Christopher Hitchens has an excellent piece on Slate about the Ground Zero mosque controversy. He says the issues requires tolerance on both sides — “both” being the operative word.

Hat tip to Allah over at Hot Air for highlighting this. Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic and novelist Martin Amis hung out with Christopher Hitchens and chatted about a wide range of topics.

I’m praying for Hitch to make a full recovery, but as he admits himself the odds are not in his favor. As Allah rightly points out, he may not be with us much longer so enjoy him while you can.

I disagree with Hitchens on a number of issues and God is certainly one of them, but the man has a considerable intellect and he’s one of my favorite writers.

Here are the discussions broken down by topic:

Christopher Hitchens has a funny column in the Mirror about Barack Obama’s latest primary victory and his battle with Hillary Clinton.

Read why Christopher Hitchens says Hillary Clinton’s Bosnian misadventure should disqualify her from the presidency, and a whole lot more.

Christopher Hitchens has a great piece in Slate about the ridiculous endorsement of Sharia law by the archbishop of Canterbury. The worldwide criticism of the archbishop’s comments has now turned to calls for his resignation, which frankly are more than justified considering the stupidity of his comments.

Picture the life of a young Urdu-speaking woman brought to Yorkshire from Pakistan to marry a man—quite possibly a close cousin—whom she has never met. He takes her dowry, beats her, and abuses the children he forces her to bear. She is not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male relative and unless she is submissively covered from head to toe. Suppose that she is able to contact one of the few support groups that now exist for the many women in Britain who share her plight. What she ought to be able to say is, “I need the police, and I need the law to be enforced.” But what she will often be told is, “Your problem is better handled within the community.” And those words, almost a death sentence, have now been endorsed and underwritten—and even advocated—by the country’s official spiritual authority.

You might argue that I am describing an extreme case (though, alas, now not an uncommon one), but it is the principle of equality before the law that really counts. And just look at how casually this sheep-faced English cleric throws away the work of centuries of civilization:

[A]n approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts”—I think that’s a bit of a danger.

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—”There’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said”—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don’t yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough? For the women who are the principal prey of the sharia system, it is often only when they are shipped or flown to Britain that their true miseries begin. This modern disgrace is deepened and extended by a fatuous cleric who, presiding over an increasingly emaciated and schismatic and irrelevant church, nonetheless maintains that any faith is better than none at all.

Christopher Hitchens has written another great piece for Slate. This time he weighs in on Bill Clinton using the race card in South Carolina and refers to Bill and Hillary as the “gruesome twosome.”

-Chris Jones

As always Christopher Hitchens says it best in his latest column discussing the flood of recent good news coming out of Iraq.

I am not at all certain that any of this apparently good news is really genuine or will be really lasting. However, I am quite sure both that it could be true and that it would be wonderful if it were to be true. What worries me about the reaction of liberals and Democrats is not the skepticism, which is pardonable, but the dank and sinister impression they give that the worse the tidings, the better they would be pleased. The latter mentality isn’t pardonable and ought not to be pardoned, either.

The problem is that Democrats have staked their entire political future on our defeat in Iraq, so now that things are turning around they still keep up the same tired rhetoric about “policing civil wars.” It was entirely appropriate to call for a change in strategy before, but now that a new strategy has been implemented and it appears to be working it’s time for critics to pipe down.

Harry Reid looks like a moron when he stands behind the podium demanding a “new strategy” even though we have one and it’s working.

-Chris Jones 

Christopher Hitchens has delivered another very insightful piece relating to the War on Terror. He debunks the tired argument from the left that the only reason terrorism exists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere is because we’re there.

If we would just bring the troops home, then everything would settle down. Most people that actually apply critical thinking skills in any capacity know that is complete nonsense.

…Now, if this were a report from Iraq, we would be hearing that it was all our own fault and that the Bin Ladenists would not be in that country at all if it were not for the coalition presence. It’s practically an article of faith among liberals that only the folly of the intervention made Iraq into a magnet and a training or recruiting ground for our foes. One of the difficulties with this shallow and glib analysis is that it fails to explain Afghanistan and, in fact, fails to explain it twice.

We have fairly convincing evidence that a majority of Afghans do not, at the very least, oppose the presence of NATO forces on their soil. The signs of progress are slight but definite, having mainly to do with the return of millions of refugees and an improvement in the lives of women. There are some outstanding stupidities, such as the attempt to spray the opium poppies, but in general the West has behaved decently, and a huge number of Afghans resent the Taliban and its allies if only on the purely nationalist ground that it represents a renewed attempt to turn Afghanistan into a Pakistani colony, as it was before 2001.

I mention all this because there is no way to argue that the Taliban, either local or imported, is the product of some grievance or injustice or root cause. Its gangs are, instead, primitive fanatics making war on a Muslim society. And they are not there only because “we” are there. We know this because, long before “we” got there, they were in effective control of large parts of the place and had turned a terrorized and stultified land into a springboard and incubator for transnational nihilism. Bad as things may be now, they were infinitely worse when we ourselves were being isolationist.

After all, if the usual peacenik logic were to be pursued, and it was to be assumed that “we” are chiefly responsible for magnetizing “them,” then it would follow that if we were to leave, they would either give up or go elsewhere. Is there anybody who can be brought to believe anything so fatuous? Well, then, if this logic is self-evidently false in the case of Afghanistan, why should it be any more persuasive in the case of Iraq?

That is only a taste of this delightful piece of truth, so be sure to click through to the article if you care to finish it.

-Chris Jones 

Christopher Hitchens defends using the term “Islamofascism” in a new column for Slate magazine. When it comes to religion I think Christopher Hitchens is dead wrong, but on terrorism he almost always gets it right.

The term “Islamofascism” makes liberals feel all icky inside, but it’s a very accurate way to describe radical Islam. Hitchens discusses the history of the term and exactly why it’s a legitimate and accurate word.

He also points out that liberals like Alan Colmes actually think that one shouldn’t use the word Islamic even to designate jihad, because to do so is to risk “incriminating an entire religion.”

If we can’t use the word Islamic to describe a radical ideology based on Islam, then I think we should just not talk anymore.

-Chris Jones