I'd been meaning to post on this for some time, but I thought George Packer's remarks on this Slate dialogue were just remarkably spot on. The whole thing is an entertaining read, but the money is down below:
"Baathism was not a rising totalitarian mania. It was a decaying totalitarian ideology that had long since lost its ability to inspire millions across borders to engage in mass acts of murder and suicide...The time I spent in Iraq was an education in the limits of war as an instrument of political transformation and the limits of America as its standard-bearer. Liberal democracy requires participation and consent, and as long as American military power is the prime tool for building it, Muslims around the world are unlikely to change their ideas."
Read the whole thing, if for nothing else than Christopher Hitchens' insanity, which now seems to be acknowledged even among his contemporaries.
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