Dear Comrades,
I never thought I'd have to outdo Arnold Beichman in a denial, and for the first few outings of a certain rumor I had really believed that no rebuttal was needful, but given today's over-wrought atmosphere I suppose it's unsafe to make any assumption. So I had better say, at once, that I am not now and have never been an advisor or confidante of the George Bush White House, or of any other Executive Mansion for that matter. Things, in other words, are not that bad.
The miniscule plume of smoke originates in a fractional kindling of fire. I was invited, last March 7 to be precise, to give the White House lecture. This is a lunchtime event for the staff, delivered from time to time by journalists and historians. I was happy to accept. I put on my tie and had my shoes shined - the first time I've ever done this - on the walk down Connecticut Avenue.
The custom is that one does not boast of this honor, and I was true to that until somebody mentioned it to someone at the London Daily Telegraph. The reporter made a good-faith effort to get my confirmation but went ahead and ran the story anyway, making it seem slightly more important than it was. Jeet Heer of the National Post also tried to reach me. We didn't manage to talk in time for his deadline. The various "anti-war" leftists who have circulated a sinister-sounding version of the same story made no effort to confirm it with me at all.
I have now asked my hosts if it is OK to respond and, having received their release from my previous vow of reticence, can state that I spoke about the difference between the rhetoric of Lincoln and the rhetoric of Churchill, strongly advocating the former over the latter for his qualities of philosophy and reluctance. I added, since the time for a confrontation with Saddam Hussein was then approaching, that I wished success to American arms in Mesopotamia but hoped that nobody, Kurdish, Cypriot or Palestinian, would ever have to live under a Pax Americana without consent. I also argued that the United States was compelled historically to defend the idea of secular pluralism.
It was an unusually busy day and I don't blame some of the more senior of the staff for not showing up for a lunchtime talk. Thus I hardly dare hope that I can be blamed or praised if the Bush administration chooses to take or ignore my advice. The question of Leon Trotsky didn't come up in any very marked manner, as far as I recall, but I did stress Karl Marx's energetic support for the Union cause, and the conviction of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine that the United States ought to be a superpower for democracy. I would if invited have said that Trotsky comes rather better out of a review of the 20th Century than do the remaining apologists for Stalinism and its surrogate forms.
I hope, but don't for a moment expect, that this may catch up to the flattering falsifications.
Christopher Hitchens