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Showcases America's leading polemicist's rejection of consensus and cliché, whether he's reporting from abroad in Indonesia, Kurdistan, Iraq, North Korea, or Cuba, or when his pen is targeted mercilessly at the likes of William Clinton, Mother Theresa ("a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud"), the Dalai Lama, Noam Chomsky, Mel Gibson and Michael Bloomberg. Hitchens began the nineties as a "darling of the Left" but has become more of an "unaffiliated radical" whose targets include those on the Left, who he accuses of "fudging" the issue of military intervention in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, as Hitchens shows in his reportage, cultural and literary criticism, and opinion essays from the 1990s to 2004, he has not jumped ship and joined the Right but is faithful to the internationalist, contrarian and democratic ideals that have always informed his work.--From publisher description.… (more)
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The second section, titled "Poverty," contains essays on a number of political/sociological topics and figures such as Mother Teresa, Michael Moore, David Irving, and so forth. They vary in quality and levels of intellectual content, and are perhaps mostly mere polemics.
The third section titled "War," is pure politics, and it begins with some fine essays about September 11, in which Hitchens provides his insight/feelings about that event. However, the final half of the section is more or less devoted to the Iraq war, which is where Hitchens very badly misses the mark. I don't object to his decidedly more "Hawkish" view of combating Islamic Jihad than the majority of the left, however I do object to his sweeping indictments of those on the left who do not hold the same point of view. Hitchens includes his embarrassing "Rejoinder to Noam Chomsky," wherein he stupidly responds to a rebuttal from Chomsky which he himself instigated by trying to argue that Chomsky was "rationalizing" Al Qida's crimes by comparing them to Clinton's bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in 1998. Unfortunately the book does not include any of Chomsky's side of the debate so it appears as though Hitchens has rightly corrected Chomsky's error, however when you read all four of the articles written collectively it's clear that it was actually Chomsky who won the debate in a number of crucial respects; Hitchens refuses to admit that the bombing of the plant was a greater crime than 9/11 (which it was, approximately 10,000 people perished), which reveals is ethnocentrism. I don't think Hitchens still actually believes that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is truly humanitarian in nature; he is simply unwilling to admit his error. Despite his unevenness, Hitchens is a bright writer and worth reading, and "Love, Poverty, and War" is a potent collection.
The remaining sections, (‘poverty’ and ‘war’) amply illustrate the brilliance and weaknesses of Hitchens. His strength is the polemic and he’s rarely less than forceful when putting forward an argument. Of course, the problem with polemicists is that you gain only their viewpoint and this is troublesome when it comes to references to his debates – for instance, whilst he has an excellent point on Michael Moore’s films, should Moore have had right of reply? And it’s frustrating when he refers to a debate with Noam Chomsky where he only presents his interpretation of the facts and events, and on a matter such as America’s conduct post 9/11 it’s a tad self-serving; particularly when so much of it is triumphant and dismissive. Still, the great work in these sections comes from Hitchens being so willing to actually visit the sites of combat himself – I can’t say I’m in a rush to emulate him by voyaging to Kabul, Pyongyang and Baghdad.
If a piece or two on atheism were added this would pretty much represent all the subjects Hitchens wrote on, as it stands it acts as probably the best introduction to Hitchens of all his books.
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