Not Just Flesh and Blood (UPDATED)

Christopher Hitchens knows why they hate us:

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

You and I may not hate Islamists because they are Muslim, but you can best believe that they hate us because we are not. And in the case of black people, they hate us, Muslim or not, because they consider us their dogs. And in the case of Arab Muslim, peace-loving Iraqis, because they don't want to eliminate the infidel.

So it would appear that the only good non-Muslim, non-Arab, non-Islamist is a dead non-Muslim, non-Arab, non-Islamist.

But this is more that a mere racial or cultural or civilizational battle. It’s one between the Forces of good and evil. And at some level, conscious or not, even rabid atheists and brilliant men like Mr. Hitchens understand this.

Apologists for these monsters, however, do not grasp even the most rudimentary of these facts. They are the ones to be pitied, even more than the dead.

UPDATE: On his radio show and his blog, Hugh Hewitt notes an interview of Christopher Hitchens by Ron Reagan on MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast. What a frightening intellectual mismatch that is! (Here's the transcript at Radioblogger.)

RR: So do you think we ought to invade Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers from 9/11 came from, following your logic, Christopher?

CH: Uh, no. Excuse me. The hijackers may have been Saudi and Yemeni, but they were not envoys of the Saudi Arabian government, even when you said the worst...

RR: Zarqawi is not an envoy of Saddam Hussein, either.

CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

RR: I guess because I listen to the 9/11 Commission, and read their report, and they said that Saddam Hussein was not exporting terror. I suppose that's how, Christopher.

Poor Ron. Blissfully, he probably doesn't realize how embarrassing the schooling was that Christopher gave him. It's a blessing that Ron's father isn't here to see it.

But Ron's problem is emblematic of those who refuse to see the nature of our enemy. He thinks that we can do something other than cease to exist in order to get the terror masters to stop blowing us up. He also thinks that history started on January 20, 2001 (the day George W. Bush was first inaugurated).

Unfortunately, I suspect that a WMD strike by the terrorists will get the attention of the George Galloways and the Ron Reagans of this world, however. Of course, that will be bad for the Western world, but it will be far worse for the Islamic world. We have hundreds (thousands?) of those things and a nuked USA/UK will have nothing to lose.

That fact ought to wake a few people up, but I'm not optimistic about it.

UPDATE: Hitchens and Reagan, the video.

(Thanks to Instapundit)