Letters to the Editor
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Chris
I've gotten so used to disagreeing with Christopher Hitchens that I forgot how awesome he can be when he's arguing a sensible position: war crimes for Kissinger, criticism of religious faith, social libertarianism...He and I are both part of a group of people who were liberal before 9/11 and afterwards, retained most of their liberal sentiments, but for some reason became raving imperialist, war-mongering nuts with respect to foreign policy. Most of us are quietly and embarrassedly recanting our previous positions as the lunacy of the Bush/Israel/Pentagon axis of imperialism's elaborate project has made itself clear through the dissolution of Iraq into utter chaos and civil war. We are admitting that we were wrong: 9/11 was a shocking event, and it provoked an extreme response from a lot of people, myself included. This is a clear illustration of how terrorism--the killing of innocent civilians--breeds extremism, militarism, hatred, and war among the victims, whether it is an Islamic terrorist killing civilians in New York or an American terrorist killing civilians in Haditha or Afghanistan. Fortunately, for many of us here in America the response seems to be slowly fading as time allows reason to slowly penetrate our skulls, and mercifully, the consequences of our horrible mistake have not yet reached our shores, knock on wood. But in the Middle East, the onslaught of American and Israeli bullets is unceasing, meaning that extremism and violence will only grow more prevalent in the Arab world unless we realize that our policies in the area are the reason it's such a mess. Hopefully Christopher Hitchens will do as I did and realize this soon. Then I could say that I genuinely admire and respect him as one of the most distinctive, bitingly intelligent, iconoclastic, and articulate members of the American intelligentsia. Until then, he's just a stubborn mule to me--take it from someone who's been in his shoes.