Hitchens: Enemy of My Enemies?
Some friends have suggested to me that, by exposing some recent antics of Christopher Hitchens, I have only helped the militant atheist sell more books. Maybe so. But Mr. Hitchens needs to have a spotlight shone on him right now, and conservatives need to pay attention.
It hardly needs saying that Hitchens’ abusive treatment of 9-11 hero Father George Rutler —previously described here — demands coverage in and of itself, on general principle. But there is more. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, the now-infamous confrontation between Hitchens and Father Rutler at Manhattan’s Union League Club on May 1 portends worse things ahead. It reveals a deadly weakness in the conservative movement. It shows how carelessly and reflexively we have fallen into the habit of treating our enemies as friends, and our friends as enemies. Many of us, it appears, have lost the ability to tell the difference. This is no trival flaw. Unless corrected, it spells doom for our movement, and perhaps ultimately for our Republic.
Take Mr. Hitchens. He is no friend of conservatives. Everyone knows that. Hitchens’ ideological overlap with what he calls “right-wingers” barely extends beyond “the single issue of fighting Islamic jihadism”, as Hitchens breezily observed in last month’s Vanity Fair.
Is this a solid enough foundation on which to build an alliance? Many conservatives think so. At least we manage to talk ourselves into it. In time of war, we tell ourselves, we need every friend we can get. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” we say, citing the old Arabian proverb. But is any of this really true?
Hitchens’ feral outburst at the Union League Club should serve as a warning. It should teach us that sometimes the enemy of my enemy is simply another enemy. History offers numerous examples.
When, for example, Hitler invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, nationalist leader Colonel Dragoljub (“Draza”) Mihailovic raised an army of freedom fighters called Chetniks. Following the dictum that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Mihailovic and his Chetniks reached out to Communist partisans under the command of Josip Broz Tito, and sought to cooperate.
Some Chetniks opposed this policy. One Kosta Milovanovic Pecanac, for example, feared the Communists more than the Nazis and proposed joining forces with Hitler. For this, Mihailovic condemned Pecanac, eventually capturing the rogue commander and executing him. (Draza Mihailovic, Wikipedia.org, retrieved 25 September 2007.)
The Communists were not grateful. They repaid Mihailovic’s loyalty by dispatching agents to slander him to the Allies, falsely branding him a Nazi collaborator and a war criminal. Communist moles in British intelligence assisted the slander campaign, as Michael Lees — a former British commando who campaigned with Mihailovic — documents in his 1991 book The Rape of Serbia: The British Role in Tito’s Grab for Power, 1943-1944. A New York Times review of Lees’ book states:
Tracking his own experiences in Serbia from June 1943 to May 1944 against some newly discovered files of Britain’s wartime Special Operations Executive, the office responsible for overseeing paramilitary operations, Mr. Lees paints a grim picture of official double-dealing. He documents how James Klugmann, a Communist, and Basil Davidson, a self-described leftist, both stationed in the Cairo headquarters of the Special Operations Executive, systematically discredited Mihailovic while undermining British material support for his forces. Their methods included manipulating battle maps and messages from the field, and attributing successful Chetnik military actions to the Partisans.
The propaganda campaign took its toll. Meeting at the Tehran Conference of November 1943, the Allies agreed to cut off aid to Mihailovic’s nationalist forces and to support Tito’s Communist partisans instead. As a result, Yugoslavia fell under Communist rule. Mihailović died before a Communist firing squad on July 18, 1946.
U.S. investigators ultimately cleared Mihailovic of all charges. At the urging of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other U.S. officers, President Harry S. Truman posthumously awarded Mihailovic the Legion of Merit — the highest honor America can grant any foreigner — on March 29, 1948. It was a fine gesture, but too late to save either Mihailovic or Yugoslavia.
Draza Mihailovic learned the hard way that the “enemy of my enemy” is not always my friend. American conservatives need to learn that same lesson today. Hopefully, we will learn it more quickly than did Mihailovic, and in a timely enough fashion to do something about it.
Reprinted from the author’s blog, Poe.com, with permission.
Comments
Hitchens was quite rightly described by George Galloway M.P. as an alchohol soaked Trotskyite popinjay. His views on just about anything are as relevant as the thoughts of Paris Hilton.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mad lib!
1. Adjective:
2. Jungle Animal:
3. Liquid:
4. Type of writing:
5. Annoying country:
6. Noun:
That Hitchens guy is a 1., war-mongering 2. He’s such a crazy drunk that he’d chug 3. with vodka all night before writing a 4. I say ship that bastard to 5. and make him eat his own 6.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
poor chris ain’t responsible anymore. he can withstand
such a comment as that… c’ept he ain’t now and never
has been really/intelligent. why does he get such play
on taki? is he really ‘top drawer’-?-sock drawer…
socks are important...we think with our feet!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Allow me to observe the obvious, that anyone tempted by the fatuity of C. Hitchens was never by any remote standard a conservative. Mr. Poe’s article is accordingly addressed to people of another political tendency, who have from the outset been regarded, and will be treated, just as those dispensable allies of British intelligence.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“Mad Lib?” Hey, that’s a fun game!
He’s a
1. Ghoulish 2. English socialist (that’s a kind of jungle animal, and British academia is the jungle) 3. micturating 4. in print 5. his apologetics for Israeli 6. fifth columnists.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Excellent observations on the validity of interest. Over at antiwar today Charlie Reese nails it. He relates:
Years ago, during an interview with a visiting Turkish colonel, I naively asked if he thought the U.S. and Turkey would remain friends. The grim-faced colonel replied: “Turkey and the U.S. are not friends. We just happen to have the same enemy.”
In foreign affairs and politics there is no friendship. There are mutual interests which are oft fleeting.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The problem is not that Hitchens is Hitchens, but that most self-designated conservatives in the US are unprincipled fools who are liberals without even knowing it.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Kirt Higdon has it exactly right: for a time I was mildly surprized that so-called American conservatives could embrace someone like Hitchens simply because he apparently shared similar views on what they called “Islamofasacism.” that is, until I realized that those individuals weren’t conservatives at all, and that they have very little in common with traditional conservatism. On this Paul Gottfried’s new book is quite instructive.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
‘Hitchens’ ideological overlap with what he calls “right-wingers” barely extends beyond “the single issue of fighting Islamic jihadism”’
One needs to only look at an average GOP debate to realize that slaughtering Muslims is the issue that most GOP booboisie seem to care about the most. Or look at how popular Giuliani is with such vermin. His campaign is mostly based on this single issue, and the boobs love him for it.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Why should we be surprised at Conservatives embracing
Hitchens? I see Sean Hannity slobbering over Rudy
Giuliani and Joe Lieberman on a nightly basis!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I would dearly love to see Mr. Hitchens confront Mr. Theodorocopulos in the manner that he confronted Fr. Rutler. The mayhem would be a YouTube hit!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I think we are being to quick to slander alcohol. I suspect Hitchen’s might be even worse in the throes of complete sobriety.
One unforgivable thing about the neo-cons is the destruction of language: now the prefix “neo” might be taken to mean “the complete opposite of”.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Hitchens, a follower of objective truth is seriously flawed philosophy. If he truly believed his diatribe he would not be arguing about Gods existence with Fr. Rutler for he, objectively, was speaking the truth. A true objectivist would therefore be incapable of debate to the point of pacifism. Actions, Mr. Hitchens, speak louder than words.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Draza Mihailovic in reality cooperated with the German nazis and with the Italian fascists. And also with the fascist Ustasha movement in Croatia.
This is all extensively documented, in numerous German and Italian documents, as well as in photos of that time. I very much doubt any smearing from leftist Britons was necessary.
Eisenhower was in many ways a prick. For instance, he deliberately starved to death thousands of captured German soldiers after the war. A sorry character.
Making Draza Mihailovic, and the Chetnik movement, into some kind of heroes is like infecting yourself with lice.
An utterly stupid and untrue description by the author. Goodbye sanity.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Rin Tin Tin writes: Draza Mihailovic in reality cooperated with the German nazis and with the Italian fascists. And also with the fascist Ustasha movement in Croatia.
I acknowledged in my article that Draza Mihailovic is a controversial figure and that many facts regarding him are disputed. However, I also offered evidence in favor of my point of view, to wit, the findings of a U.S. government investigation and the first-hand testimony of a British commando who served with Mihailovic.
If you have counter-evidence, please present it.
P.S. When you mention photographic evidence, I hope you have something more meaty than the photograph displayed on Wikipedia which purports to show “a group of Chetniks” posing “with German soldiers in an unidentified village in Serbia”.
Without further evidence, there is no way of telling what that photograph signifies. Wikipedia does not even claim that the partisans in the photo were under Mihailovic’s command.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
How “meaty” can it get?
Pictures of soldiers and officers from supposedly opposite sides in friendly group photographies isn’t enough? Enemies aren’t supposed to drink together or smoke and laugh together.
Much of this photographical and documentary evidence is collected and displayed by the Holocaust Museum in Israel.
If you type the word “chetnik” into Google and choose search for pictures, a lot of interesting stuff will come up. Or just visit the link below.
http://mprofaca.cro.net/draza_mihailovic.html
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Democrats despise Hitch because of Iraq, Republicans loath him because of his militant atheism and total lack of respect for conservative values… Could he just be the most awesome guy alive today?
I’m not too sure about his ideals, but I’d give my left pinkie for a quarter of his public-speaking and writing ability.
And his grilling of father Rutler? Absolutely hilarious! I may not agree with the man on everything (or even most things) but hearing him ripping anti-war democrats/republican faith-heads to shreads in debates is the definition of pure joy.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“By “us,” I mean all those conservatives who believe in God, which is another way of saying all genuine conservatives.”.........................
Fortunately for Mr.Poe, some of us who number His invention among the accomplishments of conservatism’s intellectual forebears are prepared to believe in him also, for he writes adequately, indeed better than John Derbyshire, if not as well as Paul Claudel.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.