Hitch has been one of the strongest supporters of the war in the journalistic space, and I believe he has displayed shocking leaps of intellectual gymnastics – eliding and glossing over fundamental facts that do not suit his argumentation, and, when all else fails, backflipping to explain away all failures and shift all blame from the neocons who sent the country down this fool’s path. Before his out-front war mongering, I respected him as an essayist, but now everything of his I read, I do so from the perspective that he is a man who was deeply wrong about the war and refuses to admit it.

Fine. We don’t agree. Live and let live. But then he uses this young man’s death as a platform and a chance for him to expend cheap emotion (how un-English). He weeps in the prose, so that we may forgive him his trespasses and I don’t buy it. He contacts Daily’s family, who show a remarkable gentleness of spirit and meet with Hitchens. Hitchens is invited to Daily’s funeral and manages to choke out some Shakespeare through (ostensibly) a tear-blocked throat  – tears the Daily’s own family manages to hold back. At this point, I really lost it.

My idea had been to quote from the last scene of Macbeth, which is the only passage I know that can hope to rise to such an occasion. The tyrant and usurper has been killed, but Ross has to tell old Siward that his boy has perished in the struggle:

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt;
He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
This being Shakespeare, the truly emotional and understated moment follows a beat or two later, when Ross adds:
Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
I became a trifle choked up after that, but everybody else also managed to speak[...]

I think this stinks. Honestly, Hitch, who gives a $hit about you being choked up? Who cares that you were touched by this boy’s life and death. It isn’t all about you; it is about a grieving family. Go expiate your guilt – and yeah, as such a pro-war pundit, you do bear guilt, you armchair hawk - somewhere else.

It is obvious that part of Hitchens is greatly troubled by the fact that his words caused another person to enlist and go to war and die. But I don’t think he’s entitled to use that man’s death as an opportunity to hash through his feelings publicly. To my mind, it’s being unfair on Daily’s family and widow, who have been through enough. I’ll close with another, far briefer and respectful expression of remorse and grief – Lincoln’s letter to Mrs. Bixby

In the fall of 1864, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew wrote to President Lincoln asking him to express condolences to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow who was believed to have lost five sons during the Civil War. Lincoln's letter to her was printed by the Boston Evening Transcript. Later it was revealed that only two of Mrs. Bixby's five sons died in battle (Charles and Oliver). One deserted the army, one was honorably discharged, and another deserted or died a prisoner of war.
The authorship of the letter has been debated by scholars, some of whom now believe it was written instead by John Hay, one of Lincoln's White House secretaries. The original letter was destroyed by Mrs. Bixby, who was a Confederate sympathizer and disliked President Lincoln. Copies of an early forgery have been circulating for many years, causing many people to believe they have the original letter.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln

How much more of this are we going to have to go through before our soldiers come home? Your thoughts, ladies?