Christopher Hitchens - [2006] - The axis of evil

I apologize for my slightly Hezbollah appearance but I was told but in my recent voyage to Iran that the more scruffy I looked the more plausible I would appear and the easier it would be to go to things like Friday prayers and then so proved it's a country for the scruffy its kind my kind of my kind of Middle East but going to Iran country I've had great difficulty getting a visa for for many many years I think I've become the only person who has since the year 2000 been on the ground in North Korea in Iraq and in Iran in other words I may now have stopped speech that I can go around giving this is my prototype for it as a matter of fact why I suggested that we might discuss this famous question of the axis of evil and what it means or what different things it might cover but I want to back up a little to about a decade ago perhaps a little more the mid nineties and bosnia-herzegovina and Kosovo where I also spent some time I've never actually added up the exact number of days but and strikes me looking out at you now that a lot of you are terrifyingly young and may not even remember what it was like to live in the last months of 1989 or not remember it very clearly but for those of us of my age and even quite a lot younger the sense of human emancipation that occurred with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the ossified form of Russel communism that had been imposed on Eastern and Baltic Europe and some of bulk in Europe that that sense of some thing I can still very vividly call to mind I was in Romania at the time it actually happened watching the overthrow of the Shah Cheska regime which was perhaps the most brutal and corrupt as well as the most the one that was most centered on a cultural personality and it wasn't just that it was extraordinary to see seventy millions of people in so many different countries and societies simply by folding their arms and adopting an attitude of defiance revolutionising and changing their system it wasn't that it was there was so moving to see that it was the realization that the Cold War was over in the other way - it was then it was quite likely now that we would not have to think every day of the possibility of a mistake or a crime or a blunder leading to what was you from mystically called in my my hometown of Washington DC a nuclear exchange imagine imagine thinking of a thermonuclear holocaust is in exchange but that was the way we tried to make the thought go away it was it was an extraordinary period and in those days some of you will remember you can look it up there was talk of a peace dividend of the possibility of transferring the enormous resources that we've been putting into warfare into peaceful projects and into doing something about the real victims of the Cold War who were the inhabitants of the countries we used to call the third world that there would be possibly a new internationalism a new committee internationally a new renunciation of force some spare money and and a common feeling that the values of pluralism and democracy were worth having for their own sake then had service be proved their worth in ideological combat against both fascism and Stalinism it was a it was a blissful time to be around I tell you that's November the 9th call it that's the day the Berlin Wall fell Josh s who fell actually not till Christmas Day or Christmas even in Bucharest so that's the end of 1998 1989 the 2nd of August 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait actually it's not really strictly true to say that he invaded Kuwait he annexed Kuwait in us the Kuwait was part of Iraq did something that had never been tried before abolished the existence of a member state of the United Nation felon was limp state and member of the I believe quite an extraordinary thing to have done and around that time slobodan milosevic tried to impose the idea of a National Socialist greater Serbia on his neighbor's in first foot Cervino and then Croatia their most heinous Lea in Bosnia Herzegovina and then in Kosovo and suddenly it it hit me I had I shouldn't have been part of this naive chorus about the end of history and the peace dividend I had some reservations about him which I published that I had shared in the general optimism of course we would not yet out from under the rule the danger that is posed by psychopathic dictatorship so I had to spend a lot of time first in northern Iraq in Kurdistan and then in Sarajevo and and most are witnessing what happens when dictators are allowed to get their way and the shameful thought that one had about it was that in in both cases the cases of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic they had been allowed to get away with the impression that they were thought of by Western democratic societies as allies even sometimes as clients or if one couldn't go quite that far as necessary partners for negotiation and in fact when Milosevic I remember being called by the Clinton administration a partner in peace as when he came he gained to come to sign the Dayton Accords with them don't let me forget his name mr. Clinton's negotiator Richard Habra Thank You Ethel Varric mr. Holbrook had two grand oscillation music and prosecution to land on an American Air Force Base in this annuity was granted him I felt that was a moment of shame and I began to evolve the following view of it coexistence with psychopathic dictatorships is in fact not possible and that is a good thing probably because it nor is it desirable two or three years after Milosevic should been called a partner in peace of Dayton one of his other conditions as well as not being arrested was that the name Kosovo not to be mentioned in any of the conversations that the subject not be brought up that was acceded to as well by an administration so eager to declare a peaceful victory he had to be in effect evicted from power in his own country just as those who he had evicted from their homes in Bosnia Herzegovina Kosovo had to be forcibly taken home and his ethnic cleansing undone or in all the years that were spent in trying to contain or even to coerce or to civilize or domesticate this man had been wasted they had in fact all been exploited by him to advance his program of his mad idea of a greater Serbia and the same had been true every time people had ever tried to make nice with Saddam Hussein it seemed that his appetite for power only grew with the eating and then in the country that most people hadn't been thinking about in Rwanda a racist party decided that it could bring about a final solution to its the problem of its racism namely the extermination of the members of the other tribe and of the members of its own tribe who were against genocide and they knew by this day they knew that they could do this without the danger or even the threat or the risk of foreign intervention or any resistance to them to their planned program of extermination and they were right and meanwhile in North Korea the war the war that never stopped the North Korea is still officially at war with the United States we are we were only knitting an armistice period a period of armistice there was I say we your pardon me the United States is anywhere in the state of armistice and armed truce with North Korea ever since the armistice of 1951 it seemed that yet another state of the one party and the one man and the one ideology want you to become grander still by the acquisition of weapons of mass well I don't need to tell you how the last few years have been completely consumed by this question and for how to address and approach it I'll give you if I may give you three brief capsules first from Iraq and and then from North Korea and then from from Iran I think the way I would want to put it about the atmosphere in Saddam Hussein's Iraq the way that would be his most memorable to me I will I will hope will will be memorable to you too if you go to El Salvador say or South Africa or Poland or former Yugoslavia you can meet people who were heroic members of the opposition in the bad old days and they can tell you terrible stories about what happened to them into their families but what I noticed about Iraq was not just that every Iraqi or and Iraqi Kurd that I knew could tell a terrible story about what had happened to him self or herself or their families but everybody I knew who'd been a member or supporter of the government could tell the same story of how their families had disappeared or how they themselves had been arrested for no reason and brutally tortured I knew for example quite well a man called Marsden Zaha way he was Saddam Hussein's personal interpreter in English he was spoke English faultlessly he was half Kurdish and he was a hundred I think a hundred percent gay which is a risky position already to have in um in in Saddam's Iraq and he privately produced the tape of the play of The Importance of Being Earnest with himself in the part of Lady Bracknell a remarkable chap and was always at the side of the leader but unfortunately he had to be at the side of the leader when after the invasion of Kuwait foreign leaders flew into Baghdad to reproach mr. Zand I was saying to upbraid him to urge him to get out of Kuwait while there was still time to obey the resolutions and to avoid a war many of them spoke to him rather brusquely and Saddam Hussein doesn't like being spoken to briskly by anybody no mafia chieftain will be insulted in front of his underlings those who are in the room who'd had to see it happen maybe the interpreter I think must have known at that moment that they were gonna die because they'd seen something they weren't supposed to see and though everyone had known all the time that Marsden was Kurdish and gay it hadn't been held against him particularly he was too useful suddenly it was announced that these things made him a traitor and he was torn to death torn to pieces you know in a dungeon in ways that I went bother to - did it - detail to you another friend of mine knows who Sabri DC the last foreign minister of Saddam's Iraq who had met originally when he round the Iraqi cultural center in London he rose to be foreign minister by means of being the editor of the Baghdad daily which was a job he's in the meantime one of his brothers was ambassador to Moscow for Iraq was a record from Moscow tortured to death with narrow charges no explanation nothing ever said and the foreign ministers other brother was recalled from another person and tortured not quite to death then he went out to beef Saddam's Foreign Minister as a broken man he went out to represent the man who had mutilated his family psychopathic sadistic dictators like to do this to people they like to show who's boss people often use the word systematic when they talk about repression or abuse of human rights they say these things are systematically abused of course that's a correct way of understanding it but it misses a certain point it must be unsystematic also it must be capricious it must be unpredictable nobody must know they're safe nobody can think now I now have passed all the tests that make me a loyal member of the bath party I'm going to be all right they will they will never be allowed to get to that moment be the fear the Republic of fear as my friend canal Makia described in his brilliant and a profile about this must always be maintained for example when Saddam because there's even a video of this you can you can get it if you want when he purged the party he had the room full of the central he probably about as full as this one is and then someone is brought in to make a confession an obviously broken person who sobs a confession into a microphone standing there handedly and starts reading out a list of the names of the traitors who are in the plot and they're in the audience and they're pointed to the guards commentating away one by one and nobody in the room knows if they're on the list yet themselves purely in to weep and scream and cry and make hysterical declarations of love and admiration for Saddam Hussein even as they're vomiting and excreting with with fear and then it's over and the ones who are in the plot have been dragged out of the room then the video comes to an end and there's a second half which I haven't seen it's harder to get but the people who survived they'd have to go out into the courtyard and shoot their former colleagues who were found to be part of the conspiracy that's a detail that is Kaname Kia says neither Stalin or Hitler ever thought of doing that that's a special twist a detail an exquisite addition if you if you like for sharing who's in power and for making an accomplice of everyone who serves you for dirtying them up as the mobsters would say I don't tell you this because I'm interested in the pornography of a dictatorship that I am I tell you that because I could find people all over Washington DC who would nonetheless say to me well Saddam may be a bad guy by the way anyone who starts a sentence saying that you know immediately knows and cares nothing about Iran but so that may be a bad guy they would say I hope not if you have ever said oh boy and I hope if you hear people say from now on your Challenger he may be a bad guy the argument went on but he's he's a realist he understands containment he understands self-preservation he understands self-interest not a so not so at all it was quite evident to me after anyone who had tasted what the atmosphere of Iraq inside was like and seen the mass graves and heard the stories that here was a man who was quite obviously delusional and who had around him for reasons which must be obvious to you by now if they weren't before no one who would tell him he was making a mistake for him to invade Kuwait was an extraordinary a mistake for him to refuse to get out thinking you get away with it show that he must have lost control of his senses he was visited or his foreign minister was summoned rather by James Baker just before the coalition intervention began Tareq Aziz was handed a note in Vienna I believe it was before perhaps Zurich it was told since you're not going to leave Kuwait we're gonna throw you out you've run you've run out your clock but that's not all if you do any of three things we will consider ourselves freed from all military restraint and everybody knows what that means when United States certainly will deny ourselves no course of action any one of these three things if you set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields will try to destroy the Kuwaiti oil industry on your way out if you do that you sabotage it we will consider ourselves not bound by the UN resolutions if you use international terrorism against us and try and open a second front of that kind the same applies and if you use chemical biological weapons on our forces now we don't know I attend a rate doe claim to know what the Gulf War Syndrome that affects so many soldiers actually is but it isn't it is consistent with the at least the possibility that some local commanders of Saddam Hussein's were allowed to enable to permitted to use no weapons in the field it's it's not to be excluded I won't say it can be asserted it was worth bearing in mind it is beyond doubt that in the on his way out of Kuwait where he had nothing to lose and nothing to gain quite pointlessly viciously so I was saying ordered not just the ignition of the oil fields but the Smashing of the wear of the heads of the oil wells said that the oil would run straight into the Gulf which I did it was thought at one point it would take ten years to clean it up and it destroyed almost all the marine and bird life of the area as well as causing an appalling conflagration that raged for several months before this will depress some of you I was put out by Halliburton by Kellogg Brown rather more quickly than that sorry to break the news but there it is and the following year when George Bush made a visit to Kuwait George Bush Senior made a visit to Kuwait to celebrate as it were the anniversary of the liberation and Iraqi death squad was caught red-handed trying to kill him imagine if they'd succeeded so that you had a dictator who was actually insanely and obscenely rash and whose movements could not be predicted and whose sense of self-preservation was extremely fragile and his hold on reality had largely gone it's for this reason and for his continued interest in weapons of mass destruction and the sponsorship of terrorism but it seems to me that it was long overdue to remove him from power and that the year to have done that would have been 1991 and it's it's a shame and a disgrace to the civilized world in my opinion they allowed continued coexistence continued survival to this regime and wasted a dozen years of the lives of the Iraqi people which were consumed by the locust but I'll just say people who want to ask me about that when I went to Pyongyang in North Korea and started travelling as far as I could outside the capital city there no journalist has ever been allowed to go off on their own in North Korea not anything ever will be and in any case it's the law in Korea that no Korean is allowed to speak to a foreign visitor so it's hardly necessary to prevent journalist from trying to talk to them or as you can see in the face of any North Korean if you can get that near them that they will back away frightened they know they're not supposed to one therefore can't give you quite as many anecdotes about what the texture of everyday life is however I am one of those authors who does their best to wage a war on cliche I went to Prague once under the days of the old Soviet regime and I thought whatever happens to me on this visit I am NOT going to mention Franz Kafka I'm gonna be the first writer to report from communist Prague who doesn't have during the piece that I know going in went to a meeting of Master Howells opposition group in the private home meeting went on for a little while the door suddenly fell in there was a mob of secret policemen dogs and searchlights and and a video camera to capture so long smash you up against the wall you're coming with us where are we going and what's the charge we're not telling you what the charge I thought I've got to mention after they make you do it it's compulsory well when I'd spend some time in North Korea where the head of state is the dead father of the current leader Kim jong-il the Dear Leader his head of the party in North Korea the Korean works party and he's head of the Armed Forces but he's not head of state his dead father is still the head of state forever makes it I think the effort of the world's first necro cracy or Moors hola cracy or san autocracy but absent that completely insane detail if here's what it's like there's a picture of him on every wall there has to be a picture of him in every house he is never office the television screen he's never off the wireless the radio he all films about him and all plays are about him all education is about him all public events are about him all holidays are about him and it's as if somebody in 1950 which is the year that George Orwell died in North Korea got hold of a copy of 1984 and thought I wonder if we could make this work that's anyway let's have a go because we've got these people locked up in this small country with Stalin and Mao on our northern borders which aren't very long with an uncrossable military frontier you know first in the south of the ocean on both sides completely hermetic already for a long time cut off from the rest of the world we can do an experiment here maybe we could create a perfectly supervised perfectly regimented perfectly drilled society where everyone was the property of the state 24/7 as it were well there was no no respite and I heard of course that they do March the children of school carrying the picture of the leader and they do do all this stuff so when I first saw it I thought oh yeah that's right I knew they did this and then off a few days they actually do to make it and they've they've been doing it every day since 1950 and they they'll be doing it after I've gone now the promise of the authoritarian state the state that says that you are state property you the citizen belong to us is that in return you will get say three meals a day and your children won't starve and will be clothed and so forth in your wee house that's the that's the least you can expect for being proper state property and for a considerable period of time in some of the Eastern European countries a version of that promise was kept it began to break down and in China to a version of it was kept it's broken down from time to time and it was so now been replaced by capitalism in North Korea your state property by a starving it's a famines day we don't know how many North Koreans died in the in the famine of them of the 90s and it's impossible to find out but it's several million and the average height of people in North Korea has shrunk we're several inches and of the younger generation I mean obviously the people didn't get any short who had already fully grown excuse me but over the though if the regime could make that happen it would certainly give it a try but the babies born in that period the young of Korea much much much shorter than their South Korean counterparts Oh their parents and even though the regime makes every effort to show you only the good bits of the country can't stop you seeing from the bus as you go cross country oh people picking up individual grains of rice from the fields and people trying to eat grass it's not possible to conceal a thing of this kind so that the promise has it work has broken down I finally had to eat a dog I was so hungry myself and I was a privileged visitor and protected guests in a privileged City of Pyongyang but I've I finally had to have a pooch for supper they wouldn't tell me what kind something I wanted to know I said a big dog they says if there made it better somehow don't ask for a doggie bag if you're North Korea you got actually got thinner myself I must go there more often if you like but it's in other words it's the perfect combination of evil if you will the the concept of freedom is unknown it's not just negating it's not known of its it doesn't exist concepts of rights do not exist but nor is there the most elementary provision for education health nutrition and so forth that's the best way they may emerge to maximize the worst forms of all kinds of oppression that condense refined distill and then again refine them to make it the most miserable place in the history perhaps of the world and certainly on the on the face of the planet president as always with such countries there's only one thing that does work and that's the military and the police and we know that the the power projection made by the regime that fit in the way it believes that it can sustain in itself and survive these rigors and these pressures is to use nuclear weapons either as blackmail or as and what would be the word extortion in other words to ask for the food it can grow to be delivered to at the doorstep in exchange for empty promises about a possible future denuclearization the here's how crazy it is by the way the USAID when it gives out bags of grain or whatever else it might happen to be they insist on stenciling all the sacks the Stars and Stripes and says is a gift from the people United States and it'll say it also in the local language so that the stuff can't be abused and so that people know that this is from America it's a small enough thing North Koreans don't mind handing it out like that at all before it goes onto the black market where it's usually bought up by the Army and the party people if he doesn't whom have first crack at it anyway they don't mind people in the starving out line cities seen this because they say you see our leader is so much loved by the rest of the world that he's and so much feared and so much respected that tribute is paid to him and it comes even from the United States of America and the people have no means of knowing this isn't true what I want to know is whether they can guess that or not I'd give a lot to know what goes on in their minds North Koreans are starting to defect now very dangerous business across the border from China they didn't used to do that before we'll see but it is not possible I cannot I cannot deceive you I cannot give you a direct account of what is happening in the North Korean mind but we will I think soon by not at any rate I would say that there was a very strong correlation therefore between the internal nightmare of the of the ideology of the regime and the the need on its part to impose itself on the outside world as well these two things are not coincidental there in dishonourably connected well to Iran somewhat different the regime has outlived for example the man whose portrait is indeed everywhere the Ayatollah Khomeini he has been dead since 1989 but the regime which displayed his picture still goes on it is still a theocracy built in the image of one man and on one rather particular interpretation of the the rights of sheer clerics to make laws it is actually a declining regime for that reason because the generation of mullahs who imposed this revolution and the generation of Revolutionary Guard who actually imposed it by force is dying and more abundant it's very clear I went several times to the weekly Friday prayers that are still held at the University the annual rally that seems to be the weekly rally of the regime and all the speakers were very elderly and often quite wavering and the Snowy bearded if you like rather than just my period in interned there was a time obviously when it was very terrifying to live in Iran you can I can tell that because from a friend of mine who runs the bookstore he's a big tough guy heavyset brilliant intellectual Kurdish strong fellow but every time anyone with a beard came into the store that there was a flinch in his eyes he he would act nervously and some has put hide a book under the desk or he'd he wasn't all that terrified when I saw him but he was a man you could you could tell had lived under a reign of terror when you've met someone who's been through that you'll always be able to recognize the symptoms it must have been very bad I know this is true also from female friends of mine there was who were terrified that if they let one strand of hair show under the job they had would have asked if threatened their face or perhaps be blinded by a blow from from a truncheon either from a policeman or from and over-enthusiastic civilian and you can see the fear in people's eyes that goes on from that too but this isn't really happening anymore what is happening in Iran is very interesting but within within the carapace of a theocratic state an almost completely secular society is being created this is for a ghoulish reasons but the Iranian mullahs lost so many young people in the suicide waves that they sent against Saddam Hussein that the sending of Grieg gangs of school children and teenagers to clear minefields on the Iraqi border there's not enough room in large parts of Iran to bury the number of people that they killed it's the large parts of the country doesn't one big cemetery they lost so many young people that they had to pay Errani and mothers incentives if you would agree to have three or more children you could get quite a lot of subsidy and quite a lot of help from from the regime they tried breathe quickly a new generation as the consequence of which you work it worked out alright but not in the way they expected at the constants in which it's estimated more than half the population of the country is under 25 and they all hate the mullahs so it's what I call the baby boomerang in Iran and if you want to get a drink which believe me I did I find a bootlegger at the airport and when I arrived as a matter of fact if you want someone to come round to your hotel room or your apartment and bring anything else you might like any other full of alcohol or drugs or pornography or any other kind of video or publication you can do that very swiftly it's the mothers of powerless to stop it and they may even some of them be profiteering from some of this illegal black market themselves there is a tradition in Shia Islam very very firmly believed in by the devout it's one of the many ways that was sheer islam is quite like roman catholicism it has twelve imams one of them one of them is still alive somewhere he never died he's never left the earth he's never left us he will come back one day and then we'll know we will know that the rate of justice or on earth is about to begin some people thought Khomeini might be the 12th Imam but he was too pious around to claim it it's very blasphemous to claim it for yourself and it may not be a Shia they may not be a person we don't know but the Hidden Imam they believe it somewhere well I overheard two taxi drivers discussing and one of them said do you think maybe George Bush is the 12th Imam now when things have gone that far the authority of the mullahs I think can be said to have been fairly fatally undermined these drivers won't stop for anyone with a turban it's remarkably seized in the street these guys just wave in a way of the cows go straight mind no one will pick them up it's very widely said it was very widely said to me that they wished that be an American military intervention it was said to me most memorably by someone I know slightly Hossein Khomeini the grandson of the arch Allah Khomeini the only living male Khomeini in his in his home in : he said to me we wished that there would be an intervention to remove the theocracy who asked well why should try it Hasan Khomeini wants to remove theocracy he's a mullah it's because he said he's a genuinely relieving and do not Shia person and a great admirer of Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Najaf in Iran where he spent a good deal of time lately and he believes that if it goes on this way his religion will be discredited and that the shear cause will be disfigured and defamed and discredited by performing a check and he's right it's led to the mass production of atheism among young Iranians I slightly hope it goes on a few more years so the job gets really thoroughly done before it falls which it will if it were if we were able to establish an ordinary timeline for ourselves we would say I think that within 10 years the generation of the dictatorship will have will die out and will somehow be replaced it'll be an organic internal endogenous process of self transformation of Iran everyone has a satellite dish almost everyone has a relative outside the country people travel they all get the news they don't bother with the official propaganda at all and they're ready to vote and when they do vote they always vote against the theocracy it's just that there's a reserve government a secret state within the state that does not actually allow them to take how that unfortunately again there is another timeline that we can travel which is the surreptitious acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and the sponsorship overseas of religious gangsterism and it's not possible I think to allow ourselves with any insouciance to say well let's have another 10 years of that as well while it gradually wears itself existence so once again we're confronted with the people who gifted talented useful civilized people who have been denied all their rights but and by government that tries to state now by making threatening gestures towards neighbors and towards the international movie this dilemma is evident me not going to go away I have some thoughts about what might be done next about all of these things and I think probably the moment has come when I've spoken enough in my own voice and I'll be as interested to hear from you if you have any thoughts about this as I would be a wearing willing and eager to take any of your questions so with thanks very much again for coming I'm all yours thank you I was asked to confirm that I've heard from more people than I had not heard from the remark that they would they would welcome in Iran or foreign the Western and American intervention to remove the Malacca Sea and which I can't confirm yes that's very commonly said and I was then asked well would that not destroy the emerging Democratic opposition there would not compromise it the answer to that is probably that it would I mean there are a lot of people who say they think we actually let me let me step a little further back I've heard that said so often by people but after a bit it stopped delighting me in other words in a way it's a confession of weakness on their part it's a confession of impotence it's a sort of resignation we can't do anything ourselves there's also something slightly servo about it and a mentality of that kind of course would could turn on a dime right right away if there was an invasion people would sue if they got what they wanted they'd suddenly say down with the occupation to show that they could be brave after all as has happened with quite a number of Iraqis now that they can show their courage they do theirs partly because of the the shame they feel that the cowardice and conformism before and one doesn't want to upset this febrile balance too much and one does hope to encourage an internal movement but every time an internal movement has been it's been very brutally put down so that given the odds given the very heavily armed goons with which the regime maintains itself one is condemning people to a much longer period of servitude and one is also exposing the international community to a much greater risk of yet of a promiscuous state with weapons of mass destruction well therefore I think everyone has to reason it and realize that the though we're accepting a responsibility either way and they're doing nothing is also a policy if the --use talks with Iran don't go well do you see Israel intervening unilaterally like they did in Iraq szerik and if so what do you think what effect you think that will have on the the growing movement against the mullahs in Iran well it couldn't be in laughs all form thing because they'd have to cross a rocky airspace and then one would think that that have happened without Iraqi or American permission so the no one could say that was the Israelis we don't know anything about it in any case people who think like that in the Middle East regard Israel as an American started that in any case so there is no such thing as Israeli unilateralism Elizabeth the best evidence that I have but I'm open to be challenged about this is that the Israelis among others have concluded that the the bombing of the Iraqi reactor in 82 I think anyone I've just forgotten the name of the reaction doesn't matter yes Erick though she refers I call it because he built it first that I was in knowing what he wanted it for there's another unilateralis to the UN for you by the way only and made some ways of advanced the Iraqi UK probe was the adidas drove it further on the ground that I've heard many Israelis say that I've had some other experts in the in the field of disarm and say that good shot there it was it didn't really do nuclear as Iraq and we've known the Iranians in any case as we all know now have configured themselves so that it will be much harder to have the the core of their program shaking out in any one place or in any one day so that's why on the linkage of internal democracy and the emancipation with these questions there are only two serious countries that have ever got this near to getting a bomb or got one and given it up from the Brazil and South Africa both cases as no sort of a democratic revolution that replaced the dictatorship that barked on the program and so I'm what one has to hope for I think is that we will get into a position where we will be negotiating on disarmament with Democratic Iranians nor theocratic ones so now Iran is a poor country a lot of people are very poor in the outlying parts of it but it is enormous Lemoore developed infrastructure me it's really quite the roads are excellent the internal airline flights are very good the traffic jams in Tehran are often gone for four days but that's the sign that most people have a car everyone has satellite dishes and so forth everyone's have custom more or less to living in an open society ever almost everyone has a relative in a democratic country there have already been elections it's just in the rule obviously won't let the winners take office so all of that work has been done in advance and as far as I could tell there's no sectarian or confessional problem in Iraq 92% year there are even the existing theocracy has reserved seats for Jews and for Christians who are quite small but significant minorities mainly Armenian the Christian in the malleus in the parliament they're recognized and their rights are so to speak at least acknowledged if not actually observed there's certainly no dislike for Jews or Christians it's very dangerous to be a member of the Baha'i faith because that's post Islamic not pre but other than that there's nothing of this sort the Kurds are a very small minority they're not separatist there's no there isn't having any fighting there for some time will help what have I left out not everyone is everyone speaks the same language everyone speaks Farsi not everyone is Persian it may be there's many 30% of Zuri that's not an issue nobody would pull a knife over it so all you need to do if I learn my voice here okay I've no right to say any of this all you need to do is what a woman in a shadow said to me in Isfahan the only one woman I met actually in a shadow who hated the regime so much but she's to say do you think the members could come and only stay for about a week and then get out and I thought what would happen I'll pass it off you know several of the Iranian government have wanted men in Europe and elsewhere we know the names of the people who sent out these death squads to Berlin and don't arrest them you've got your net the rest of you up against the wall we're going to blow up that tunnel that you thought we wouldn't find out about in the Mountaineer Isfahan there's a couple of other places we don't like the look of because you know we've found out you can only really inspect a country by really paying in a proper visit and then we return the country to its people and go home think about it think about because that's what they're thinking about I don't know that the United States is thinking like this but a lot of the remnants of him using it would we wouldn't need to be this stewardship guardianship wardship that we have to have for the Iraqi people after what they've been through around the time of the first Gulf War you wrote an essay where he described US policy in the Middle East as mutually assured stabilization do you see the invasion of the rack of Iraq is like the ultimate repudiation of that policy a reversal where now the u.s. is looking to create stable stabilization well I would be it would be nice in a way to be able to say that it would be symmetrical but not quite I think when I was referring to was the way of the United States sort of managed to be on both sides of the iran-iraq war and was different factions of administration with dealing with it covertly as well and arming both sides and you had the feeling that his words that element of profiteering there was also a kissing Geryon mindset in fact Henry Kissinger did more or less say hey this is a great war I wish they could both news that was his comment on this war killed perhaps two million people you know it was same two enemies hurt each other which is of course why the everyone were more or less everyone in Iran believes that Saddam Hussein was instigated by the United States to attack which is actually a half-truth bit more than after so yes the this policy is partly with party we have to undertake it because of the failures of the previous one wasn't that was such a disastrous policy the second we ought to but I can't exactly say that it's stabilizing policy because in it in one way it was to say that the status quo of the Middle East should be overturned that's why I feel that some of my friends in Washington are unjustly referred to as neoconservatives in other words the conservative they're not at all these are people who said no who don't like the status quo we don't like the way things are we willing to take the risk of destabilizing it because we're sure they're in the alternative would be better that's not really a conservative position the conservative position was taken by George Bush Senior by Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft and some other senior statesman group usually around Henry Kissinger real quality view of the world that says no we we like to treat the region as if it was something that we could rule through proxy dictators not have to worry too much about the opinions of the unwashed what do you see happening in Iraq over the next five years well it was interesting when I asked irani ins what they thought about the Iraqi elections in the process there for the most part they they pretended sort of indifference this comes largely from the feeling that don't talk to us as if we were Arabs very strong feeling that it was a resent very much being thought of as ours do not imagine that they have anything to learn from an Arab model of any kind and regard Iraq not as a nation but as a stake there's a recently cobbled together political entity not the wonderful millennial highly evolved civilization like the Persian one just two thousand and more years old I mentioned that because of course the main problem with Iraq is that is precisely in that it isn't really a country there is a rocky nationalism though and I what's going to happen over the next five years is a competition between that feeling of nationalism and other feelings of national ethnic or confessional Allegiance I don't think it's at all obvious that there won't be a compromise a federal compromise about that one reason I believe it is because the groups even lean fairly evenly matched the Kurds who are Sunni are about twenty percent no one's ever going to try and rule them by force again and they also have an army of their own now they can't no one's ever going to be able to bully them again the same is more or less true of the Shia and the the numbers of the suniye too large to allow them to be treated as the despised minority also that's the first thing the second is I have never met an Iraqi who is 100% Shir Sunni or Kurdish that's not quite true I have met some Kurds and hardly have any non Kurdish relatives because there's been Kurdistan was governed separately as you know under the nurse no-fly zones it wasn't ruled by Saddam Hussein it wasn't part of the route for the last few years but otherwise it's a standard rule you meet someone in Baghdad they ask you to gender and you meet their Kurdish brother-in-law and their shear auntie and so forth that's they were up 101 it's the reason why most of the of the predictions about civil war are not proven to be true and where there's been so little individual fratricide in the country and or revenge taking so that's what I think will happen I think it will take I don't know if it'll take five years to destroy the insurgency I think it'll probably take less time than that because it's based on a minority of a minority it doesn't have a state that can resupply it it's it's operating on the stolen resources of the previous regime and because it's linked to another view organizations of al-qaeda and because it's a it's military superiority of a kind that you wouldn't believe until you've actually seen it there's most I don't know Wi-Fi it's called insurgency at all i annoy me that such a flattering Chinese use for such a sordid and evidently self-defeating operation you may know something I don't about the what causes anti-american feeling you're actually Western feeling in the Middle East but I don't think it's Western intervention I mean I think that's giving a free pass to the al Qaeda mentality you should take them seriously should you should see what really does constitute their grievance I can tell you well you know what their grievance is what makes them angry what makes them what kill the sight of a female face for example or a Shia Muslim or a synagogue or a skyscraper or a Christian or a Hindu particularly the Hindus that's what makes them angry now I'm sorry I have no patience what ever or at all with people who say that what brings them about is resistance to them for one thing it's not true for another it euphemized as their actual propaganda which I've just Julianne anything for which as you know as I not you won't even be full of self or they've been painted and for the third would have to mean surrender if resisting the Moni makes them more and more active than we might as well give up now they've won haven't they well they're not been away and they're popular base is going to be tested for them they didn't even run in the Afghan elections and I can tell you what would've happened to them if they did they didn't try to run in Iraq and I tell you what would have happened if they did they did not gonna run in the Lebanese one so I can tell you what happen if they did why are you being a ventriloquist for them and saying that their appeal is growing and why do you imply that it's the resistance to this fascism that brings it about this is defeating the mind drop it I would I'd stop saying that I didn't hear your entire lecture so I don't know if you discussed Syria at any point no but I'd be happy to okay they're kind of a question mark to me because I I have any impression they're basically a secular government and I wouldn't see them as a nation to be part of a movement to be you know spouse Sina serve an Islamic type movement around the world but they're always being accused of harboring insurgents you know they're accused of harboring Iraqi insurgents and helping them train and so forth yeah and also this issue is Lebanon I don't remember hearing anything about this and all of a sudden now they have to leave lemon and immediately I kind of don't understand what's up with that right well just a full four start the word on this bath is the secular question which comes up a lot there are two things you have to bear in mind if you're going to say that this is a secular policy the first is that it's explicitly based and you can look at I hope you can look up the as I have the original writings of the founders and inspires of the party they're modeled themselves basically on European fascism I don't think European fascism was a Christian movement exactly though did have the support of the Vatican I don't think I think it's a bit much to court secular somehow but it's only in in that sense at any rate that one can call it secular it's the person's instead the worship of the state of the party and of the leader and it's it's not against religion in the least in Iraq the Saddam Hussein regime is closing 15 years mutated completely into an Islamist regime it changed all of its rhetoric of jihadism he began to build spent a fortune on building mosques including the largest mosque in the world the saddam hussein mosque profanely named sent a piece of quran miniature quran written in his own blood i don't know if it was his own blood it's blood all right there he was all his his the pictures and statues of him started to take the form of showing him in clerical robes verse not the rest of the Koran that the servant Allahu Akbar was put on the Iraqi flag where it had never been before and they were sponsoring all over the world Islamist not secular movements no notably supporting the Islamic Jihad forces in Palestine against the secular PLO and paying I'm saying paying personally for every suicide bomber who would who was known as a martyr in the Baathist press just as the nuclear scientists were up were calling the Baathist press our nuclear Mujahideen which is a wonderful expression I think you'll have to agree and it was based on the tribal minority of the city now obviously someone who doesn't want majority rule when when the majority is Shia Muslim has every reason to pretend to be a circular stone not saying I'm not a chair and it's not that I want to protect my own son II was in tribe but don't be fooled by this and Dobbie Fulbright in Syria either the Syrian government is a completely religious regime is based on the Alawite minority which is a very small minority in Syria it's a religious time it rules that's not secular if you want me to say that what our wisdom is I can tell you only really that it is a a form a variant of she is not rather individual most form of it but this minority rule in Syria is breaking up and hasn't belong to last but while it does last there's no question that it sponsors of what you say it does not sponsor namely caracal terrorism around the world its main ally is Iran its main trading partner and armorer is Iran it's just made a formal military agreement with Iran and with Iran it co-sponsors Hezbollah which happens to be conveniently a pro Syrian party and it's currently the current crisis in Lebanon where you say where's all this come from why are they suddenly being told to get out of there well because the people of Lebanon fair enough because there was an election coming there is one coming in May because a force was being put together and screams the Drew's led by the Socialist Party leader what did you like many of the sunny the Christian a lot probably majority of London and and others and mr. Rafiq Hariri was going to join this coalition and if he'd done so it would be very hard for it not to live so like everyone else has ever criticized Syrian rule in Lebanon he's been murdered I don't say the Syrians did it I say that that's what always happens to be reconized Syrian rule those are the facts that's what happened to the previously Socialist Party convulsion left that's I think why you'll find that suddenly all of a sudden in a way that seems to have upset you I'm sorry there until the time in Lebanon is up and they should go as they should we proceed with its agreement with Iran to provide them with enriched uranium they're also playing mid-range missiles to Syria and this is all following a brief meeting with a president about two weeks ago in Europe there's criticism on both sides of the aisle that the president blinked during this meeting and I was hoping to gauge your thought and opinion on where is the u.s. relation where are the US relations heading with Russia particularly with respect to the Middle East and and and what are we essentially looking at are we again looking at I stare down with Russia or do you hope that the situation will will come around because the sentiment is preferred democracy is too great the stupidest thing that I think that George Bush has ever said some might laugh at this point and say how only you're gonna go on before you pick one but actually I think he said many quite rude things including about the axis of evil after all think what we've been talking about just now who says he wasn't right to say that was matters of evil nobody says that now over everything we find out about this countries are much worse than what we thought for most people's finally however I should say the stupidest thing the president said was he as soon as he saw the value illusion was wearing a crucifix around his neck he was a man who could be trusted I have garlic under this case you're wondering and he looked him in the eye knew here was a great man and I mean I thought Oh God so that's what that really is what you get if you're faith-based you get KGB Wiesel as their partner and it's too late to say that you think he's no good after you've endorsed him in that since that time mr. Putin intervene outrageously in the attempt of the people of Ukraine to make self-determine government of their own I I do not believe I said flatly I do not believe anyone in the Ukrainian KGB would have dared to try to poison the opposition leader if they thought the Russians didn't know or might disapprove it is not possible in that Miglia forced the approval of Putin at least negatively not to have been sort and I think that question should be asked much more aggressively than it has been mr. Putin's policy of unilateralism in respect of Iraq at the United Nations putting Russian interest or the interest actually of a clan of Soviet mobs former Soviet mobsters who are only loved money by Saddam's regime and who were trading on the oil-for-food program which was largely run through Russia was scandalous that's that's unilateralism in the UN not what the United States was doing which was trying to get the existing resolutions enforced and yes now Syria and now Iran and very unlock for about North Korea to and dragging their feet on an agreement we've had for a long time I come sorry I keep saying we I was in America this morning I'll be there again tomorrow your pardon that to build down the existing nuclear talks with a lot of which are still targeted and still so in the silos that should have been done years ago it hasn't been and this is this is to say nothing about how he doesn't let the Russians interfere in their own internal affairs which he does not I mean he's good he's quite clearly embarked on a course of one man and one party rule for his own country so this is extremely dangerous and it shows that there has been a great Russian chauvinist resentment ever the events of 1989 the feeling that they are on the losing side and that their being a victim becoming a victim country this I think is incalculably dangerous you mentioned three very repressive regimes of which one in Iraq are you justifying also that the United States or whoever should also invade North Korea and on that basis of your answer is yes I mean who becomes the arbiter and what is the criteria then for not invading Saudi Arabia Egypt regime if you return me to the question of a quote quo warranto of the old question by what right to wealth which must be asked of everything as you know there are four conditions under which a government can be said to have sacrificed its sovereignty and to put itself outside international law such that the United Nations can can contemplate removing such a government or intervening in its internal affairs at least these four are the following invasion or invasions of neighboring states for occupations of neighboring states violation of a Genocide Convention which mandates action both to prevent entrepreneurship from all signatory powers which counter the United States are one to violations of the treaty on nuclear non-proliferation NPT and sponsorship of international terrorism any of those four qualifying to us any member of the Security Council to pass the United Nations to consider taking action well with Iraq that's easy they all reverse form violated repeatedly serially flagrantly got away with a lot of them should have probably been arraigned earlier than they were Iraq was not a sovereign country in 2003 it was under international sanctions already large parts of its airspace were patrolled by American British planes it didn't have really control over its importance it was so it was a banal estate in in law Iran only qualifies under two fees at present it seems to me it doesn't threaten any neighboring country unless you say that its alliance with Syria helps perpetuate the occupation of Lebanon translated as it's been fooling around with the NPT but it is constantly in negotiation it is submitting to inspections and it does sponsor international terrorism but in I would say the most ambiguous form in that Hezbollah there's another part it's not like al-qaeda or Islamic Jihad Hezbollah Reza is a Shia political movement with with a military wing and it's there would be there would be some argument in the United Nations I think there should be as to whether or not the qualifies as a terrorist organization Gloria period simply I would say that it did not so this is very difficult North Korea commit genocide only against its own people not others but it does do that it's political policy of starvation it's in flagrant breach of all the agree all agreements on limited nor nuclear weapons and he plans to invade South Korea it maintains itself on invasion footing at all times so you would be as good a job design but these are the criteria and as you'll see it should get people to stop doing this rather annoying thing that when one makes a case against that I was saying as carefully as one can they say well why don't you go and invade role of Mugabe then I hate it when people do that don't do it please don't do that it's my understanding that back in 1920s when even bin saud was trying to create his personal state and post Ottoman Arabia he made a deal with the hobbyists saying that if you support my political agenda to create the state of Saudi Arabia I'll support you in your education programs and while you sense the free reign within my territory now fast-forward to 2005 now you have al Qaeda and all these groups that spring from hobby ISM the United States that's now pressuring autocratic regimes and the Middle East to democratize and my specific question is this is it zulan the Hausa saw its best interest to support the hobbyists and their educational institutions within Saudi Arabia essentially there are domestic forces or is it now that to use a totally politically uncorrect term they feel that they've made a deal the devil and that now they're having all these pressures from the United States and they're essentially walking tightrope so I just wanna know your answer on that do you think there's anything politically incorrect in saying deal with the devil your your analysis of it is as far as I can see flawless at first I know that's exactly what did happen and it's also exactly the question that they are going to confront is it worth it because they've invested billions of their Petro dollars in creating madrassas for the inculcation of a very fundamentalist version of the Koran in Indonesia in Algeria in some parts of Turkey and Nigeria which i think is the next place where there's going to be a confrontation of this kind by the way we should be paying a lot more attention to my jury than we are doing and also in in the United States and Canada where very often now this the Wahhabi version of the Bible which explicitly see how the Koran the holy book which explicitly endorses impulse for of violence against unbelievers is being used by Imams in our prison system I mean that's not mince words here there's an attempt being made to build a secret army and within Western society out of criminal elements and to supply from outside and to keep it and give it an ideology that would really disciplined it and this has to be taken very seriously I think that the Bush administration has been purposely laggard on this question the president has never used the word Saudi Arabia in the same sentence as the word terrorism use the word terrorism a lot now I think just by you know one day the words how do you were to turn up in the st. this doesn't seem to do it he's used in conjunction with almost every other word so that he makes it sound like tourism now every time he speaks its Howard well hear him say the war on tourism well which I wish also would break on I think you should say very plainly to them that there will be not one more school or institution that's Oprah open with Sally money on American soil and less churches synagogues sheer mosques and centers of atheist humanism can be legally open in Saudi Arabia if they don't say yes to that is over finish and the worst will follow but we cannot have a situation with their training the realists in schools in the United States and put everything the presidents and trying to do it in the army under the protection of the First Amendment and and it's illegal to be a Christian in Saudi Arabia it's illegal to be an atheist it's illegal to be a Jew it's very nearly illegal to be a shear they're one of the very good things that has been happening lately is the signs of stirring among the shear people of Saudi Arabia who happen to do the heavy lifting in the oil fields and all the stoop work down there and they're beginning to get ideas and if Iraq and I hope we're encouraging them to do so and make life hell for the kingdom and for the harvests where they live every day do something mean to them what is the real relationship between China and North Korea and could the Chinese impose change there the answer to that is certainly that they could I mean part of the reason for the collapse of the North Korean economy was the collapse of communism and China and Russia and the end of the traditional subsidies that had been given to them for that plus their rather than fantastic agricultural incompetence and that Chinese control most of the avenues through which trade goes in and out of North Korea and there is also on the other side of the Tumen River that separates the two countries there so the Korean speaking area in that on the on the border there's a large South Korean speaking minority ethnic Koreans in fact in in China which gives them an interest because that's where the refugees are going and obviously in China hopes that North Korea does not completely implode because if it does the the whole population which annex escape into China facing them with a huge demographic crisis a minority crisis that they don't need so they're very interested in getting a soft landing for the regime and this may explain why they seem reluctant to do anything very public but they have a real interest on that on the disarmament question which is this if North Korea carries on with them with this promiscuous policy it will almost certainly force the Japanese to declare themselves a nuclear power in Japan the Japanese we know have the resources to and they and they possess the knowledge to put together a nuclear weapon in a day they just don't do it because their Constitution forbids them to division because there's a very large public opinion that is of his reasons very anti-nuclear but if you remember when the Koreans last tested their long-range missile the missile that they've been selling by the way to Iran and were going to be selling to Saddam Hussein had he stayed in power they tested it without warning by firing it across Japan so it landed on the other side of Japan from in the sea that's how the Japanese found out that that does make them nervous because it means they don't have to ask the question I wonder if they can reach us now China quite obviously does not want a nuclear Japan so you can jolt you can do the triangulation of it very simply it's in obvious in China's national interest to keep Japan nor nuclear so for them to do that they'll have to make sure that North Korea becomes non-nuclear too so it would be nice I think if the Chinese acknowledged that this was the fact and we're not asking them to do us a favor we're asking them to do themselves a favor as well as of course to the people of North Korea my question we're talking about negotiations and sticks in your carrots and you were saying the other boot to kick him with they don't follow through well back to 94 the agreed framework North Korea and they broke it five minutes later and we found out in the fall of 2002 that they weren't agreeing with it should've been the reaction come to the table again we'll negotiate from this point or something else this Nick well there's a hideous difficulty here which you probably understand the sum off at least which is the same as the one I dwelt on with Saddam Hussein we we don't think that the mullahs I probably should have said a word about this why don't they think of the mullahs are mad anyone I think they're quite cool quite calculating very cynical very corrupt guys they profit enormously from the present status quo they'll do their best to hang on to it but they're not they're not deranged and not do anything wrong that's my but their religion is partly it does make them believe and do some very stupid things that often against their self-interest but that's what religion does it's not it's not it's not as toxic as were partisan with North Korea though there's every reason to think that there is an element of insanity not just in the leadership but in the very system itself is set up to drive people mad and thus it's very difficult to calibrate a reward and punishment system with them and I've been on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone of Korea now it's a huge concentration of violence and the problem is that the capital city of Seoul capital city of South Korea is about an hour's maybe two hours drive is very near the border and it's a huge city now it's also the capital of life in democracy now after a long struggle and it could be saturated with conventional fire from North Korea and every time it's it has been war game and I've been to some of these war games at the DMZ you start with losing so without the nuclear question coming into now if there's North Koreans do that because that's the end of their regime not just their game at the end of the stage North Korea doesn't isn't a country that would be the end for them if they did do this but we would have lost our brothers and sisters in Seoul now if the United States was the country that some people think it is they would say what who cares we didn't live there and Korea would never be a problem again though we can't do that we can't take that chance otherwise you can send a squadron Plains over North Korea could denuclearization afternoon well that isn't a part and you can in the best time to do that it's some people argue would be right now before the yeah yeah just fully come on stream but we don't we can't bet we can't bet that they wouldn't destroy themselves in an attempt to destroy us in the process or that it's morally not possible to take that chance and if you refuse to pay any more tribute to them from on the extortion side and leaving the blackmail for the movie the extortion side of it you say right we're not gonna give you any more food you know who's gonna go hungry and it's not gonna be Kim Jong and again it's morally very difficult to say well we hate you so much we'll starve your population especially will we now have the full record of how bismal in the united nations are exploited and fleeced the people of Iraq that was blood for oil by the way if you want to slow them to time

Channel: TheHitchensArchive

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Keywords: Christopher Hitchens, Axis, of, evil, iraq, North Korea, Iran

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Length: 72min 28sec (4348 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2013