Letters
Private war
Sir: If James Fenton doesn't want or need my compliments (Spectator 14 May) then I withdraw them with relief. After all, he wrote on 1 May that 'we are going to war in order to prevent further seasickness among the marines'. He then majestically summed ?P the entire Falklands expedition as frivolous! murderous! wicked!'. After reading that bogus concoction I still wrote of its author that his taste and judgment were always thoughtful and founded on decency. Having had my caresses slapped away in such a petulant fashion, I feel somewhat less encumbered by euphemism. Mr Fenton's arguments are phoney. He Sets up as a strategist: the very department in which his original article reveals him as (among other things) incompetent. I am writing this letter three weeks after his point about seasickness and, though there may be a landing yet, it will obviously not be deter- mind
by such 'ivolous' considrations.
deter- Flat on his face, fr Mr Fenton stile babbles about sovereignty and power-sharing. Why not admit the 'obvious? Neither sanctions for the UN could, separately or together, have undone what General Galtieri Latin America would not have observed the first and, in default or military readiness, the US and the EEC would only politely have acknowledged the second. Why doesn't Mr Fenton simply say that the least aren't worth fighting for? That. at (as would have been an honest position 'as. well as the lone and courageous one which he obviously craves). I'm more used to getting white feathers than to dishing them out, and I don't know W. hat colour or plume you get from a furious pseudo-pacifist when you say that Some things are worth fighting for. But I'm. Impressed that Mr Fenton reserves all his Spleen and dislike for the poor old British ueveriunent. He even says that 'Mrs That- cher lost the Falklands', which is true but nbthe truth. Might it be too banal or too them to say that General Galtieri stole ".e,m — and their inhabitants? I personally ,41 Yield to anybody in my admiration for the Prime Minister, but I'd be intrigued to hear injured why Mr Fenton feels that Argentina is the njured party. His final jibe is the hardest to bear but .11e easiest to answer. I wrote that I would the Task Force in order to distinguish myself from those (like the buffoonish Foot and the calculating Healey) who cheer when one fleet sets sail and then turn queasy at the _Nleal and probable consequences of their enthusiasm. I didn't by doing so claim to Put myself in the front line. But I refuse to
take refuge in the lazy idea that military operations might be unpredictable or dangerous to those involved and by poin- ting out that I don't believe that I became jingoist.
Questions of principle do arise every now and then. For example, I've never doubted that British force in Rhodesia in 1965 would have been, on any calculation, more humanitarian than the alternative as well as more consonant with the small matter of a promise solemnly and democratically made. Mrs Thatcher wasn't with me there, but that's too bad for both of us.
As the Chinese say, when the finger points at the moon, the idiot looks at the finger. I said that I thought Britain was right to react to a premeditated aggression, and that I would not judge the principle by the risk. Mr Fenton is evidently more displeased with me than with the junta in Buenos Aires. Your readers can readily see the fearful fix into which he has fallen as a result.
Christopher Hitchens
do 24 Missolonghi Street, Nicosia,
Cyprus
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