Hitchens Still Faithful to Neo-Con Movement

Christopher Hitchens doesn't regret being a leading media proponent of the Iraq invasion and subsequent insurgency quagmire. Today in Slate Magazine he writes that the Iranian democratic uprising may have gotten a jumpstart from the US invasion next door.

Which brings me to a question that I think deserves to be asked: Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread.

The theory is not a slam dunk and even if it is: Sorry if I'm not that impressed on this angle as a selling point. The thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted don't seem worth it to me. Nowhere is it written in the US Constitution about the obligation to stabilize the governments of Iran, Iraq or Outer Mongolia.