Christopher Hitchens on the Falklands War

A cartoon by Ralph Steadman of Margaret Thatcher being haunted by the ARA General Belgrano

The cartoon is by Ralph Steadman of Margaret Thatcher being haunted by the ARA General Belgrano, an Argentine cruiser leaving the British Declared Exclusion Zone that was ordered to be sunk under her instructions.

In all the polarisation around Thatcher and controvery about the Falklands War, Christopher Hitchens brings some clarity. He held that line that he could not agree more with Thatcher and her position on the Falklands War. Hitchens shared his position on the Falklands War in a conversation with Salman Rushdie, where he said:

"In Argentina where I was during the reign of the death squad terror, the so-called Dirty War, filthy war actually, in the late 70s and almost everyone I met in Argentina had a family member missing and the man who I had to interview, the president Jorge Rafael Videla, is now in jail for selling the babies of the rape and torture victims that were produced in his own private prison in Buenos Aires. He’s one oF Henry Kissinger’s best friends but Kissinger is still on the outside astonishingly to me. Any way, so I went around finding out more and more about this, and had a terrifying interview with president Videla where he more or less admitted that these people were, especially these communist jews these subversive jews, if they want a fight they can have one… and after all of this I got back to Egnland and wrote it all up and spoke at a lot of meetings about it and then quite shortly after that there was a war between Britain and Argentina, in which Mrs Thatcher says, these are a bunch of fascist thugs and murderers and torturers and they’ve tried to take a bit of British territory in the south Atlantic. “Certainly not” was her view. We have to fight this. You can’t be pushed around by a gang of rapists and torturers. And I thought, good for you. I could not possibly agree with you more. But most of the people of the left absolutely failed completely to see that point, that not only would we regain the Falkland Islands, the Malvinas Islands if you prefer, but by doing so discredit and demolish the junta. They didn’t care about them at all and it jolly well did."