As usual, the Hitch has penned an especially elegant analysis of recent events in the Middle East: From Beirut to Baghdad: The ghastly predictability of nihilist violence.

Many considerations, including intense inter-Islamic Shiite-Sunni hatred, divide Ahmadinejad and Assad from the forces of al-Qaida, which would also prefer to see Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan in ruins than have these countries get a chance of modernism and secularism. But on this essential point, they are in agreement, and their wrecking activities tend toward the same objective. In due course, they will certainly fight each other. But the ruins over which they will be disputing will, they believe, have at least been abandoned by the West, as Afghanistan was after 1989. And the interest of human-rights monitors and others will have slackened accordingly. [Emphasis added].

How true. So many of our leaders and barstool pundits make a habit of standing back and demanding the recognition of secularism and human rights from afar, but back off whenever a realistic solution is offered.

(And yes, I am aware that I am a barstool pundit, so don’t bother commenting or e-mailing me that little tidbit - I didn’t say it was a bad thing).