“…hundreds of thousands of young Americans are now patrolling and guarding hazardous frontiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is there a single thinking person who does not hope that secular forces arise in both countries, and who does not realize that the success of our cause depends on a wall of separation, in Islamic society, between church and state? How can we maintain this cause abroad and subvert it at home?”
The piece is by Hitchens who skillfully tears a bunch of arseholes a new bunch of arseholes. While I sometimes wonder about Hitchen’s integrity – he does seem to now be digging himself out of the pit he has created for himself over the last 2 years, by supporting secular libertarianism, which is surely the future for US politics.
Hitchens is a good writer, his pen as dangerous a weapon when he was on the left as on the right. Hopefully he is finding a middle ground that will be constructive.