I really appreciate this type of book, where a relentless focus on one small topic allows you to feel like an issue has actually been settled—I felt the same way about [b:The Mismeasure of Man|54218|The Mismeasure of Man|Stephen Jay Gould|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924672l/54218._SY75_.jpg|1235400]. However, where Gould was just laying out the best case he could in the clearest language possible, Hitchens was more of a cat toying with its prey. Unfortunately, he's so convinced that he's right (which, to be fair, he is) that his language gets a bit pompous at times, but, in the end, I'm not going to begrudge him a few rhetorical flourishes. ( )

Prateleira 8 Livro 45

NF

In 2002, I had the opportunity to ask Christopher Hitchens what he would say to the conservatives who had a "strange new respect" for him based on his support for anti-terrorist activities by the USA. In response, he said that they should read The Trial of Henry Kissinger. I'm finally getting around to fulfilling that request.

Page 25: Hitchens points out that Telford Taylor, who represented the United States at the Nuremberg trials, said that by the standards of those trials the prosecutors of the war against North Vietnam would be found guilty of war crimes. (Hitchens hasn't said it yet, but Taylor specified that its not just the architects of the bombing campaign against North Vietnam but individual American aviators who would be war criminals.)

It seems to me that in order for Taylor's judgement to be meaningful, there must have *been* some coherent, objective standards used to prosecute war crimes in the wake of World War II. I am not so sure that there were. Representatives of the Soviet Union sat in judgement of German leaders at Nuremberg, but no Soviet leaders were (for example) held to account for the Katyn massacre. It will be interesting to see how (if he does so) Hitchens indicts Kissinger for the carpet bombing of Vietnam without also indicting Bomber Harris for the carpet bombing of Germany and FDR and Truman for, respectively, the firebombing and atomic bombing of Japan.

Page 34: Hitchens says: "In the period after the Second World War . . . the United States had denied even its closest allies the right to invade countries that allegedly gave shelter to their antagonists." Well, on 9/11, President Bush said: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". Didn't Hitchens agree with Bush then?

Page 47: In the middle of decrying U.S. cooperation with despots, the only descriptor Hitchens has for Chou En Lai is "serious person". Is the word for this "tendentious"?

Page 99: Kissinger likened the Indonesian invasion of East Timor to the Indian invasion of Goa. Hitchens says the comparison is inapt because (1) Goa was not a bloodbath and (2) the invasion of Goa completed the *decolonization* of India, while the invasion of East Timor completed the *colonization* of Indonesia. It's true that the invasion of Goa resulted in only slightly more than 100 casualties, while the invasion of East Timor resulted in somewhere around 100,000. While that certainly indicates a difference in magnitude, does it indicate a difference in type? There were (very) roughly the same number of deaths in the invasion of Grenada as in the invasion of Goa, but that didn't stop Hitchens from condemning the former. I don't know what Hitchens is getting at in distinguishing between colonizing and decolonizing invasions, and he doesn't elaborate on the point.

I think Hitchens succeeds in showing that Kissinger was involved in some ugly business. I had anticipated, though, that his case would be more extensive than it, in the event, turned out to be. ( )

This book reminds me of The Hunger, which was a contemporaneous account of the Irish Potato Famine, and which I just couldn't finish (I read Part I only) because it was so horrificly depressing. In this work by Hitchens, he refers himself to it as dispiriting. That it is. ( )