A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that those willing to challenge entrenched power structures in the Middle East cannot be labeled as conservative.
Christopher Hitchens asserts that any group or faction that is prepared to engage in conflict against the established and rigid systems of power in the Middle East should not be classified as conservative. This suggests that true conservatism entails a desire to maintain the status quo rather than disrupt it, and therefore those advocating for significant change, even through warfare, are fundamentally aligned with more revolutionary ideals rather than conservative ones.
In practice
In a debate on foreign policy, one might quote Hitchens to argue against traditional conservative approaches to international relations.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Major international interventions are doomed unless the US is directly or indirectly involved. But if American politicians, officials and servicemen are to be put at risk of arrest and prosecution, the United States will be most reluctant to act in order to curb aggression or prevent genocide. So the effect of the court may well be to diminish, not increase, the numbers of (in the words of the UN Secretary General) 'innocents of distant wars and conflicts'.
Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's security. You couldn't make this thing up.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
We live in very volatile times. And it is super necessary that all of us resist this move toward the militarization and establishment of a more and more authoritarian regime, not just in the United States but in Europe and elsewhere.
The powers know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. ... An army and navy represents the people's toys.
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