Hitchens: What about them?

Many of our readers may not make a habit of reading columns by Cristopher Hitchens. Hitchens is a self-described leftist. But he is a democrat (small "d") and a supporter of the war that deposed Saddam Hussein. He is courageous in that respect as his fellow leftists have inexplicably been against the war since the beginning. Hitchens rightly points out that the Husseins and the bin Ladens of the world would deny us the very way of life these leftists profess to believe in.

Anyway, Hitchens asks a very pertinent question. If we abandon Iraq now, what happens to all the people in Iraq that DO BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY?

Some excerpts:

I am glad that all previous demands for withdrawal or disengagement from Iraq were unheeded, because otherwise we would not be able to celebrate the arrest and trial of Saddam Hussein; the removal from the planet of his two sadistic kids and putative successors; the certified disarmament of a former WMD- and gangster-sponsoring rogue state; the recuperation of the marshes and their ecology and society; the introduction of a convertible currency; the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan (currently advertising for investors and tourists on American television); the killing of al-Qaida's most dangerous and wicked leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and many of his associates; the opening of dozens of newspapers and radio and TV stations; the holding of elections for an assembly and to approve a constitution; and the introduction of the idea of federal democracy as the only solution for Iraq short of outright partition and/or civil war. If this cause is now to be considered defeated, by the sheer staggering persistence in murder and sabotage of the clerico-fascist forces and the sectarian militias, then it will always count as a noble one.
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What is to become, in the event of a withdrawal, of the many Arab and Kurdish Iraqis who do want to live in a secular and democratic and federal country?
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And does anyone want to argue that a Talibanized Iraq would not require our attention down the road if we left it behind us?
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But all demands for an evacuation are based on the fantasy that there is a distinction between "over there" and "over here." In a world-scale confrontation with jihadism, this distinction is idle and false. It also involves callously forgetting the people who would be the first victims but who would not by any means be the last ones.

Read the whole column here.