Christopher Hitchens is still a delusional intellectual who dreams of world revolution. Nowadays he just has changed the old red flag to a blue-and-white-and-red -flag...

It´s hard to take him seriously when he says things like this:

He explains that he believes the moment the left's bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. "The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists." He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali's books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. "It's explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings."

The "American Empire" is worser than the Taliban because the Taliban were and are petty thugs in Central Asia, who did and can make live miserable for millions of people, but the United States is a global power, whose actions affect all of us. The Taliban wanted to rule a single country and mould it to suit the movement´s wishes; Christopher Hitchens wants USA to rule the world and make it in it´s own image. The Taliban have been in existence about ten years; the United States have been on existence in 228 years and has invaded other countries in something like 160 times and in the wars that it has fought, tens of millions of people have perished, genocides and ethnic cleansings have been committed by it and regimes that it has supported. And the United States has also ways to wreak global havoc in peaceful ways.

Just lately, by taking millions of dollars of US support away from a UN charity, which abortion opponents have falsely claimed supports abortions in China, Bush caused 600 000 new abortions to be made next year. This many unwanted pregnancies could have been avoided with those millions of dollars. The president of the US have immense power. If he makes a mistake, a simple, innocent mistake, huge numbers of people may die. If a leader of a terrorist group wants to achieve same kind of results, it could take years and years of plotting and hard work to get the same kind of results. US president can kill far more people by writing his name on a peace of paper than a Taliban leaders can ever "hope to achieve".

Yes, the theocratic fundamentalists are not nice people. But that doesn´t make the people and states they oppose the good guys. Most of the regimes and countries they fight against are just as bad at least - and with the resources a country offers, usually kill far more people. And one has to remember that even nice people can too make terrible things, especially if they have a good cause they truly believe in. You don´t have to be evil to kill innocent civilians. Sometimes all is needed is a uniform and a commanding officer that says that it´s your duty and necessary thing to do to protect your own civilians. Most of the terrorists are no worser people even if they don´t have a uniform. They just think that what they do is necessary and unavoidable, part of a just war. There certainly are among them people that enjoy killing, but then there are sadists in every army and in every police force. And if we deny people the right to fight for their and their peoples freedom with arms if necessary, we end up supporting stagnated conservative world order, Metternich´s dream of Europe transferred on to a global stage.

If just truly bad people would do all the killing, this world would be a almost perfect utopia.