War. What is it good for? Christopher Hitchens won't get bored.

9/11:

downside: 3,000 dead Americans. Two wars. Tens of thousands of innocents dead as a result. Possible clash of civilizations with untold more dead to come.

Upside: Christopher Hitchens won't get bored.

From an interview in World magazine: As a journalist Mr. Hitchens extensively covered the Bosnian war and the Gulf War, yet describes 9/11 as

"an exhilarating moment" because it crystallized his views. "Everything I hate is on one side, and everything I love is on the other. I'm never going to get bored with this."

War. What is it good for? Well, there's that. It's a recurring theme with him. As he said a few years ago:

I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it, because it is a fight over essentials. And because it is so interesting.

Sure, that's a repugnant sentiment, and one that you'd do better to leave unsaid, if you're weird enough to feel it. But something else struck me about the World magazine interview, something that goes beyond the Right's very favorite ex(?)-Trot. (...)

Now, I'm not a Christian, but aren't Christians supposed to get offended at the following?Hitchens says:

"[Jesus on the cross] is scapegoating that absolves one of all responsibility in return for the acceptance of the incredible and the undesirable. And then with the other shoe, the other hand, says if you don't believe it, then we have a real program of torture that will go on forever. It's disgusting. It was completely invented by very underdeveloped human beings," he says, astoundingly citing Augustine and Aquinas. "These are peasants; the sort of people we are up against now, with wild looks in their eyes and living in caves."

The interviewer who clearly digs Hitch, says only that this is " a rare moment of less-than-astute analysis" for him.

Insult our Savior, defame our religion, support the president: you're pretty swell, all things considered. The war must be very, very important to Christian conservatives. "
War: Boredom Cure by Gene Healy