I think Hitchens did a good job identifying the problems posed by Islamic extremism, but he did a poor job providing a solution to those problems.  He didn't provide a convincing justification for why continuing our current policy in Iraq and using a similar policy towards Iran will lead to better results in the future than we are seeing in Iraq right now.  The evidence that we are seeing coming back from Iraq suggests that our current policy is producing more radicalized Islamic militants, not fewer.  Hitchens' glib response during the Q&A was that  bombing militants kills them, and so bombing means there are fewer of them.  That response ignores the fact that the vast majority of the Iraqi people are not militants, but it is impossible for American military operations to perfectly differentiate the militants from the ordinary civilians.  The increasing numbers of civilian casualties in Iraq due to 'collateral damage' from U.S. military operations and the inability of the military to provide adequate security for Iraqi civilians leads to more Iraqi people becoming radicalized and joining militant groups, and creates the spiral we are seeing of increasing violence and instability.

It is my day job to encourage people to engage in critical and scientific dialog.  Part of the deal is the marketplace of ideas and allowing different points of view to be powerfully and reasonably argued.  Yet at atheist and humanist conferences we can spend a lot of time talking about how much we agree with each other.  It can get a little old to keep talking about how much “those other folks” need to get their act together and start thinking like we do.  If we freethinkers do argue, it's typically about what we want to call ourselves – an interesting tactical question, but not really all that consequential to the world outside of our conferences.

Christopher Hitchens (both at this conference and at the Atheist Alliance International gathering two weeks earlier in Washington, D.C.) said a lot of things of serious consequence that much of the audience disagreed with him about.  While I personally disagreed with a good chunk of what he said, it was refreshing to hear some ideas at our events that jarred my ears and caused me to reconsider conclusions with which I'd long been comfortable. I'd personally like to hear more that I disagree with at freethought events – as long as it is well reasoned and evidenced.