I didn't mean to suggest it was uniform, but Hitch is talking more in line with the New Republic crowd than with the "Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein" axis he so derides (in terms that would be welcome in Peretz's rag). Just to use Alterman's own cites:
"In another not quite shocking development Marty Peretz explained that the crime was the fault of insufficient hatred of Arabs. 'I do not understand why so many people are so surprised by the radical evil emanating from the Muslim world,' Peretz writes."
And then:
"To achieve the ends they have always sought, these conservatives demean considered analyses of our predicament with the epithet 'appeasement.' Andrew Sullivan--the author of a book on friendship--has already accused his friend Robert Wright of exactly this crime in response to the latter's thoughtful musings about some of the difficulties of retaliation."
Hitch is dangerously close to making the same accusations of his former comrades, using terms like "moral cretin" and the like, while reminding us that Bin Laden and the Taliban are murderous theocrats -- as if no one else has said this! Sorry, but at the moment Chomsky and Robert Fisk make more sense than does Hitch.
DP