The main affective drama in life, if one discounts the perpetual conflict between desire and a reality hostile to desire, must surely be the feeling of time slipping away.
A decade after Hitchens’ ballyhooed invasion, Iraq is a wretched basket case, a nation riddled with sectarian violence, religious extremism, ruined infrastructure, poverty, high rates of childhood cancer, and sheer human misery. The country is on the verge of disintegration.