Christopher Hitchens - At Large: A conversation with James Kirchick [2010]

what was it that attracted you to revolutionary politics what drew me to revolutionary politics was I'd have to say the sheer fact that they were revolutionary that I could feel I was born in 1949 so I was almost the perfect age to be at university in 90-68 and to have become very outraged by a number of things principally the Vietnam War but not to learn that and to be very discontented as many people were for different reasons with the boring post-war partly Social Democratic Party conservative consensus so you know in a sense the shield from promiscuity I think it's worth remembering that in 1968 had the height of what we thought of us and I still do think of us that the pouring aggression accompanied by chemical destruction its environment in people and appalling things of Vietnam in the United States the Democrats were in power in some ways quite liberal over in Great Britain the Labour Party was in power in what was then still Western federal Germany there was a grand coalition of Social Democrats in other words if you wanted to oppose from the left you had to go quite a long way to the left because a sort of official left was already there I think that that context might be important but it was more than anything else that actually with what I think of still as a sense of history that I can sometimes call out I actually felt what was entering a revolutionary period I'll say quickly the rejection by black America often violent rejection of his long condition of servitude very dramatic we take over in the middle of Mediterranean Democratic Europe Greece with all its metaphors and democracy and so by right-wing military dictatorship protected by NATO the warning of China the way in which white Rhodesia was allowed to get away with the rebellion against the crown by what seemed to us a spineless regime the extraordinary stirrings in Latin America which had four long being a kind of backyard of American Empire a number of things and then as the Year ruled I mounted a social rebellion really put an end to the girls fifth republic which is long overdue to be put asleep anyway and in Poland and in Czechoslovakia the very very interesting stirrings very intelligible to those of us who thought we were transfixed supported the left opposition tradition of intellectual and working-class opposition to Zionism so what would hear speakers saying we might be living through another 1848 or even another nineteen seventeen or eighteen and it didn't seem all that much of an exaggeration it took a long time one had to live awhile to realize that what I was actually seeing was the the end of a long stretch of the European left today when people talk about revolution what do you what do you think the revolution is now where is it is there still one I was asked to give a talk at the American University of Beirut a couple of years ago and you were there about who are the revolutionaries in the Middle East now and I had to do it in the teeth of some rather an appetizing audience members who are sympathizers of either Hezbollah or more likely on that campus the Syrian national socialist party or equally not equally but comparably disgusting group and so on and also against speaking as a kind of culture of anti-americanism on that campus or so to me the revolutionaries in the Middle East now are the people who are trying to replace the Islamic Republic of Iran putting their own lives right onto the street against a very ruthless regime to transform a theocracy into something that's more appropriate to government an ancient civilization like Persia that's defamed and Fabray fouled by this Caracol fascist regime and the people have driven with increasing success to create an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq or an autonomous Kurdistan that might lead to stirrings has larae lettuce dogs in Syria a turkey arriving elsewhere among the oldest oppressed minority in the Middle East and the largest people in the world dead he'll stay to their own cause much longer in some ways more venerable than the Palestinian one and I went on in that vein know that those are revolutionaries to me and it's been by extension I would have said before then the people who asked us so little in Eastern Europe up try to 1989 it was revolutionary to demand something like a Bill of Rights modeled on the American Constitution that was a revolutionary demand and my conclusion roughly was and is if you want a short handed that the American Revolution is probably with its separation of powers separation of church and state guarantee of free expression and other celebrated trance of the Enlightenment is the revolution the model of which is still that when did you realize that the Soviet Union was irredeemable as a political force in the world I was I chose born in 99 and I grew up thinking I mean I had read darkness at noon for example because this masterpiece know about the silent show trials on my own and I'd been given in 1984 to read I would have read anyway in my school curricula and when I was seven it's one of the first times I remember watching the news the tupid 936 the two great international events were the doomed British Invasion of Egypt with France in Israel and the Hungarian Revolution and the repression by the Red Army of a popular revolt within a European capital city which hangs see it on the TV so I was one of those fortunate people I suppose did have any illusions to lose in the Soviet Union and he regarded it with plain horror as a ramshackle corrupt dangerous Empire but one that wouldn't last very long I never believed they could they could survive but that would be easy to do an area door was any fool could do that who could read a book against Zionism but in in experiences worst theory I was in Cuba in 1968 in the run-up to the invasion of Czechoslovakia as it then was and I'd knew quite a number of the Czech student leaders and others who were trying to declare their own independence from the Warsaw Pact from Russian domination of East Newark because the Russian empires excited to the Soviet Union coextensive with it and I thought the Russians will get to invade I didn't see what choice did have they couldn't let it go but nor nor did I think could they invade without completely as if you by losing their credit that that would be the end of it and I took part in various arguments that took place in Cuba in Havana during that week in August including Fidel Castro's endorsement and then you could still meet people reasonable people who were still members of the Communist Party in Western you I knew quite a lot of their her expression changed her from then on was as if their mainspring had broken it often took them a long time actually to leave but I can't remember anyone joining after that I just remember thinking I've seen the end of it I don't know I was gonna take took 20 years but it's over that was you know more demonstration than one needed yes and wrong yeah I was very fortunate I was young to meet logic Kolakowski put national hero in Poland still he died I think now only two years ago had been a so-called reform communist of the 50s generation had eventually we'd forced out of Poland by the repression in 1968 came to Oxford where then was Rotem Magisterial history notice of communism in practice of marxism as the theories there's still the best most exhaustive critique of Marxist theory of history ever written and legit having been through these experiences would tend to poopoo any news of stirrings of reform or protest in don't bring me any more news of reformed communist in the hopeful shoots here and they say it's it's a it's an irredeemable system it's beyond reform well I thought that was true but it still could be reformed communist which there were from Mikhail Gorbachev was obviously the most salient example and the precisely because it was beyond reform even a very tentative attempt to reform it would do their job would bring in the roof so it's a it's a nuance of a difference but um legend was too much unimpressed by developments like that by the end of his life he was too wedded to pessimism I hope I don't offend anyone watching who admired him as I did Rudolf borrow for example East German Marxist who went to jail after the invasion of Czechoslovakia and wrote of a critique of these German state almost perfectly predicting the date on which it would collapse when I showed logic this book Barbara's book in the late 70s he said basically don't bother me with this I mean borrow is still a Marxist you can't have anything of interest to say on these questions I was sure he was wrong and I don't think I was wrong to point that out so your views on America have changed I would say over the years well of course the biggest single revision that all the this mmm excuse me certainly the biggest single revision that for of this was involved for me and and has part of all the other ones is revisiting one's view of the United States yes I was having a discussion the other day in London during the debate over the liberation of Iraq what I was speaking against some American liberals and with a friend of mine who until quite recently being a member of the British Communist Party and we had taken the side of Jalal Talabani and Bhansali and Kenan Makia and the other Iraqi left and secular revolutionary intellectuals that the Saddam Hussein regime had to go that no policy was conceivable that allowed it to retain private ownership of Iraq I would've thought pretty easy case to me and my friend I've recently ex-communist trend in the debate said look I know what all the criticisms of American imperialism are and I've made them myself and I could add the same with my book on Henricus and his crimes and so forth but if there was going to be a superpower or hyper power in verbal Affairs I'm very glad he went on to say this the United States and not any of the possible rival well that's common sense to me too yeah well you were at a book 20 years ago about the Anglosphere yes it was more critical than perhaps it would be today what what's what's changed that may that makes the concept more palatable to you well I'm still think which is what my book was about that the more or less direct succession by American policy and institutions after 1945 or British imperialism possibilities wasn't a good thing for the United States and not that good thing for the territories that is inherited either I'd mentioned the disputed churches that were still there at the end of the above Palestine Cyprus Kashmir so and the borderlines which we're still fighting advice well I don't think it was an admirable or fortunate thing that that happened nor in fact the American succession in other parts of the world to the empires of Portugal in Africa Belgium in Africa Holland in Indonesian elsewhere that these are very very spotty periods indeed and I think deserved maybe more criticism than they got but everything has to do with the alternative and now that there isn't what you could call an idealistic internationalist secular leftist opposition to this there's nothing of the kind becomes much plainer with the real rivals are so I would say for example that's certainly the cruelest master it's in Bob weighs over half country was very much involved at one point when it was still Rhodesia his not just Maga being locally but its Imperial boss his appeal was China by far the cruelest master that's important and if you make that extension religious unhappily easy to do to Darfur Burma North Korea there's quite a long list may have left something out everywhere where human rights are not just denied but literally negated mm-hmm the superpower China is behind it and blood for oil is the simplest way for once simplicity works in this case of encapsulating it and one misses the idea that there's an American willingness to resist this there is some it feels faint and one which is it to be stronger you've you've written a lot about this way the eastern sin of communism but also the Western sin of imperialism do you think it's easy to lump these together and are there distinctions that need to be made between the two and also within within imperialism was the British Empire is bad or nasty as the Belgian Empire was well if you want me to compare and contrast progress made by imperialism's or as opposed to retrogressive things done my favorite writing on this always was and still is Karl Marx's brilliant essays on India where he said it's absurd to go on about the British oppression or occupation of India because it's not as if India would be unoccupied without the British it would be now dominated either by Russia possibly Turkey consignor Persia not then I think Jana but but that doesn't about it addressing point and so the British Empire is undoubtedly using India for it what I would call extractive reasons making converting its people and raw materials into capital without very much concern in order to finance the British industrial revolution nonetheless this has brought to India he numerous them the railway the printing press you know that was the past importance of the Telegraph and steamship communication with our culture systems ended the Millennial stagnation in isolation in India but all of this is to benefit with Indian people and it also means in the end they will be able to have their own modern relatively modern cross post post British State actually that's not only was it the correct analysis at the time we left out nothing by way of the critique the way the British treated their self but objectively was quite a good predictor the British record in Ireland doesn't strike me that way at all parts of West Africa and elsewhere I don't think one can say that it harnessed the energies emancipated the labor force and savings or any of this sort of thing that as it did in India and I hope my accent doesn't betray me or compromise me but I still think I think a good case we made if you have to be colonized don't be colonized by the Belgians the one thing that's a terrible thing to be back to be colonized by a country that's already practically a colony itself and backward and impoverished and narrow and better best of all this should have your own free economy and free institutions and an alliance with other countries that have the same the Anglosphere is a prefiguration of that I suppose brother and brother imperfect rather a exact but not bad the least bad of the only would just to give you an example of how the promptings of the left and leave me oh I don't it can be left out of this neither South Africa wasn't affecting your speaking entirely with an Afrikaner dominated in Dutch run totalitarian system in my opinion was I think racism is to tell journalism their definition run by people whose party leadership would actually been on the other side in the second world war and I would say if I've been asked in the latest in 1970s the worst place to live in and the worst disgrace to human value was there and say Cuba was or even is now South Africa yes so that there are played the separations aren't all that easy but to make and then I would have added and I should have said Italy I always thought and I still think that a nuclear war who would be worse than any possible political outcome it would be totalitarianism defined for the survivors back to the most appalling tyranny of scarcity and famine and want and ruin that's self-evident but it would also be the end not just of our generations of all the generations that have come before us to build civilization and so my anxiety to avoid anything that could lead to what was pathetically wickedly I thought you finishing before the nuclear exchange was very strong and still is and I the one would in the better dead than red calculus have no difficulty at all to say don't forget there were people at that time who honestly did think that the risk of that was worth running for Cuba Farren say even for Vietnam in the fifties then I thought that I thought was was the spirit of fascism transmuted into the discourse of the Western eyes it was very much against it I don't regret that one bit since we're on that topic do you think a nuclear Iran can be contained no I don't think actually a theocratic Iran can be contained even without you I think there's a confrontation in our future between our civilization I'll I'll say that without embarrassment the world that at least respect so it doesn't was practiced a little law and that has devised certain forms of diplomacy and certain systems of arms control to which the Iranians are legally signatories and a regime that has the clearly expressed ambition to break out of and to trample all those conventions we already see it in the threats to their Arab Sunni neighbors in countries like Bahrain in their export of violence as far away as murdering Jewish community leaders in Argentina or Kurdish exhales in Berlin and Vienna if I have a say over a novelist friend of mine living in London writing fiction I think they've they've asked for a fighter should know that in those conditions they certainly won't get one I was at to Hezbollah rally world so were you in Beirut a little while ago and I couldn't but notice that the party symbol of Iran's main client in that country Hezbollah is now a nuclear mushroom cloud in cartoon form the cartoon is made up of words which when decoded cause constitute a threat to the Jewish state Jewish people well I wouldn't want to look back and think I wonder if I should have paid attention to a threat that you may say one is alarmist I could give you also all the reasons why that could be a bluff they don't have it they just want you to think they do it's a wave and grin dicing themselves I know that's all partly true true but the behind it is a reality and the reality would be emergence of a thermonuclear theocracy the one thing we since I was at school been lying awake worrying about what happens when apokoliptic weaponry is grabbed hold of laid hold of by messianic totalitarian forces well we are about to find out if we want to run that experiment they're ready to do it for us so that's the worst there there are no consequences and no consequences could possibly be worse than that because I'm not one of those who thinks they musically uses on the Israelis let alone on the United States I think they wanted for purposes of blackmail yeah principally against other Muslims and non Persians in the in the region or least initially they have the mullahs have a great racket bleeding their country dry and running it into the ground and sucking out the surplus they must have done want to give it up but doesn't mean that a later regime wouldn't be much more extreme and they'd have the same weapons so we have to take that into account but in the meanwhile we'd have to live in a world where perforce we were polite and accommodating and agreeable to these characters and I decline to live from those tenants I would do it the best speech made by Churchill or none the most overused example of course of this kind of compromise but still I think the best of one of the least known is you you finally said in one speech it's not that what objects particularly to any one policy internal or external of the Hitler regime it's that you basically don't want to live on the same continent that's them you don't even bring breathing the same air and in the in the long run in fact you aren't going to be able to one of you is going to have to yield this is there is and I think should be some glad there is a radical incompatibility between a civilized world order which aspires at any rate to democracy and free exchange and totalitarian expansionist fanatical regimes did the overthrow of Saddam Hussein strengthen the Iranian regime or is that question moot if there are simply next on the list if I was asked if the overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime had the effect of strengthening the Iranian one I think I'd have at least two or three replies one would have to be yes in the short term it gives it access to an audience of co-religionists within Iraq so by no means it's puppets but over whose leadership it does exert in front it's not a little financial whitsunday on the other hand it gives them the knowledge that on the near abroad frontier as with their Afghan won there are forces that are keeping an eye on Mariana's and we're as near to them as they are to us if you see what I mean prepare that in mine too I have some reason to think from talking to Iranian dissidents both in Iran were being and in the Diaspora that when the Iranian people see free elections taking place in which she are voters they're not at all a sectarian as that but let's just keep it tonight sheer parties compete against one another they're not completely unimpressed they don't want anyone to think of course that they would take an hour of country as a model no person would ever allow that but the Free Press the satellite dishes and cell phones in the rest of these are unquantifiable that's harder to judge and the immediate influence exerted by Ahmadinejad on some Iraqi client but they deserve you mentioned too and I think could indeed be not more equally P could be more than that in the information in the long run second do we wish to go back to a time when Jimmy Carter was encouraging that I was saying to rearm in order that he could invade Iran apparently to do the United States a favor in a war that failed to bring down the Khomeini regime did strengthen the Saddam Hussein regime did strengthen dictatorial is in Iran and not incidentally took the lives of perhaps a million and a half people and beggared know this plane off the run against the road is one of the powerless parts of the statecraft what one wants is to end it by putting both countries in the control of their own people and that might sound simplistic but it could not possibly be worse than the competing dictatorship calculus which we operated on before so there's no point at which the consequences of the Iraq war would outweigh notice anymore because apart from anything else it's invariably a good thing to see Caligula on trial in front of his own people with Milosevic with Charles Taylor of Liberia and the invader and attempted Genesee there in Sierra Leone where we prevented another wonderful taking place Tony Blair getting nothing particular credit for that in West Africa and with the humiliation I would happily call it the Sodoma sitting in front of the people who he tortured and murdered and ruined for so long and others to know what can't wish that undone of course and furthermore not a small thing we can now certify Iraq as some in compliance with UN resolutions on weapons of mass destruction which we couldn't before that's by the way that's again not knowing not being able to certify is a great source of insecurity and instability as well as a registry to international law in that neighborhood turkey do you think they'll ever be ready to join the EU no I don't know sorry if I I would have once said that I looked forward not without misgiving to Turkish membership European Union and certainly was against some of the reasons given for opposing instructors by His Holiness the Pope at one stage have said that openly that a country that that Muslim culture was by definition not European that's not true well we better hope it's not true say it Bosnia and Herzegovina in Kosovo which we liberated from an attempt at their extirpation by Christian fascists and something I'm very proud of having advocated but the problem is okay I think is a somewhat different one at least under its new leadership it's already becoming the originator of unusual demands on the European family of nations for example at a NATO meeting held not very long ago where it was it had been decided that all the members of NATO wanted as their next spokesman hundreds Rasmussen of Denmark it had been agreed at the last minute the Turks veto it and say we cannot have as head of NATO someone who wasn't willing to sense of his own press something Danish it all forbids right in the matter of some cartoons in a papal in Jutland well this is unacceptable that's how they behave before they're ignored I do like to think how they would behave when in so a friend of mine has a very rough way of putting this but he's once I said it you were beautiful forget it neither he said where did you last read a report from Istanbul they didn't describe Turkey as a bridge between East and West you can't not read it especially about Istanbul oh honey who does it is knows all about it Turkish intellectuals and journalists begin their addresses to Western think tanks that way said my friend it's not a bridge it's a tunnel now forget that European Union's borders will be with Iran and Iraq actually with some of the benefits for up but we don't know for sure what can we impose inflicted on that area - in future it's it's not it's not inspiring this sort of an irony though because in many ways the party in power now is more democratic the Kemalists are more liberal in many ways yet they're also secular so where do you find your your place to plant your flag well in some respects the feminists Acuras were more chauvinistic than their yeah then mr. Iran's party which at least in its early days showed signs of being somewhat more flexible on especially on the Kurdish question there isn't other people non-turkish who'd well you know I tell you second the Turks a long time to admit it but they have begun to and some strides of that kind of me but they may just be the personality of mr. a drunk himself but he's a bully and I'm not sure how tightly wrapped he is either by that I mean he goes into tantrums he pity he picked no one dislikes human Perez perhaps more than I do but the the fight that was picked in public with him by mr. Leonov divorce was purely vulgar and thuggish and opportunist the remarks he made on the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in April earlier this year was scandalous instead of the United States Congress didn't see is troubling him on a matter which were obliged to do he would deport the remaining army well I still do live in Tokyo we've come there as workers from the I mean in Republic nickname extrude a saying that both national and object he denied that Bashir is a is a mass murderer well he's he said no Muslim no Muslim Turkey's relations with Iran are far too sickly and warm as with China and it is possible that the organic on trial this massive show trial that's now being brought nearer to a course in interview is the unmasking of a reactionary military Kemalists plot the ham bean plots to overthrow the election in Turkey before from that quarter it's possible there so it's also possible it's an occasion to shut down all the sent and I would not want to say that I was confident it wasn't the latter and certainly a man who has openly said while running for office that democracy is like getting on a bus or a train you ride it till you get to where you wanna go and then you get off some form of coded reassurance I suppose to them all unreconstructed a Thomas in his electorate but I don't like the sound of that either so for now I think ice men ssin this concept before you since was always going to regret one outcome there's no possibility of not having the regret whichever choice want it I think I'd rather regret keeping turkey out of the oven Union then regret having it in with veto power so we're two years now into the Obama administration has there been any reset with Russia do you see any benefits from this policy so far the Obama administration professor explained his policy towards put him and his Russia which is what it is as a reset and I would be more impressed if there's a little bit more to show for this for example those that it's it's said that Russia is becoming recently a little more cooperative in the majesty of the Iranian sanctions not very much more and those gestures of cooperation are more than compensated for on the other side by Russian overtures directly actually to the Iranian nuclear program in office to help in fact and I regard that as the crucial test of Russian resetting if you like on the arms control agreement well that's more the price of it than the policy itself the ground control room I see persuasive argument might be worth having for its own sake but if it isn't it's not worth having for the good behavior that mr. Putin's display so far either at home or abroad do you still believe in the notion of a of a nuclear-free world this is this is of you know this has been articulated by the president as a policy do you think that's feasible or desirable when the president got his good behavior Nobel price in other words the price that you get in the hope you will do something to peace rather than whole new concept and Oscar in the hope that you'll make a decent film when in fact may be a good idea actually better than the rewards for the terrible films that have been read one of the soggy and regrettable things he said was he looked forward to a nuclear-free world at a rate it's the sort of thing you people do say when they go to something and I feel sure you did there has other on other occasions there are two distinctions to be made here one is that of if you like are inventing some people who talk about nuclear-free world almost seem to wish that that could be done in fact seem explicitly to wish little weren't even nuclear reactors bizarre you come with a lot of green talk expresses a nostalgia for a pre-industrial pre-modern society human agrarian relations were more simple than more warm and human which have no nostalgia at all but I didn't take any stock in any of that but I think the bullets can be taken out of the gun and the gun put in a drawer I mean we are still in the condition not very far from launch on warning a war that could break out for no reason it was a misunderstanding or panic or even a tantrum have I I find that an appalling way to be living and I can't believe we can't improve on that and it will be much better therefore much superior to say specifically how one could live without the curse and the fear of a nuclear annihilation ban to talking arm-waving terms about been involved just throwing the word nuclear with the word free together in a sentence mm-hmm on this question of Russia do you think that some societies are not suited or at least for the foreseeable future to have democracy whereas this is the soft bigotry of low expectations well again to revert to my favorite nineteenth-century analysts and journalists and columnist Karl Marx and his devoted sidekick Friedrich Engels published essays about Murphy's aspects when they weren't being brilliant about the future British India they were unusually shrewd about the future of the United States which they thought to be the great country for free labor untrammeled social mobility innovation and many other positively charged things in contrast to the frightful millennial backwardness and despotism of Russia seemed almost impervious to human effort it's the view that many great Russian writers have taken out there of their culture I've simply don't feel entitled to announce on that but one reason I haven't been to Russia enough of anyway only being the one I've read a lot of it's writers and writing and I could understand the idea of the pessimistic Russian soul rightly enough given their history I think the reason I'd want to resist it is because it makes something like the current Putin regime seem like the best they can do well that's plainly not the case I mean a country in far worse straits maturely than Russia could do a great deal better than the regime of personal power in which for some reason there seems to me a law that says it must be true but anyone who criticizes the regime goes missing or is mutilated in which there's a vet what I consider to be a very dangerous alliance between Russian nationalism and chauvinism revived on diverse pretexts of humiliation that I think a very dubious and a very dogmatic reactionary Russian Orthodox Church which has now become the clerical garb in which in all public ceremonies putinism is his drapes very reminiscent in fact of pre-1970 nazar ISM and for that reason to be deployed as a terrible outcome for the Russian people and for people who live within Russia's borders and on Russia but also for russian Lynda's because this expresses a clear nostalgia for days of Russian glory and domination do you think the United States or its allies should make security contingent security arrangements with the small countries in Russia's periphery or is that not worth the trouble like why would you or the Baltics if I'm asked what responsibilities this gives us now the Menace of a recrudescence lists expansionist reactionary Russia with its periphery or its near abroad as it's sometimes called well I think suddenly the case of the Baltic republics we're annexed by the Soviet Union as part of the Hitler Stalin pact and finally pried loose from that only in the last days of Bush off and confirmed as independent states and very recently I think that's a clear responsibility on our part to prevent any bullying in that case and I think that the poles can certainly suddenly claim to be able to look after themselves and look as if they probably can't there's a lot of Russian meddling in checkers in the Czech Republic about 8 o clock yet which I don't know the sound of and then of course there's a very outstanding case in Georgia which wants to keeps describing yourself as president leadership does it so more Western than we are more committed to our values than we seem to be clearly with the hope that we will take that literally as David Cameron did during the recent conflict as a fly to division declare for Georgia I don't know I dread what we know a lot more about children internal dynamics before I could commit that there's one question on Afghanistan if you lost hope and that is that note intractable again there are countries were there are countries where we are responsible whether we wish to be or not where we've incurred responsibility there countries where we haven't I think that's a good distinction to make at the outset what happened in Rwanda I believe we could have done more to prevent through the United Nations but it wasn't something wasn't a crisis or a misery or a potential catastrophe that we had created it was our job to do more than we did we shouldn't have vetoed the check resolution of the United Nations that called just for the strengthening of the UN protective force in Kagari even opposed that thought as I say it wasn't something where you had to say to every American look whether you know it or not this is our responsibility well wouldn't Afghanistan you can't you can't say that well rather if you like you can I mean we involve ourselves in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union very deeply we picked some not very desirable allies at that point the good reasons of realpolitik quality feel bad if you want then we walked away from the country and let it collapse and civil war and factionism worse final worst possible combination of both chaos and tyranny an Islamic Republic manages to get the worst of both worlds Hobbesian state with iron rules it means we have we have to we've got more reasons than the Taliban you have to undo this and repay some of what we've we owe to the Afghan people and that would be true I think even if it was not in our interest okay with the right we have we have an interface of all responsibilities there the CIL boasted in the past of helping Saddam Hussein get to path I think that burst is probably badly true we certainly encourage that I was saying to attack Iran we declared ourselves nutri and dance when he said he wanted to have a border dispute with Kuwait this can't be walked away from Americans like to say well what have we got to do with this place and the other side the world well this is what we have to do with it so Afghanistan Saudi belongs in on that list of countries where have a responsibility whether we like it or not there was once a moment in the in the 1950s in the British Parliament when the British government had said very unwisely they wanted to hold on to the island of Cyprus the whole island of Cyprus as a colony because of its strategic importance that because of the basis that the British Empire had their which command the approaches to the Suez Canal and to Palestine and there was a national rebellion against this by the Greek majority and the large British garrison had to be kept there to keep them down and an iron Bevin the great socialist orator of the Labour Party left opposition at that time got up and and asked the government their question time has some majesty I can't do his Welsh voice has a Majesty's government considered whether it was a base in Cyprus or Cyprus as a base and I'm told that people who saw that could see the expressions change on the face of the government there is we don't have to run and own the whole place in order to have a presence now and we live actually very short time they'd withdraw and written a constitution given Cyprus independence and the condition for it was that to bases remain permanently part of under British control not perfect that a huge improvement well we don't have to appoint the government of Afghanistan will be responsible for its rich running but it's never been a government of Afghanistan whose Ritter's run all across the country I very much doubt there ever will be one it certainly won't be with the Karzai regime but it's entirely possible to make life unbearable for the Taliban if we fight more as guerrillas look they take over an area we let them run it for a bit you know what will happen not anything else anyone who can leave will and in our direction make their lives impossible fight them with subversive tactics we other things have a very strong interest in continuing to train the cadre of people as does every other NATO country who are used to this kind of fighting in these kind of conditions and be able to conduct you very ruthless we're going to need it again a lot and I think it's important to keep engaged and if you like sounds heartless keep blooded because this Wars not gonna end until one or the other of us so to use it as a training ground for the Smashing and massacre of jihad to use it as an example of how Afghans could live especially their women folk would all serve their national minorities Andrews note is like the Hazara here I know this compared to what is offered to them by the supporters of the Caliphate so make that a permanent example which part of Afghanistan would you rather live in and to interdict and destroy their their motor bases by aerial bombardment yes that's something we have to keep on doing what is look look this is a NATO responsibility backed up by a series of United Nations resolutions the Taliban are allowed to declare victory in Afghanistan it means what means they beat the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States and the United Nations in open warfare and can boast about it well that's an outcome there's nothing we can certainly prevent them from doing that I doubt even now they could take the cities on their own let alone hold them I think that's already probably impossible there are large tracts of Afghanistan populated by peoples who would never submit a telephone rule all we have to do is make sure those people donors and it means the Taliban cannot win what role is economics playing this the British government you know all these austerity measures are cutting the defense budget our own budget most of it is inevitable Anika's but since you mentioned economics there's nature it's actually a game risk signing card it's negligible amount of casualties it's not war at all these are not warfare country these are attrition country these are the sort of numbers an army loses by being in existence from training accidents not much worse than that it doesn't cost a great deal what does cost a lot of kicking some of the Karzai government going perhaps not money well spent since you mentioned the economy the big product of the Afghan economy which is opium poppies we insist belong to the Tala why we do this I do not know why we say you we insist that you have a monopoly on the production of sale of Afghans any product is beyond me it's the last human sacrifice we make to the Nixon doctrine of war on drugs and it may be the end of the enterprise I think this is the greatest importance we stopped saying to the Afghans we liberate you if you will just now stand still while we burn your any cash crop and the since we've noticed that all over the world there's a shortage of painkillers we'll buy the stuff from you while you learn to grow other things of course we should encourage diversity and make it into analgesics we need to do we already pay the Turks to do this as it is why why not give an Afghan to the contract there's such a shortage of imagination in considering this is a war of liberation and social transformation but that's what it could be as well as what it is which is a test of will that we can't lose thank God for mrs. naturally used to say as if she was if you like a deliverer deus ex machina i don't think she ever not until her very last days whether slight science of queen leanness not Queenie nurse queendom did she seem to think that I think she just thought that the British people had it in them to do better than the fantastic mediocrity of the 70s so grim dirty rude low productivity resign he used to be the most overrated man in America and running for the position of most overrated man in the world he's nothing lost both simply by being himself he's an analogy a hole in the air the triumph of Baptists rectitude the bursts do you ever want to see how perfect it can be a great amount of ideas and of action but very rarely met in in combination and who could write about Freud about surrealism about literature and art read a wonderful article called the struggle for cultured speech saying the thing that was wrong with the Russian was not full of cursing and slave talk it was perfect proportions and qualities and for one brief time which makes an imperishable in history the the the leading rhetorical opponent and warner against birth Hitler and Stalin and a martyr to that struggle someone as patient history hasn't yet been established but the only one of the early 20th century Bolsheviks who was really worth considering pursuing in the 21st I stopped howl perfect for my profession and yours ironic understated non fanatical nonviolent by folding his arms and putting a smile a knowing smile on his face was able to ridicule whole edifice of totalitarianism when the invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred in 1968 dr. Jordan was living just across the border in Austria and he wrote a very short poem called the ogre and try to recite it goes some I think because the ogre does what ogres can Dean's quite impossible from that but one prize is beyond his reach the ogre cannot master speech about a subjugated plain amid the sovereign in the slain the ogre stalks with hands on hips while drivel gushes from his lips as twenty years before in Prague the Civic Forum movement and its allies by putting on plays by writing curbs but publishing essays by making jokes by demonstrating the value of the written word and life lived in truth and by nothing else no car bombs no bullying no fanaticism just shouldn't bother yoga to a halt and let the air completely out of the bag no one who had anything to do with it will live through that will ever ever forget it and the personal symbol of it was will always be I think that's a fitting end so now thank you I think yes I think it pretty soon

Channel: CaNANDian

Views: 24,830

Rating: 4.7069597 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher, Hitchens, At, Large, conversation, with, James, Kirchick, 2010, Iraq, and, Afghanistan, Iran's, nuclear, program, Turkey's, Islamist, turn, Putin's, Russia, Soviet Union (Country), Iran (Country)

Id: HDfly8_z528

Length: 50min 7sec (3007 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2012