Pankaj Mishra writes:

Doubtless the Churchill wannabes that have proliferated since 9/11 would fight on their laptops to the last drop of Afghan and Pakistani blood. Intoxicated by their own cliches, they remain blind to how their warmongering in the cause of democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has boosted the most militaristic elements there, ruining even the basic hope of a violence-free life, not to mention the grand ambition of democracy.

Please explain how a) the removal of the Taliban from power has boosted them and b) how the establishment of an elected government in Afghanistan has “ruined … the grand ambition of democracy“.

Answers to be submitted on your blood-soaked laptop please.

Hitch fulminates on the embarrassing obsession with the construct of ‘race’, and those who have

failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought.