Hitchens on the Kerry flap...

No one writes with the wit and wisdom of Christopher Hitchens....

I propose a compromise. Sen. Kerry and his party should publicly demand that the U.S. military be allowed to recruit openly on elite campuses. And the supposed reason for the ban on ROTC--the continuing refusal of the armed services to admit known homosexuals--should be dispelled at a stroke by a presidential order rescinding the Clintonian nonsense of "don't ask/don't tell." It is already outrageous that the CIA, for example, has been firing Arabic and Persian translators because of their supposed private sexual lives. That policy certainly could have come from bin Laden himself.

This is going to be a long war, and not just in Iraq, and we have learned something this week about the perceived inequality with which it is shared and experienced. It would be good if a sideshow spat in a rather mediocre election season could have the effect of making two self-evident wrongs into a right.