When the much-admired Christopher Hitchens died a couple of years ago, he left behind a younger brother. Peter Hitchens is also a distinguished journalist, and I don’t think it’s any insult to the man to say that what I’ve read of his work doesn’t rise to Christopher’s habitual levels of wit, eloquence and intellectual vigour. Almost anyone who had Hitch for a brother would have ended up overshadowed.
Peter is also simply a very different person from his older brother. Christopher was an atheist bon vivant who moved to America and was politically committed to what is sometimes called the anti-totalitarian left, whereas Peter is a curmudgeonly, puritanical Christian who has remained in England and who exhibits a distinct right-wing reactionary streak. He seems to share a good bit of his brother’s celebrated contrarianism, but that’s about it.
One of the things that sometimes alienated Christopher from his fellow leftish atheists was his support for the second U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and similar military adventures in the name of freedom, human rights and democracy. It’s somewhat ironic and refreshing, then, to find Hitch the Younger using his Daily Mail blog to make an impassioned argument against sending in the troops (or rather, at this stage, the cruise missiles). The United States, of course, seems increasingly likely to launch some sort of attack on Syria in order to punish President Bashar al-Assad for the recent alleged use of chemical weapons near Damascus. The British House of Commons is set to vote on whether to join the assault, and Peter Hitchens is hoping for a resounding “no”. He’s skeptical of the circumstantial evidence that Syrian government forces resorted to chemical weapons, and of David Cameron’s apparent eagerness to rush in where angels might fear to tread:
Governments simply cannot be trusted to act wisely or responsibly in such matters. They have repeatedly shown this in recent years. That is why we have a Parliament and a free press, to scrutinize and question such things. What is the rush? Why are we having the sentence first, and the evidence and the verdict afterwards? Mr Cameron should be told he cannot have his war until he has proof that it is justified, and until he can show that the actions that he plans are in the interests of this country.
To me all this sounds eminently reasonable, and well worth the attention of Prime Minister Harper as well as Prime Minister Cameron. Peter may be no Christopher, on multiple levels, but on the specific question of playing idealistic global policeman in the Middle East he appears to have far sounder instincts.