Wow I learned so much from Hitchens I don't know what to say. What's really felt is the infighting with the left, but also his love of the literary and ironic. He'd repeat Voltaire's "écrasez l'infâme."

From Wikipedia:

Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently contain the word "l'infâme" and the expression "écrasez l'infâme," or "crush the infamous". The phrase refers to abuses to the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him, and the superstition and intolerance that the clergy bred within the people.[20] He had felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the hideous sufferings of Calas and La Barre. He stated in one of his most famous quotes that "Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them".

I remember the Bosnian war being a big break from the left. And then of course Iraq.