My challenge is really to say, 'Can you name me a moral action or a statement that has been made by a believer that couldn't have been made by a non-… - Christopher Hitchens

No possible future government in Kabul can be worse than the Taliban, and no thinkable future government would allow the level of Al Qaeda gangsterism to recur. So the outcome is proportionate and congruent with international principles of self-defense.

But gallows humor is inseparable from dentistry: at one point I heard the good doctor say, as he plowed through the layers of plaque and tartar, “Good news. I’ve found some of your teeth.”

...those who view the history of North America as a narrative of genocide and slavery are, it seems to me, hopelessly stuck on this reactionary position. They can think of the Western expansion of the United States only in terms of plague blankets, bootleg booze and dead buffalo, never in terms of the medicine chest, the wheel and the railway.