>His
>allusion to Palestine is totally out of place and the connection he tries
>to make is weak, at best. what conflict is there in Palestinian society
>between those who "want sharia" and those who don't? this is a non-issue,
>really. there are many conflicts amongst palestinians but that aint
>one of them.
What the heck are you talking about? The basic division between the PLO and Hamas is based on the issue of secularism versus Islamic fundamentalism as goals of the movement. Hamas's suicide bombing is part of its harder militancy but is as well tied to its adherents religious view of their martydom.
The issue is not one of religion versus atheism, since many of the strongest proponents of democratic pluralism in the region are religious muslims-- note Turkey as an example -- but as Hitchens highlights, the conflict between a tiny minority of extreme islamic haters who bend the text to support fascist policies.
As the discussion has gone in the past, I support federal troops to protect the black vote in the South and to protect abortion clinics when necessary, so I just don't buy that military intervention to prevent mass murder of the oppressed is always a bad thing, whether to stop the slaughter of muslims by Christians in the Balkans or to stop the murder of innocent women by muslims in Afghanistan et al. As Hitchens has noted, that principle may collide with the reality of a US government that will not really pursue those goals, but use them as a cover for worse ends, but that is the complexity of argument that Hitchens argues for -- condemning both the oppression and the US policies that let them continue.
-- Nathan Newman