So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war?
Christopher HitchensTag: war united-states separation-of-church-and-state secularism israel palestine united-states-constitution palestinians israeli-palestinian-conflict israelis united-states-congress scotus holy-war israel-united-states-relations israeli-settlement us-department-of-justice us-treasury-department west-bank
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
Christopher HitchensTag: religion atheism united-states fundamentalism separation-of-church-and-state secularism united-states-constitution
I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy and impotence in the face of Netanyahu's consistent double-dealing is even more culpable.) The Islamist fanatics have their own agenda, and, as in the case of Hamas and its Iranian backers, they have already demonstrated that nothing but the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region will possibly satisfy them. No, it is more the case that justice—and a homeland for the Palestinians—is a good and necessary cause in its own right. It is also a special legal and moral responsibility of the United States, which has several times declared a dual-statehood outcome to be its objective.
Christopher HitchensTag: religion foreign-policy atheism united-states islam barack-obama israel palestine iran middle-east islamism israeli-palestinian-conflict hamas benjamin-netanyahu obama-foreign-policy obama-middle-east-policy us-foreign-policy
Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I'd tell you why he's now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that.
Christopher HitchensTag: evil dictatorship rape totalitarianism 1970s argentina jorge-rafael-videla banality-of-evil hannah-arendt hitch-22
I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity.
Christopher HitchensTag: politics united-states totalitarianism islam 2008 terrorism war-on-terror islamism united-states-elections-2008 politics-of-the-united-states
The clear suggestion is that there ought not to be civilian control of the military. What have callow noncombatants giving brisk orders to grizzled soldiers? How could Lincoln have fired the slavery-loving Gen. George B. McClellan, or Truman dismissed the glorious Douglas MacArthur?
Christopher HitchensTag: armchair-generals chicken-hawks
There is, especially in the American media, a deep belief that insincerity is better than no sincerity at all.
Christopher HitchensWhat can be asserted without proof can be dissmissed without proof.
Christopher HitchensI became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.
Christopher HitchensTag: information journalism newspapers mainstream-media
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
Christopher HitchensTag: thinking opinions skepticism independent-thought critical-thinking
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