Required reading

After promising myself that today would be reserved for reading and research, I've just found something that forces me to break my promise, if only to write this introduction. When I made Christopher Hitchens the sole link in my "required reading" blogroll, I wasn't being facetious. Those who still do not know why he deserves that place--or who still doubt me--must read this, his essay in Slate on the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacres. Everyone else merely should. An excerpt:

Why did Saddam Hussein, that great lion of the Arab and Muslim world, denounce the American bombing of the Muslim-killing Milosevic? Why did Qaddafi do the same? For the very same reason that Christian fascists in Serbia now denounce the intervention in Iraq: They know that the main foe is the United States and that this fact transcends all the others. There has been a great deal of nonsense published in the last week to the effect that an alliance with the United States can put other countries like Britain in the position of being "targeted." Why deny this? I reflect on what was not done at Srebrenica, and on what ought to have been done in Rwanda, and on what was put off too long with the Taliban and the Baathists, and I think what an honor it is to have such enemies.

Please read it in its entirety:

From Srebrenica to Baghdad - What the genocide taught us about intervention. By Christopher Hitchens