Articles by and about Christopher Hitchens
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Believe Me, It's Torture
-Vanity Fair August 2008
"What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it."
Watch Hitchens get waterboarded
Book Drive for Iraq: How you can do you bit to build democracy.
-Slate June 30, 2008
"It's quite common to read, usually from liberal opponents of the engagement in Iraq, that George W. Bush's administration hasn't asked the American people to make any sacrifices."
A War Worth Fighting: Revisionist say that World War II was unnecessary. They're wrong.
-Newsweek June 23, 2008
"Is there any one shared principle or assumption on which our political consensus rests, any value judgment on which we are all essentially agreed? Apart from abstractions such as a general belief in democracy, one would probably get the widest measure of agreement for the proposition that the second world war was a "good war" and one well worth fighting."
Mourning Glory: The Media goes overboard with "The Russert Miracles".
-Slate June 23, 2008
"When the late Tim Russert actually became the late Tim Russert, I wrote an appreciation for the Vanity Fair Web site and said what I genuinely thought: that he was a nice and generous man and a first-rate journalist and one of nature's democrats."
Christopher Hitchens' open letter to George Bush as outgoing President visits the UK
-The Mirror UK June 16, 2008
"Can it really be eight years since you ran against Vice-President Gore and criticised his schemes for "nationbuilding" and the export of democracy on the point of a US bayonet?"
Christopher Hitchens Remembers Tim Russert
-Vanity Fair June 14, 2008
"It’s almost unbearable to think of Tim Russert dying so soon after celebrating the graduation of his beloved son, Luke, and one’s first thought must be for the young man and for his mother, our dear colleague Maureen Orth, as well as for Tim’s all-important father and three sisters."
The Lion Who Didn't Roar: Why hasn't Nelson Mandela sponken out against Robet Mugabe?
-Slate June 09, 2008
"The scale of state-sponsored crime and terror in Zimbabwe has now escalated to the point where we are compelled to watch not just the systematic demolition of democracy and human rights in that country but something not very far removed from slow-motion mass murder a la Burma. "
A Tale of Two Tell-Alls: If you want to read a serious book about the intervention in Iraq, look to Douglas Feith.
-Slate June 02, 2008
"When Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill defected from the Cabinet in 2002 and Ron Suskind told O'Neill's story of being surrounded by fools, Michael Kinsley observed that the president deserved all he got from the book. Anyone dumb enough to hire a fool like O'Neill in the first place ought to have known what to expect. So it goes with the ludicrous figure of Scott McClellan."
Christopher Hitchens on Hillary Clinton's primary win in Puerto Rico
- The Mirror UK June 02, 2008
"Puerto Rico, the fifty-and-a-halfth state of the American union, seemed to be practically in the throes of a fiesta yesterday as Mrs Clinton wrapped up almost seventy per cent of its primary vote. This is not some isolated Caribbean colony: a good proportion of its population lives in or commutes to the mainland and exerts considerable political power in New York."
Hollowed By Thy Name: Christopher Hitchens Lets the Air Out of God -By John Hood
-The Miami Sun Post
"People don’t think anymore. Not much, anyway. Oh, sure, we like to think we’re thinking, but that’s just so we can say we exist (thanks, Rene!). Mostly what we consider to be thought are flashes in our brain pan — we may think of, and we may think for, and sometimes we may even think up, yet seldom do we ever think out or think through."
Wine Drinkers of the World Unite:You have nothing to lose but inflated bills and interrupted anecdotes.
-Slate May 26, 2008
"The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened."
Question Time: John McCain want to bring British-Style political grillings to Capitol Hill.
-Slate May 19, 2008
"In the near-universal sarcastic mirth that accompanied the rolling-out of Sen. John McCain's somewhat utopian speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 15, the quixotic nature of his foreign-policy ambitions was generally stressed. As a consequence, one of his smaller and more realistic and achievable domestic proposals seems to have been overlooked."
Can Isreal Survive for Another 60 Years? Perhaps, but not necessarily as a Jewish state.
-Slate May 12, 2008
"It's somehow absurd and trivial to use the word Israel and the expression 60th birthday in the same sentence or the same breath. (What is this, some candle-bedecked ceremony in Miami?) The questions before us are somewhat more antique, and also a little more pressingly and urgently modern, than that."
Christopher Hitchens on Barack Obama's latest primary victory
-The Mirror UK May 07, 2008
"Of all the slogans that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama might have picked to distinguish themselves from one another, “Prolier Than Thou” was probably the least convincing."
Are We Getting Two for One? Is Michelle Obama responsible for the Jeremiah Wright fiasco?
-Slate May 05, 2008
"So numbed have I become by the endless replay of the fatuous clerical rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that it has taken me this long to remember the significant antecedent. In 1995, there appeared a documentary titled Brother Minister about the assassination of Malcolm X."
A Little Night Music - A legendary snorer comes to terms with his reputation as one of the noisiests men who ever slept.
-Men's Vouge May 2008
"Could there be anything more delightful than Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula at Thanksgiving? My cousins by marriage have a new place there, within easy reach of bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuges, and the light has to be experienced to be believed."
One Angry Man: Should we worry about John McCain's temper?
-Slate April 28, 2008
"So, a fresh and sly political subtext in a very bizarre campaign season. The two Democratic nominees remain icily calm when in each other's vicinity—plain as it is that they cordially loathe and despise one another—while huge shudders of molten rage continue to shake the ample and empurpled yet graying frame of Bill Clinton as he broods on the many injustices to which life has subjected him."
Christopher Hitchens on Hilary Clinton's Pennsylvania primary victory
-The Mirror UK April 23, 2008
"Well, it’s fairly easy to see why Barack Obama made his speech in Evansville, Indiana last night rather than Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or any other Pennsylvanian centre of population."
Mandela Envy: Is Robert Mugabe's lawless misrule founded in jealousy?
-Slate April 21, 2008
"The stirring news—that the dockworkers of Durban, South Africa, had refused to unload a shipload of Chinese weapons ordered by the lawless government of Zimbabwe—made me remember very piercingly how good it sometimes felt to be a socialist."
Cardinals' Law: Two questionss for the pope.
-Slate April 14, 2008
"The visit of his holiness the pope to the United States this week will be an occasion for all kinds of manifestation of deference and servility from politicians and from the press."
Hitchens vs. Hitchens
-The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies April 2008
Brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens debate the Iraq War and religion at an event organized by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies with support from the Center for Inquiry and the Interfaith Dialogue Association
Obama Is No King: Today the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second rate shakedown artists.
-Slate April 07, 2008
"When Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, I was 19 years old and fancifully considered myself to be far to the left of him. Notwithstanding that, he felt to me like one of my moral elders and tutors (as he still does)."
The Tall Tale of Tuzla: Hillary Clinton's Bosnian misadventure should disqualify her from the presidency, but the airport landing is the least of it.
-Slate March 31, 2008
"The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.")"
Christopher Hitchens on Hilary Clinton's Trip to Bosnia
-The Mirror March 26, 2008
"As soon as Mrs Clinton's long-hidden daily records as First Lady were revealed to the public, my lines lit up from people who remembered how her husband's administration sold out the Bosnians."
Blind Faith: The statements of clergymen like Jeremiah Wright aren't controversial and incendiary; they're wicked and stupid.
-Slate March 24, 2008
"It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing."
Christopher Hitchens on the US Presidential race (transcript)
-Lateline (Austrailian Broadcasting Corporation) March 23, 2008
Journalist and author Christopher Hitchens joins Lateline to discuss Barack Obama's speech on race.
How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I didn't
-Slate March 17, 2008
"An "anniversary" of a "war" is in many ways the least useful occasion on which to take stock of something like the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq, if only because any such formal observance involves the assumption that a) this is, in fact, a war and b) it is by that definition an exception from the rest of our engagement with that country and that region."
Iraq: Worth the Price
-Washington Post -March 11, 2008
"It's not enough that the Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz begin their article in Sunday's Outlook section with an old cliché (from Milton Friedman, as it happens) and then go on to make the breezy and easy assertion that "we've done the math."
Prince Valiant: Britain's Prince Harry Should've Stayed in Afghanistan
-Slate March 11, 2008
"The extraordinary thing—and also the alarming thing—about the hasty withdrawal of Prince Harry from his front-line duties in Afghanistan is the way in which everybody seems to assume that it was the only right thing to do. It was all very well, apparently, for the junior of the two royal princes to share in the risks and duties shouldered by his fellow soldiers in the Household Cavalry, yet not for a moment longer than his valor could be kept a secret. At that point, he was supposed to make a rapid exit and take his valor with him."
Announcing “Hitch Bitch”: Where You Tell Christopher Hitchens What You Think
-Vanity Fair February 29, 2008
"No V.F. contributing editor arouses more reader ire than our tireless columnist Christopher Hitchens. To accommodate the overflow of outraged letters and e-mails sent to the magazine, VF Daily introduces a new feature: Hitch Bitch. Readers seeking to weigh in on Hitchens’s recent columns, books, and television appearances are invited to write to us at hitchbitch@vf.com."
Barack Obama's magic fading as Hillary Clinton revives US presidential campaign
-Mirror March 05, 2008
"Barack Obama's magic fading as Hillary Clinton revives If it had been held last Friday, it might well have gone the other way, or a different way. But something about the Obama magic seems somehow to have curdled, or congealed into what some analysts call “buyer’s remorse”. In a few short days, the world’s most charismatic candidate went straight from being able to do nothing wrong to being able to do very little right.US presidential"
Words Matter: Cliche, not plagerism, is the problem with today's pallid political discourse
-Slate March 03, 2008
"One of the great moments among many in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is when we find the young Albert Brooks manning the phones in the campaign office of the man we know (and he does not) to be a double-dyed phony. On behalf of the empty and grinning Sen. Palantine, he is complaining to a manufacturer of lapel buttons. "We asked for buttons that said, 'We Are the People.' These say, 'We Are the People.'… "
The Serbs' Self-Inflicted Wounds: With Kosovo independent, Yugoslavia is finally dead
-Slate February 22, 2008
"Someone with a good memory of the conversation once told me how Lord Carrington, then one of the "mediators" of the incipient post-Yugoslavia war, came to the conclusion that Slobodan Milosevic was a highly dangerous man. Well-disposed toward Serbia (as the British establishment has always been), Carrington told the late dictator that he understood Serb concerns about significant Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia. But why did Milosevic also insist on exclusive control over Kosovo, where the Albanian population was approximately 90 percent?"
Mr. President, Don't Forget Iran
-Wall Street Journal February 19, 2008
"Dear Mr. President: A few months ago, it became possible to hear members and supporters of your administration going around Washington and saying that the question of a nuclear-armed Iran "would not be left to the next administration." As a line of the day, this had the advantage of sounding both determined and slightly mysterious, as if to commit both to everything and to nothing in particular"
Truth and Consequences: What is the point of a paper of record that decides the untarnished record is too much for readers?
-Slate February 18, 2008
"Do you ever wonder what is the greatest enemy of the free press? One might mention a few conspicuous foes, such as the state censor, the monopolistic proprietor, the advertiser who wants either favorable coverage or at least an absence of unfavorable coverage, and so forth."
To Hell With the Archbishop of CanterburyRowan Williams' dangerous claptrap about "plural jurisdiction."
-Slate February 11, 2008
"In December 1931, George Orwell got himself arrested in the slums of East London in order to find out about conditions "inside," and then he wrote an essay about the people he met while in detention. One of them was a buyer for a kosher butcher who had embezzled some of his boss's money."
