Enemy down

Kindle Singles are inexpensive novellas, stories, essays, and other short-form literary offerings available for a song in the Kindle Store. They can be a refreshing reading choice between longer works.

I just finished the Kindle Single entitled The Enemy, by Christopher Hitchens. This longish article is essentially Mr. Hitchens' obituary of Osama bin Laden, and is heavily laced with the writer's assertion that the infamous terrorist leader was indisputably evil, not someone who, as some amazingly still state, "commited terrible yet understandable acts." No, Mr. Hitchens says, Osama bin Laden's many terrorist actions were not on any level a kind of justified response to wrongs inflicted on the people and political structures important to him (a group that actually changed fairly often, as factions fell in and out of favor with bin Laden), but rather nothing more than a concerted attempt to spread his evil intent outward throughout the world, much like the Third Reich's effort to spread Nazism.

Sometimes a little too scholarly for leisurely reading, it's nonetheless worth doing the little bit of work needed to get through The Enemy. You'll learn a lot, and unlike much of Mr. Hitchens' other writing, you won't be distracted by any serious controversy. On this subject at least, I don't see very many Americans disagreeing with Mr. Hitchens' scathing biography and venomous good riddance to this long-despised international figure.

The Enemy is available on Kindle for $1.99.