Hitchens: Why won't the Left clap for al-Tinkerbell?

Christopher Hitchens is really pissed (take that any way you want). Americans are too detached from the realities of Iraq, and of course the Black Sox Left is rooting for a loss.

How can so many people watch this [war] as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration?

That's just silly. Those of us at home, a position of safety but not neutrality, are only spectators. And the media, especially the cable news talking heads, do nothing but handicap the players and rate the successes and failures. Why is Hitchens surprised about this? He makes a good living -- and replenishes his celebrity -- by being just such a political turf accountant.

Hitchens doubts the compassion and altruism of Americans:

Question: Why have several large American cities not already announced that they are going to become sister cities with Baghdad and help raise money and awareness to aid Dr. Tamimi [the mayor of Baghdad]?

He pesters his serious antiwar friends about this, and they give him an answer:

[T]heir answer was to the effect that it's the job of the administration to allocate the money, so that there's little room or need for civic action.

And when he gets this answer, Hitchens only gets sniffy: "I find this difficult to credit."

Credit -- what an odd word choice. This country will be paying off the Iraq war debt long after the last trace of my contribution to the gene pool has vanished -- unless somebody decides to dig up my bones and drill for mitochondrial DNA. So don't get sniffy with me, Hitchens, or with your serious antiwar friends.

Oh, but he can't help himself: Hitchens has the power to peer into souls, and, sigh, he finds us lacking.

Unless someone gives me a persuasive reason to think otherwise, my provisional conclusion is that the human rights and charitable "communities" have taken a pass on Iraq for political reasons that are not very creditable. And so we watch with detached curiosity, from dry land, to see whether the Iraqis will sink or swim. For shame.

Curious, isn't it, that we will be watching. Why doesn't Hitchens personally set out to landscape a traffic island as part of downtown Baghdad's "adopt-a-spot" beautification program. I'll chip in for some flower seeds and a pair of Marks & Spencer wellies.

UPDATE: Rogue Planet props Hitchens back up on his bar stool and carefully explains why he's a useless sot.