I don’t think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.

Taken at face value, the line expresses a hard-line, punitive view of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan: that the campaign was conducted with insufficient severity to achieve its aims. In Hitchens’s public persona, such a remark would likely be tied to his post‑9/11 arguments that Islamist militancy should be confronted as a totalitarian threat and that half-measures—limited rules of engagement, political caution, or an emphasis on “nation-building” over decisive military victory—prolong conflict and embolden adversaries. The quote’s shock value also functions rhetorically: it forces the listener to confront the moral and strategic tradeoffs between restraint (to reduce civilian harm and preserve legitimacy) and ruthlessness (to compel surrender or deterrence).