> The bulk of the above is good though familiar (still, I doubt Hitch
> supplied the title), but there is one line that sticks out:
> "In confronting such people, the crucial thing is to be willing and able,
> if not in fact eager, to kill them without pity before they can get
> started."
-ObL has already gotten started. Is Hitch suggesting we should assassinate
all
-the ObL wannabe's older than 4 years in age?
A young woman is about to be killed in Nigeria for the "crime" of having a baby out of wedlock. That is the context of Hitchens comments. If Alabama Christian fundamentalists began summary execution of welfare moms having kids, I would suggest that most lefties might be engaging in similar rhetoric.
This version of Islam, like literalist primitive interpretations of Christianity (something Hitchens emphasizes), is a murderous ideology that deserves complete and total opposition by progressives. And Hitchens is under no illusion that the US regime is clearly in that opposition:
"The two regimes that did most to incubate and protect al Qaeda and the Taliban - the Saudi feudalists and the Pakistani military - were and still are on the official "friends and allies" list of the American establishment. The obscurantists and fanatics were nurtured in the bosom of the same "national security" apparatus that so grotesquely, if not criminally, failed to protect our civil society a year ago."
I wouldn't use the specific bloodthirsty language Hitchens uses, but I still have great sympathy for his demands that progressives deal with the complexity of this threat.
-- Nathan Newman