Reading through the most recent Fighting Words columns, one can be reasonably sure that the cancer hasn't got to Hitchipooh's brain yet, although the same cannot be vouchsafed for his best friend Martin based on that hideous heap of hagiographic hogwash that the Guardian saw fit to publish last week. And to think this is the same Martin who just ten short years ago published a reasonably lucid, erudite and, dare I say it, articulately worded collection of prose pieces entitled The War on Cliché. Reading Martin's recent drivel one can only ask "What went wrong?"
Meanwhile, Hitch is mighty unimpressed with NATO's latest feat of derring do:
"In effect, this half-baked approach leaves the initiative with Qaddafi. It also means that the mounting death rate, which recently included the lost life of my much-admired Vanity Fair colleague Tim Hetherington along with several others, is not justifiable by any commensurate military or political gains. These are lives that are being frittered away. Hetherington's last tweet described what he saw in Misurata the day before his death: "Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO." How shameful. What is utterly lacking in Libya, still, is an entrance strategy."
Besides putting Hitch squarely in the company of the next president of the United States Donald "we-should-go-in-and-take-the-oil" Trump — and before the trolls chirp in, I freely admit there is a sheet or two of toilet paper's difference in their respective positions - it also prompts the inevitable rejoinder, "Just like yours, Hitchens! Just like yours!" As plump and pampered as any Nero, Christopher has spent the last ten years frittering while the New Rome has been barbecuing itself, not to mention half of Ummah Wahida, to a crisp. What an artist dies in him? Let me give you a clue. It begins with a "P" and ends with soiled underwear.
In other news, could Hitch be implicated in that Arizona "honor killing"? Probably not, but the implications are traceable to anyone who cares to join the dots. Iraqi immigrant to Freedom's Shore Faleh Hassan Almalek apparently ran down his rebellious 20-year-old daughter because he couldn't accept her disgracing of the family by adopting licentious western ways. How shameful. And yet if Hitch hadn't launched the Glorious War in the first place, the Almaleks would in all probability be running their own kebab stand or selling trinkets to the tourists in Saddam City and young Noor would have been obediently espoused to her second cousin twice removed, as indeed she is in a parallel universe where Al Gore got elected and Saddam Hussein received a Nobel Peace Prize for not making war anymore.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.....
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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