Atheist Heroes?

[Reforged]

Yes, I know it was anything but quick and decisive, but that isn't because the shock and awe phase failed.  That went entirely according to plan and yeilded only a small fraction of the civilian casualties produced by the conflict.  I could explain to you, right now, why the US doesn't want to be seen assassinating the Heads of State of foreign countries, if you need to have that explained.  

Yes, we botched the occupation, but again, Hitchens wasn't advocating for a botched occupation, and never missed an opportunity to opine upon how badly botched that occupation was.  You keep saying things like "it was his job" and "he should have known".  Was it his job, and why should he have known?  Do you think anyone was sharing state secrets with him?  Did they invite him to the pentagon for a planning session?  Do you think he could have predicted how the occupation would go, was that his area of expertise?  He -did- lay out his pro-war position, both before and after the realization that we had been lied into the war.  You're criticizing the man for something that wasn't a part of his position.  Your criticizing him for failing to see how things would turn out when we -didn't- follow the plan he advocated for.  We went some other, weird way with it, and then got our asses handed to us by insurgents, another enemy, we didn't expect and were not prepared for.  It was embarrassing, and frustrating.  We got a handle on that, then fucked it up a little more, just for good measure......or maybe just because we missed the feeling of fucking things up, idk.  

(The US military and government, btw, publicly pride themselves on alot of things that they can't actually do, it's called propaganda - controlling information and building an image, lol.)

I think I do. I think I need that explained. Assassination compared to occupation is a smaller shit in the bed. Yes its still quite a big shit with a litany of political consequences but its not the horrific explosion of feces that occupation is. Occupation rarely goes smoothly even under the best circumstances. These were not the best circumstances, it wasn't that huge of a surprise when it was botched. There are so many other options before you get to that one and noone ever really went down a checklist to explain why none of them would work, including Hitchens.

Hitchens didn't alter his opinion to account for the fact we had been lied to. He doubled down. If he didn't have a handle on all the facts he shouldn't of entered a horse into the race instead of dancing around the gaps in his knowledge. The fact of the matter is he launched directly into a pro-war position immediately after 9/11.
I am not saying there isn't a fantastic case to be made for war or even the way it was waged. I'm simply saying he is not the one who made it. In almost all cases he referred statistically to the evils perpetrated under the regimes in an emotional appeal which in no way attempted to explain why an all out war was the best way to deal with the situation. Thats missing a pretty important stepping stone.
Compared to the arguments he made for most other subjects it was entirely sub-par and made an inordinate amount of appeals to emotion. Prime example; his debate with George Galloway was just a mud-slinging match and frankly it was sad to watch. George Galloway is not a clever man, it was not a debate befitting of the subject. The person on the other side to present the anti-war case should not have starred on Big Brother in an attempt to appeal to the youthful demographic and it should not be necessary to fill time with a ad-hominem backstory of your opponent. It certainly shouldn't be required to give people defaming leaflets before the debate regardless or not whether they're true. 
The points should of spoken for themselves but they didn't. They either couldn't or weren't allowed to. I found that frequently in his war debates.