A Long Short War

Über

A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq is a collection of twenty two articles 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. In the preface, Hitchens is typically unapologetic about his pro-invasion stance, 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".
Among the many individuals credited in the introduction are Barham Salih, Kanan Makiya and Ahmad Chalabi.
The essays are constructed in polemical, often vitriolic 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.