Hitchens on "Islamophobia"

[chiwhisoxx]

Originally Posted by Wonderment

I wouldn't call Hitchens Islamophobic, since as others have noted, he's quite hostile to all religions. However, an argument can be made that support for the Iraq war was a mutant strain of the rampant Islamophobia virus.

I trace its origins as follows: anti-Arab/Muslim fervor after 9/11 required revenge and punishment somewhere in the Arab world. Iraq was a scapegoat country. So those who favored war on Iraq, like Hitchens, were acting out this irrational prejudice against Arabs. If you accept the premise, as I do, that the war was insane, gratuitous, morally wrong and catastrophic to both Iraq and the USA, then acknowledging the Islamophobe underpinnings becomes almost inescapable.

I find very hard to forgive intellectuals like Hitchens and Frum for jumping off this cliff with the likes of Dick Cheney. Cheney, I get; he was never thoughtful enough to understand the moral issues. Hitchens should have known better.

it's getting harder to take you seriously