A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq is a collection of twenty-two articles originally written by Christopher Hitchens for the online magazine Slate. The articles support the impending American-led invasion of Iraq and were written between November 7, 2002 and April 18, 2003.
Background
In the preface, Hitchens is typically unapologetic about his pro-invasion stance (a stance which solidified the author's break with the anti-war leadership of the American left), stating:
I began from the viewpoint of one who took the side of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam Hussein, who hoped for their victory, and who had come to believe that the chiefest and gravest mistake of Western and especially American statecraft had been to reconfirm Saddam Hussein in power in 1991 (Hitchens, v).
The book is not a single, cohesive narrative but rather a compilation of Hitchens' writings on Iraq, arranged chronologically. This format allows readers to trace the evolution of Hitchens' thoughts and arguments as the situation in Iraq unfolded.
The essays are constructed in highly polemical prose, and heap especial scorn on what Hitchens sees as the sickly masochism of the dovish Left, systematically addressing and dismissing the most popular of the antiwar arguments while tendering ordered expostulations of his own position. Turkey and France were heavily chastised, while a qualified defence of George W. Bush is mounted, in one essay against the charge that the US president merits the appellative "cowboy" and in another that he rushed his nation into war.
"I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors," wrote Hitchens in 2008, "and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity."[2]
Responses
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Despite his many articles supporting the US invasion of Iraq, Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the 2004 US presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for George W. Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".[8]