Christopher Hitchens on American Imperialism, Iran, Iraq War, Israel, Palestine (1991)

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Hitchens described Zionism as being based on "the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land." He went further, saying "Zionism is a form of Bourgeoisie Nationalism" when debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis at a Town hall function in Pennsylvania "[48] Hitchens supported Israel's right to exist, but argued that Israel doesn't "give up" anything by abandoning religious expansionism in the West Bank and Gaza. It does itself a favor, because it confronts the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews, and because it abandons a scheme which is doomed to fail in the worst possible way. The so-called "security" question operates in reverse, because as I may have said already, only a moral and political idiot would place Jews in a settlement in Gaza in the wild belief that this would make them more safe. Of course this hard-headed and self-interested solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists. But one isn't seeking to placate them. One is seeking to destroy and discredit them. At the present moment, they operate among an occupied and dispossessed and humiliated people, who are forced by Sharon's logic to live in a close yet ghettoised relationship to the Jewish centers of population. Try and design a more lethal and rotten solution than that, and see what you come up with.[48] On 14 November 2004, Hitchens noted that Edward Said asked many times, in public and private, where the Mandela of Palestine could be. In rather bold contrast to this decent imagination, Arafat managed to be both a killer and a compromiser (Mandela was neither), both a Swiss bank-account artist and a populist ranter (Mandela was neither), both an Islamic "martyrdom" blow-hard and a servile opportunist, and a man who managed to establish a dictatorship over his own people before they even had a state (here one simply refuses to mention Mandela in the same breath).[49] Hitchens earlier had collaborated on this issue with Edward Said, publishing the 1988 book Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens%27_political_views American imperialism is a term referring to the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States on other countries. The concept of an American Empire was first popularized during the presidency of James K. Polk who led the United States into the Mexican--American War of 1846, and the eventual annexation of California and other western territories via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden purchase. Chalmers Johnson argues that America's version of the colony is the military base.[38] Chip Pitts argues similarly that enduring U.S. bases in Iraq suggest a vision of "Iraq as a colony".[39] There have also been conflicting reports made by U.S. government officials as to how many military bases actually exist outside the country.[40] While territories such as Guam, the United States Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico remain under U.S. control, the U.S. allowed many of its overseas territories or occupations to gain independence after World War II. Examples include the Philippines (1946), the Panama canal zone (1979), Palau (1981), the Federated States of Micronesia (1986), and the Marshall Islands (1986). Most of them still have U.S. bases within their territories. In the case of Okinawa, which came under U.S. administration after the battle of Okinawa during World War II, this happened despite local popular opinion.[41] As of 2003, the United States had bases in over 36 countries worldwide.[42] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism