I haven’t read “Hitch-22” – the memoir by Christopher Hitchens and I’m not sure if I’m going to read the book.
But it’s interesting to compare Ian Buruma’s review of “Hitch-22” in The New York Review of Books with a column by David Brooks on the same subject in today’s Times.

Buruma writes: ‘Hitchens was so smitten with George W. Bush’s Pentagon, despite its connivance at torture, that he appears to have believed everything he was told: “In all my discussions with Wolfowitz and his people at the Pentagon, I never heard anything alarmist on the WMD issue.” To be sure, Wolfowitz has since admitted that oil was a major reason for going to war, and the threat of WMDs was just a convenient “bureaucratic” excuse. But his Pentagon boss certainly was alarmist about the nuclear threat, as were the President and the Vice President. In claiming that there was no alarmism at the Pentagon, Hitchens is either disingenuous or a lousy reporter.’

(Please don’t rely on this excerpt, read the complete article, just click on the link.)

David Brooks wrote: ‘No one will agree with, or even comprehend, all of his aversions, but his affections are easy to admire, especially his strong and growing affection for America.
Most of all, his is a memoir that should be given to high school and college students of a literary bent. In the age of the Internet and the academy, it will open up different models for how to be a thoughtful person, how to engage in political life and what sort of things one should know in order to be truly educated.’

(Click on the link to read the complete article.)

I have a strong affection for America, but I know that often affection is just an insult in disguise.