[SeattleUte]

Thanks for the article. I haven't had a chance to read it but look forward to it.

Hitchins is an interesting fellow. He despises religion in all forms, and the atheist Tom Paine is his hero. He was born and bred in the UK upper class but moved to the United States long ago and recently or is about to become a U.S. Citizen. His first wife and son still live in London. He has relatively young kids by his second wife, an American. He was once one of the stars on the Nation's staff, but the far left has excommunicated him, he left the Nation in an acrimonious split, and he's now a favorite of Neo-Conservatives. This break with his past occurred over his constant and unwavering support for the Iraq war. Meanwhile, many of his former liberal friends deride him as an admitted alcholic, make unfounded claims that he is a closet homosexual, call him a shallow opportunist, etc. It's a real food fight. Great stuff.

Two factors led him to his support for the Iraq war: His loathing for religion, particularly but not exclusively Islam, and his paleo-liberal belief that a super power like America shouldn't abide human rights abuses anywhere and should go police and re-engineer whole societies. He'd have us all over Africa if he had his way. He and Bush are strange bedfellows that's for sure. Which should be instructive in of itself. I've read liberals lamenting the new "pragmatism" among liberals about foreign policy, such pragmatism holding that we should intervene with military force only in America's interest without regard to human rights abuses. THAT was the original liberal doctrine of FDR, however.