SOURCE: O'Sullivan, John. “One Man's War Criminal.” National Review (19 February 2001): 24–26.

In the following essay, O'Sullivan refutes Hitchens's contention—put forth in a Harper's magazine article—that Henry Kissinger should be indicted as a war criminal.

Last weekend in New York, it was all but impossible to buy the latest issue of Harper's. The magazine contained the first half of Christopher Hitchens's vast “indictment” of Henry Kissinger as a war criminal, for carrying out a foreign policy of which Hitchens disapproves; and it had sold out in the first 15 or so places I checked. A second installment is forthcoming in the March issue, but having read the first, I predict that the next issue will not sell out. Hitchens writes gracefully, as always, but his organization of the complicated material is rambling, tortuous, and confused.

Not without reason, however—for clarity would be fatal to his argument. Insofar as...