Very Nicely Said

Really GOOD article today by Christopher Hitchens in Slate.

Hitchens is a former hardline socialist. He used to be good friends with tonnes of hardcore leftist intellectuals up until a few years ago. He wrote a book about the war crimes of Henry Kissinger and he authored lots of other leftist literature as well. He was, and still is to a large extent a HARDCORE communist.

Anyways.... in the past couple of years he's made a pretty sharp conversion and is now one of the only leftists who supports the idea of regime change in the Middle East. He's probably one of the most eloquent spokespersons out there, who could make the liberal or leftist argument for supporting President Bush's foreign policy.

George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?