A reader writes:
With all due respect to Hitchens, his question – "Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?" – is easily answered. Stalin comes to mind.
In the end, what is true about Bin Laden is not the vastness of his vision nor the horror of his occasional strategic successes, it is the smallness of the man. He lit fires in small minds. He inhabited a small world. His global vision was to propagate that small world and impose it on all. Rather than a grandiose visionary, he was a small man with a small plan. He was relentless but, ultimately, the smallness of his vision relegates him to history's waste bin.
The Dish 