional foreign policy disposition. Whether we like it or not, we are the only middle-power with truly global capabilities. We still have a mini-empire (in the Mediterranean; Gibraltar at the western end and our Cyprus bases in the east), our base at Bahrain, our 3,000 Gurkha soldiers and the army establishment in Brunei, our territory in the Indian Ocean at Diego Garcia. Only France, among the other middle powers, has a comparable mini-empire.

Peter Hitchens has never been able to get over being Christopher's little brother, and it sent him a bit loopy. He clearly hewed to the opposite of whatever position his brother adopted, leaving him with a really quite nasty, reactionary set of ideas that manages to marry the worst elements of isolationism, superstition and barbarous socio-political ideas. He should be treated as the confused, psychologically-broken man he is.

Although I'm an evangelical atheist I wasn't actually drawn to C. Hitchens anti theism although I agree with him on the issue. I was more drawn to his journalism e.g his demolishing of Michael Moore. See here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html

His critiques of Michael Moore, Bill Clinton and the allegedly anti-War movement make me very happy.

He's also the person who convinced me that the Iraq War wasnt the crime against humanity some people seem to think it was.

His critiques of Michael Moore, Bill Clinton and the allegedly anti-War movement make me very happy.

He's also the person who convinced me that the Iraq War wasnt the crime against humanity some people seem to think it was.

Because we didn't fight the war vigorously enough and defend our gains, yes.

Because we didn't fight the war vigorously enough and defend our gains, yes.

It wasn't a crime against humanity, it was just a massive idiotic blunder where over a hundred British soldiers died for nothing.

It wasn't our war to fight, or do you think British troops should always be ready to die for American Imperial interests?

Staying in after Hussein was overthrown was the first mistake. Bush just about got on top of it though, then Obama came in and screwed that up. That's why we are where we are.

As for it not being our fight, I think Hitchens argued against that point pretty effectively. Saddam had declared himself an enemy of the civilised world by invading Kuwait, and had in the past expressed a desire to obtain WMDs (even if he didn't yet have them). Not to mention the horror he and his family inflicted upon the Iraqi people every single day.

Staying in after Hussein was overthrown was the first mistake. Bush just about got on top of it though, then Obama came in and screwed that up. That's why we are where we are.

As for it not being our fight, I think Hitchens argued against that point pretty effectively. Saddam had declared himself an enemy of the civilised world by invading Kuwait, and had in the past expressed a desire to obtain WMDs (even if he didn't yet have them). Not to mention the horror he and his family inflicted upon the Iraqi people every single day.

Imperialism is good. And it was in both our countries' interests to conquer Iraq.

We were right to stay in. We should have colonised Iraq and made it a model for Middle Eastern governance.

It was not in the British interest it was in the American interest, just as Iraq was. Hell it's not even like Suez where we were fighting to preserve our interests and the Americans back stabbed us, Iraq was American Imperialism it did not benefit Britain at all.

Ok let's us assume that that venture wouldn't be doomed to utter failure in some magical fantasy land...why should we expend blood and treasure to do that? The nations that were created out of that would only be American puppets anyway, you sure you're British?

You're right, America screwed us over in 1956. However, Eden made a mistake in not carrying on the attack on Nasserist Egypt when he were on the cusp of victory.

That doesn't of course mean that our interests cannot be aligned now.

It is in our interests to ensure that our American friends, who share our values and our language, gain ascendancy in that region, at the expense of other powers.