I have gotten a lot of mail asking me to react to Christopher Hitchens comments in the Nation magazine and on the Nation website.I am loathe to do so because I fear that considerable energies of wonderfulpeople will go into worrying about precise wording of diverse entries in aback-and-forth battle of writers, instead of into the hard and worthy work thatneeds to be undertaken to prevent mass starvation in Afghanistan, to ward offmilitary insanity around the region, and to obstruct and reverse a reactionaryreorientation of mind and policy here in the U.S. But, so many have asked aboutHitchens comments, that apparently silence won’t best reorient attention backwhere we all know it belongs.