That tends to be how it works, generally speaking. Anyway, some lengthy Hitch-related items to be found these days.
The first is a debate between Hitchens and anti-war writer Tariq Ali, hosted by Democracy Now! (home of an article entitled “Resisting occupation from Northern Ireland to Iraq”–yeah, if there’s one thing the IRA and Fedayeen are all about, it’s democracy!). Ali is too deeply invested in making people who set off bombs that kill their countrymen a dozen at a time into junior George Washingtons to acknowledge that Hitch is kicking the shit out of him, but it’s still a trouncing worth reading. When Ali implies that the “resistance” will eventually be pushing for elections, it seems that Hitchens can barely stop himself from laughing.
Also worth reading is a long two-part interview with Hitch at FrontPage Magazine. The first part focuses on the Iraq War and Hitch’s falling-out with his former fellow travelers on the Left. I like how he sticks it to his traditional-conservative interlouctor for supporting all sorts of heinous shit in the name of anti-Communism during the Cold War, while still finding time to decimate the usual bromides that ersatz liberals and Leftists have been offering up in support of the most retrograde, openly fascist forces on Earth.
The second part focuses on the Israel/Palestine situation. Hitchens puts a worthwhile emphasis on the Sharon administration’s intransigence, but though he’s quick to lambaste the “Islamic nihilists” who blow themselves up and are excused by the Left with the ridiculous claim that they’re trying to bring about a two-state solution, he fails to address that this plague of Islamic nihilism now infects a sizeable majority of the Palestinian populace. In other words, I could have used a little less emphasis on what a bad idea the founding of Israel was and more on what a bad idea Palestinian society as it stands now is. Still, Hitchens’s ability to condemn theocratic hardliners on both sides of the divide is refreshing, and indeed nearly singular among all the voices currently embroiled in this debate. (Both halves of the interview are full of fabulous quotes, and since I don’t want to abuse my blockquote tags, you’ll just have to go and discover them yourselves.)
Hitchens’s writing is characterized with an intolerance for injustice so palpable you can practically wear it as body armor. Go and read. (Links courtesy of The Christopher Hitchens Web.)