The Flaubert Report

Could it be that Christopher Hitchens is slyly using his book reviews to express his doubts about the neocon Middle Eastern project to which he has so eagerly attached himself? Because in his NYT review of Bouvard and Pécuchet, an unfinished novel by Flaubert, he says:

This novel was plainly intended to show its author's deep contempt, however comedically expressed, for all grand schemes, most especially the Rousseauean ones, to improve the human lot. Such schemes founder because the human material is simply too base to be transmuted.

Or is it that the grand schemes shouldn't be left in the hands of fools?

True bathos requires a slight interval between the sublime and the ridiculous, but no sooner have our clowns embarked on a project than we see the bucket of whitewash or the banana skin.

Or is it just a bid for Pseuds Corner?