Hitchens' title as Mr. Wonder Wanker is secure. Re Hitchens' quotation from Kipling's "Dane-Geld":
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!"
A far more apt quotation about the high -- not trifling -- cost of reckless confrontation with the Islamic world can be found in Kipling's "The Young British Soldier," which ends with these lines:
"If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white, Remember it's ruin to run from a fight: So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!"
<http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_the_young_british_soldier.htm>
Carl
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