HITCHENS ADMIRES CANADA'S AFGHAN EFFORT

CANADIANS should not let military casualties yank them from their
course in Afghanistan, says a leading international political and
cultural pundit.

"I'm full of admiration for what Canadians are doing in Afghanistan,"
Christopher Hitchens said in a phone interview yesterday prior to his
first-ever visit to Winnipeg.

The British-born writer, who lives in Washington, D.C., is best known
for his vigorous defence of the American-led war on terrorism in such
publications as The Guardian in England and Vanity Fair in the U.S.

"If we are beaten by the other side, which is quite possible, it
won't be a defeat for the Bush administration," Hitchens, 57, says.

"It will be a defeat for everybody, a defeat for civilization in
general."

The Hitch, as he is known to both allies and adversaries, has been
invited to Winnipeg by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a think-
tank led by the right-tilting analyst Peter Holle. He will be the
guest speaker tomorrow night at the Fairmont Hotel before 200 people
who've anted up $75 each for dinner and to hear the intellectually
pugnacious writer.

There are still a few tickets available. They can be purchased by
phoning the FCCP at 977-5050.

Hitchens' topic will not be international politics but rather the
"busybody state," which he sees as a woeful aspect of liberal
democracies throughout the western world.

Governments should not regulate their citizens' personal choices, he
says.

In the U.S., for example, an 18-year-old can vote and go to war but
cannot legally enjoy a glass of wine.

"It's quite preposterous," he says. "I can't believe people put up
with it."

An unapologetic nicotine addict, Hitchens puts state-sanctioned non-
smoking regulations in the "busybody" category.

"I know the difference between protecting non-smokers and imposing
prohibitions on smokers, and the line has been crossed." The "famous
war on drugs," as he calls the U.S. policy against those who choose
to indulge in marijuana and cocaine, is his third major beef against
state-imposed morality.

He encourages the Canadian government to legalize marijuana sales
without fear of U.S. administrative reprisals.

"My feeling is that there are lot of people in the U.S. who would
applaud that bit of common sense."

Hitch-watchers, both friends and foes alike, draw parallels between
him and one of his intellectual idols, the great British novelist and
political journalist George Orwell.

Orwell, a socialist, fell out with the British left-wing during the
Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Hitchens, who also called himself a
man of the left and wrote a book called Why Orwell Matters, broke
with his fellow travellers in the wake of Sept. 11.

Yet Hitchens is embarrassed at any attempt to compare him to the man
who gave the world such novels as 1984 and Animal Farm.

"For one thing, he was a much better writer than I am," Hitchens
says. "He also suffered the physical and moral consequences of his
beliefs. I've lost a few magazine jobs because of my principles, but
that's hardly the same thing."

Hitchens, who has written books excoriating Mother Teresa, Bill
Clinton and Henry Kissinger, among others, is hesitant to offer an
opinion about what he sees as his own virtues as a writer.

"I can be serious, but I'm not always boring," he finally offers. "I
can sometimes make people laugh. It almost kills me to say this,
because it will stop being true."

Militantly anti-religious, Hitchens says he is working on a new book
called God is Not Great.

He says it will contain a chapter refuting the argument that atheism
was responsible for more deaths in the 20th century than religion.

He calls his distaste for supernatural belief "the main thing in my
life."

He was raised by a Baptist father and a non-practising Jewish mother.
He went to a Methodist prep school and was married in a Greek
Orthodox Church, then later by a rabbi. But the cosmologies of the
world's monotheistic religions strike him not just as "preposterous"
but actually distasteful.

"Imagine being supervised by some divine leader for all your life and
even into eternity," he says. "It would be like living in a celestial
North Korea."