{"id":1895,"date":"2011-12-16T08:46:54","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T16:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2011\/12\/iraq_war_ends_hitchen_dies_fit\/"},"modified":"2012-08-25T13:37:06","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T17:37:06","slug":"iraq_war_ends_hitchen_dies_fit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2011\/12\/iraq_war_ends_hitchen_dies_fit.html","title":{"rendered":"Off He Goes Into the Wild Blue Yonder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/.a\/6a00d8341c630a53ef0133f1f9e754970b-800wi\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;\" title=\"Christopher Hitchens in 2010 [Photo credit: Twelve Books]\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/assets_c\/2011\/12\/Christopher Hitchens in 2010-thumb-175x153-21034.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"175\" height=\"153\" \/><\/a>You can say a lot of things about Christopher Hitchens&#8217;s role as a cheerleader for the war in Iraq, most of all that it stank to high heaven. Of course it&#8217;s pure coincidence that he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/obituaries\/la-me-christopher-hitchens-20111216,0,4974067,full.story\">died<\/a> on the same day that marked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/16\/world\/middleeast\/end-for-us-begins-period-of-uncertainty-for-iraqis.html?ref=todayspaper&amp;pagewanted=all\">the official end of the war<\/a>. But it&#8217;s a fitting irony that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta&#8217;s lie to the departing troops &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/latino.foxnews.com\/latino\/politics\/2011\/12\/15\/iraq-leon-panetta-announces-official-end-war\/\">&#8220;You will leave with great pride, lasting pride&#8221;<\/a> &#8212; applies to Hitchens&#8217;s departure as well. All the fine principles that Hitchens stood for were tarnished by his relentless drumbeat for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2005\/03\/by_the_numbers_stupidity_arrog.html\">an unforgivable war<\/a>. When they took down the American flag in Baghdad for the last time, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/USA\/Military\/2011\/1215\/Mission-accomplished-really-US-war-in-Iraq-officially-ends\">the band played<\/a> &#8220;Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder.&#8221; I doubt that the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_U.S._Air_Force_%28song%29#Lyrics\">lyrics<\/a> will be recited at Hitchens&#8217;s funeral, but they would be a fitting sendoff for him, too.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Postscript:<\/strong> Dec. 20 &#8212; I see that Alexander Cockborn wrote a welcome <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2011\/12\/16\/farewell-to-c-h\/\">antidote to the Hitcharoma<\/a> that has gripped the press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can say a lot of things about Christopher Hitchens&#8217;s role as a cheerleader for the war in Iraq, most of all that it stank to high heaven. Of course it&#8217;s pure coincidence that he died on the same day that marked the official end of the war. But it&#8217;s a fitting irony that Secretary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-political-culture","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/6a00d8341c630a53ef0133f1f9e754970b-800wi.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-uz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}