Christopher Hitchens: Assassination is the best option
Probably because it mainly provides the kind of short-term cinematic satisfaction that characterizes the Hellfire terminus, the flashy ending of al-Qaeda’s main media star has only led to the reopening of some pressing questions about the nature of the jihadi menace. It has also forced us to confront the idea of words as weapons, and the relationship between ideas and actions, in a world of conscienceless criminal violence that operates without employing any code or precedent of its own.
So now we have the phenomenon of an American citizen, able to whisper directly into the ears of people living here, but until recently being able to do so from a geographical location where our laws cannot reach him. There is no precedent, however remote, for a legal and moral challenge of this kind, let alone for a political or military one.
Simply Evil: A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida.
Hitchens’ most recent article from Slate on the Topic of Al Qaida, terrorism, and the response of the last 10 years.
Christopher Hitchens - Rick Perry's God
Does the Texas governor believe his idiotic religious rhetoric, or is he just pandering for votes?
Christopher Hitchens By Tom Conger
(via cocknbull)
“What about Fraulein Fritzl in Austria? Whose father kept her in a dungeon where she didn’t see daylight for 24 years… and came down most nights to rape and sodomize her, often in front of the children who were the product of the previous attacks and offenses….imagine how she must have begged. Imagine how she must have pleaded. Imagine for how long. Imagine how she must have prayed every day, how she must have beseeched heaven. Imagine for 24 hours and no answer at all, nothing. Nothing! Imagine how those children must have felt. Now you say it’s all right that she went through that because she’ll get a better deal in another life? I have to ask you if you can be morally or ethically serious and postulate such a question. No, that had to happen and Heaven did watch it with indifference because it knows that score will later on be settled, so it’s well worth her going through it, she’ll have a better time next time. I don’t see how you can look anyone—ANYONE—in the face or live with yourself and say anything so hideously, wickedly immoral as that, or even imply it.”
(via cocknbull)
“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.”
(via apoplecticskeptic)
“I don’t think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.”
SLATE: Chomsky's Follies: The professor's pronouncements about Osama Bin Laden are stupid and ignorant.
Christopher Hitchens isn’t too impressed with Noam Chomky’s recent (and not so recent) diatribes.
In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade.
Over the years Christopher Hitchens has spontaneously delivered many dozens of unforgettable lines:
2. Every novelist of his acquaintance is riveted by Christopher, not just qua friend but also qua novelist. I considered the retort I am about to quote (all four words of it) so epiphanically devastating that I put it in a novel – indeed, I put Christopher in a novel. Mutatis mutandis (and it is the novel itself that dictates the changes), Christopher “is” Nicholas Shackleton in The Pregnant Widow – though it really does matter, in this case, what the meaning of “is” is… The year was 1981. We were in a tiny Italian restaurant in west London, where we would soon be joined by our future first wives. Two elegant young men in waisted suits were unignorably and interminably fussing with the staff about rearranging the tables, to accommodate the large party they expected. It was an intensely class-conscious era (because the class system was dying); Christopher and I were candidly lower-middle bohemian, and the two young men were raffishly minor-gentry (they had the air of those who await, with epic stoicism, the deaths of elderly relatives). At length, one of them approached our table, and sank smoothly to his haunches, seeming to pout out through the fine strands of his fringe. The crouch, the fringe, the pout: these had clearly enjoyed many successes in the matter of bending others to his will. After a flirtatious pause he said, “You’re going to hate us for this.”
And Christopher said, “We hate you already.”
Hitchens, 1988.
On Al Gore and Reagan.
Amis on Hitchens: ‘He’s one of the most terrifying rhetoricians the world has seen’ - The Observer
You are in my thoughts but not my prayers, as per your instructions.
(via apoplecticskeptic)
“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.” - Christopher Hitchens
Words to live by.
(via apoplecticskeptic)
60 Minutes piece on Christopher Hitchens.
(via @CandiedVinegar, with thanks)
”I make preparations both to live and to die everyday, but with the emphasis on not dying.”
Steve Croft, interviewing Hitch for 60 Minutes, says to his subject “Alexander Coburn, a former friend of yours… called you a self-serving, fat ass, drunken, opportunistic, cynical contrarian.”
With a twinkle in his eye, Hitchens responds “Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Though, he should see my ass now.”
I have so much love for this man.
(via apoplecticskeptic)
C-SPAN Q&A: Brian Lamb interviews Christopher Hitchens - January 27, 2011
Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens talks about his recent memoir, “Hitch-22” and some of his other books, including “God is Not Great” and “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.”
