Hitchens agonistes: Will Bush's latest massive screw-up screw up his other massive screw-up?

Hitchens' all a dither. Americans are beginning to suspect that there's just not enough money and soldiers and equipment and commitment to stretch from Biloxi to Baghdad. And he fears they just might choose Biloxi over Baghdad.

Pay no attention to the uncollected corpses and their watery wanderings in New Orleans, he commands us. Just remember the purple fingers, people, the purple fingers!

Yes, Hitchens is right royally pissed at the Bush people and their damn August vacations. When the Bush administration takes downtime, they unplug everything but Cheney's pacemaker.

[T]he weekend before the Katrina disaster…I received an e-mail from a brilliant friend, who asked if I realized what would happen to the Iraq debate if the hurricane really hit.

And of course I could at once easily see what an apparent shortage of National Guardsmen, or any lack of preparation, would look like. And if this tiny thought can occur in my mind, then what can one say about the mind of the White House?

Well, what can one say about the mind of the White House? Nobody's home? The porch lights are flickering? The foundation's cracked?

Now this is truly jaw-dropping. After reviewing the disaster of disaster relief that is still unfolding in the Gulf Coast, Hitchens makes this grand pronouncement:

So, George Bush has already paid, as he should, a weighty political price for his literally fatal insouciance.

Just what is considered a "weighty political price" for thousands of dead and billion-dollar economic jolts to the nation's economy? And how did Bush transfer the funds so fast out of his much vaunted stash of political capital? I either missed it or they didn't cover the official payment ceremony on CNN or FOX.

Hitchens is totally confident -- to the point of delusion -- that the American economy can just keep taking it and taking it and taking it. The concepts of "debt" and "deficit" mean nothing.

The United States has a $10 trillion economy and a massive and sophisticated military, which is quite capable in competent hands of combating rogue-state dictators and jihadist maniacs, while simultaneously ensuring the safety of all its citizens, at least against the more predictable acts of God or the more predictable attacks of the extremely godly. And there are billions left over after these expenditures, which we choose to waste (in my opinion) on the huge diversion of manpower and resources to the "Drug War" and to "Missile Defense."

Billions left over? Mr. Hitchens, here's some basic math: The amount of money "left over" from deficit spending = $0.

Just in case the clumsy attempts at financial reassurance don't work, Hitchens employees his "a wog's a wog for all of that" ploy.

A favorite trope among those who try to politicize the justified outrage over New Orleans is the plight of the slum-dwellers and the dark-skinned, and quite right, too. But it's highly objectionable to be told, by those who go on in this way, that we should instantly dump the Iraqis and Kurds who are fighting for their lives in a slum that could become another slaughterhouse and plague-spot.

There is something degrading and suspect here—why lavish any of our care and resources on the wogs? Does this suggestion do anything to diminish xenophobia and resentment "at home," at just the time and just the place where we don't need it?

Am I expected to tell a homeless woman in Biloxi that she has just been ripped off by an Ay-rab?

Actually, I'd buy tickets to see that conversational exchange.

And if Hitchens' calling you a xenophobic racist doesn't bully you into staying the course in Iraq, then what about a full-on blast of shame.

If liberalism and humanitarianism do not mean internationalism, they mean precisely nothing. Shame on those who try to turn the needy and the victims against each other.

Bastard.