Bosnian War Hitchens cited the
Bosnian War as monumentally changing his views on
military intervention, commenting that for the first time he found himself on the side of
neoconservatives. In an interview with
Johann Hari he said: Hitchens argued that the choice in
Yugoslavia was between a
multi-ethnic plural democracy led by Muslim president
Alija Izetbegović in
Bosnia and a
fascistic, nationalistically inspired
ethnically cleansed state driven by Serbian leader
Slobodan Milošević. He called Milošević a fascist and a "
national-socialist", and condemned his
war crimes Hitchens saw Milošević and his nationalism as the prime catalyst for the break-up of Yugoslavia. He also highlighted the hypocrisy of Milošević's regime in their concern about the Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia while at the same time suppressing autonomy for the 90% of
Albanians in Kosovo. After the war, Hitchens supported
Kosovo's independence and criticized the
burning of the US Embassy in Belgrade as a response to it:
Gulf War Hitchens deplored and opposed the 1990–91
Gulf War in which the US expelled Iraq from Kuwait after a seven-month invasion and occupation of its neighbor undertaken in an effort to absorb it as its
19th province. He contended that President
George H. W. Bush's supposedly principled enthusiasm for the "cause" of "liberating" Kuwait was nothing more than
realpolitik. In the continuation of a national policy dating back to
Henry Kissinger and
Richard Nixon in 1972, the latest "cause was yet another move in the policy of keeping a region divided and embittered, and therefore accessible to the franchisers of weaponry and the owners of black gold". However, after the war, Hitchens scolded those within the US who had opposed the war by observing that "the peace movement in this country in my opinion acted in a very narrow, isolationist, and almost chauvinistic way. It said that a war was more or less alright with it as long as it could be guaranteed in advance that American casualties could be kept low... I thought that was a dishonourably narrow way of approaching the question. ... When large numbers of Iraqis were turned into soap...and many others, as we've since found out, were bulldozed and buried alive and in other ways done away with and people don't even want to think about the body count ...because they're afraid of what they might find out."
Israeli−Palestinian conflict Hitchens described
Zionism as "an
ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" but argued that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that
Israeli settlements on
Palestinian territory in order to achieve security for
Israel are "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly
racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal
clerical and
chauvinist forces which want to instate a
theocracy for Jews". Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the
Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference of Arab
secularism into
religious terrorism as a means of
democratisation: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of
Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and
thanatocratic hell of
Hamas and
Islamic Jihad". Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an
Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no
Palestinians." and "If Jews born in
Brooklyn have a right to a state in
Palestine, then Palestinians born in
Jerusalem have a right to a
state in Palestine. Anyone who doesn't agree with that principle I think is suspect." A review of his autobiography
Hitch-22 in
The Jewish Daily Forward refers to Hitchens "at the time [that he had learned that his grandparents were Jews, he had been] a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he viewed Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians". Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well. At other times - for example, speaking at 2nd annual Memorial for
Daniel Pearl, and in print in an article for
The Atlantic - he had made comments against the terrorism against Jews in the Middle East. Hitchens stated "But the
Jews of the Arab lands were
expelled again in revenge for the defeat of
Palestinian nationalistic aspirations, in
1947–48, and now the absolute most evil and discredited fabrication of Jew-baiting Christian Europe –
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – is eagerly promulgated in the Hamas charter and on the group's Web site and recycled through a whole nexus of outlets that includes schools as well as state-run television stations". In
Slate magazine, Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing
antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned" it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call
Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "
secularise and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the
greater Jerusalem area in the first place?" Hitchens said that the only justification for Zionism given by Jews is a
religious one.
Kurdistan Hitchens was a longtime observer of
Saddam Hussein's regime, and publicly called for his removal, albeit only beginning in 1998. with political autonomy, if not full independence. He also wore a
lapel pin with the
flag of Kurdistan on it, to show his solidarity with the Kurds.
War on terror 11 September attacks In the months following the
9/11 attacks, Hitchens and
Noam Chomsky debated the nature of
radical Islam and the proper response to it in a highly charged exchange of letters in
The Nation, including discussion of whether any comparison could be legitimately made between the 9/11 attacks and the
1998 Al Shifa bombing by the U.S. Approximately a year after the 9/11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left
The Nation, claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered
John Ashcroft a bigger threat than
Osama bin Laden, and were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his former colleagues.
War in Afghanistan Hitchens strongly supported US military actions in
Afghanistan, particularly in his "Fighting Words" columns in
Slate.
Iraq War Hitchens employed the term "Islamofascist" and supported the
Iraq War, causing his critics to consider him a "
neoconservative". Hitchens, however, refused to embrace this designation, insisting, "I'm not any kind of conservative". In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in
Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary
foreign policy issues, and characterized himself as an unqualified "supporter of Paul Wolfowitz." He referred to his associations as "temporary neocon allies". In this period he opined that "the
Bush administration [...] has redefined the lazy term 'conservative' to mean someone who is impatient with the status quo." In the years after the
fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie in response to his novel
The Satanic Verses, Hitchens became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the
Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the
neoconservative group that included
Paul Wolfowitz. Around this time, he befriended the
Iraqi dissident and businessman
Ahmed Chalabi.
Scott Ritter, and his brother
Peter Hitchens. In its obituary of Hitchens,
The Economist wrote that, "on the most consequential political issue of the last decade of his life, the bullshit got him."
Human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Haditha Hitchens criticised human rights abuses by US forces in Iraq but argued that conditions had improved considerably compared either to Saddam Hussein's previous regime or to previous US military actions in Vietnam. In 2005, Hitchens criticised the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib but argued that overall "prison conditions at
Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad",
Pre-war American and British Intelligence In a variety of articles and interviews, Hitchens asserted that British intelligence was correct in
claiming that Saddam had attempted to buy
uranium from
Niger, and that US envoy
Joseph Wilson had been dishonest in his public denials of it. He also pointed to discovered munitions in Iraq that violated
U. N. Security Council Resolutions 686 and
687, the cease-fire agreements ending the
1991 Iraq-Kuwait conflict. On 19 March 2007, Hitchens asked himself whether Western intelligence sources should have known that Iraq had 'no stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction.' In his response, Hitchens stated that:
Saddam Hussein In July 2007, the
New Statesman printed selected portions of a 1976 piece by Hitchens which they claimed "took a more admiring view of the Iraqi dictator" than his later strong support for ousting
Saddam Hussein. In this Hitchens pointed to Iraq's military strength, oil reserves and young leadership to argue that
Iraq was "a force to be reckoned with" and described Saddam Hussein as a leader "who has sprung from being an underground revolutionary gunman to perhaps the first visionary
Arab statesman since
Nasser." He also argued: He argued that the means through which the
Baathist regime rose to power were similar to that of
Iran: having crushed any political dissent and notions of an independent
Kurdish state. He stated that the Ba'ath party "point to efforts made by the party press to stimulate criticism of
revolutionary shortcomings" but that these "fall rather short of permitting any organised opposition". He claimed that Iraq defended this by claiming "that the country is surrounded by enemies and attacked by imperialist intrigue" but that this had led to the repression of Kurdish nationalists.
Waterboarding Hitchens was asked by
Vanity Fair to experience
waterboarding for himself at a
U.S. Army training facility. In May 2008, Hitchens voluntarily underwent the procedure. Hitchens stopped the procedure after 11 seconds and subsequently endorsed the view that it was "
torture." He concluded, "If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."
Lebanon Hitchens described Lebanon as "the most
plural society in the region" and criticized the Syrian regime for continuing to manipulate the country by proxies and by surrogates notably
Hezbollah and the
SSNP. In an article written on
Slate, Hitchens stated: ==Domestic policy==