Christopher Hitchens vs Michael Parenti - Iraq and the future of US foreign policy [2005]

we're going to warn you guys when you get down to a two minute limit hopefully that's alright with the both of you then we're going to give them a chance to reply and robot to one another for an additional ten minutes after that we have a moderating panel that's going to ask a few questions the members of that panel aside from myself professor Martha Crenshaw from the government Department sad nabil professor Rob Rosenthal from sociology and Sarah after the modern panel has had its say we have asked that our guests directly engage each other and pose and respond to in lieu of closing remarks a single question so now it is my incredible privilege to introduce our guests for this evening first off we have dr. Michael Parenti who has been a very vocal and persistent critic of u.s. foreign policy and intervention ISM over the past 25 years he received his PhD in political science from Yale although he now likes to refer to himself as a recovering academic he is the author of many books including super patriotism which is an exploration of the cultural dynamics that have served as the underpinning to u.s. foreign policy in recent years the assassination of Julius Caesar nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and his upcoming work the culture struggle our other guest tonight is Christopher Hitchens the a former columnist for the nation Kriss pigeons is by no means a stranger to controversy he found himself in a number of very heated in public disputes with people he proclaimed himself to be former comrades and allies in the wake of September 11th after he came out in support of the Bush administration's plans for Iraq and Afghanistan aside from the nation he is now contributing editor to Vanity Fair and writes regularly for The Times Literary Supplement and the online magazine slate.com amongst many others his books include the missionary position mother Teresa in theory and practice always gets a lot title always gets a laugh the trial of Henry Kissinger and his most recent work love poverty and war journeys and essays so that's it for my role it is my great privilege to introduce to all of you dr. Michael Prenton Christopher Hitchens ha all right how about moderating that's all right Connie are you all right okay everybody hear me now can everybody hear me now all right now it's not Wow okay okay so by agreement opening tonight will be CRISPR agents Thank You Sasha thank you ladies and gentlemen comrades and friends for brothers and sisters I hope I can say for coming I can't say that okay have you ever known that to fail am i audible to all very good I recently realized after returning from a long trip to Iran that I become the only person I think since the year 2000 to have reported from both would both from Iran from Iraq and from North Korea in other words to have without particularly wishing to have become an expert in axis of evil and I'll just say to begin with that it's a huge pleasure to be invited to debate these grave matters in what seems to me to be the hogwarts dining hall some of you some of you look from where I'm standing reassuringly antique I can see some veteran visages in the hall but I also noticed that quite a lot of you are terrifying ly Hank young and I want you this is perhaps a pity but I hope it won't be because I want to date my remarks from the Year 1989 in fact to be specific from the fall of that year which will be perhaps a legend or an early memory to some of you but which is always worth looking up it was in in that year that a tremendous act of social and national emancipation occurred not just in the countries of the former Soviet Empire in its dependencies who saw their former masters and their former system of Banana Republic socialism melting away but an emancipation for all of us to all of us like myself I was born in 1949 who've been brought up in the shadow not just of the Cold War but of its corollary the arms race the permanent threat of nuclear extinction the zero-sum and authoritarian manner in which all political arguments had to be conducted whether it was Chile for South Africa Vietnam Poland or Czechoslovakia everything one found it one attempted to make sense or to deploy reasoning was shoehorned into the Conscription categories of the cold war with over it all the time the possibility that a final solution would be found in the form of a thermonuclear extinction to be freed from this and from its counterpart the concept of the one-party dictatorial state was an extraordinary moment of what I suppose I'd now have to call you for you it didn't seem safe auric at the time there were beautiful moments to it I was in Romania for example for the end of the harshest critics headship it seemed realistic we began to hear some foolishness being uttered professor fukuyama's prediction of the end of history I think I think now as I thought then was perhaps a little premature but there were reasons to think that a synthesis might be possible that some of what had been learned by the Socialist Movement in its long struggle through the 19th and 20th centuries I could be used to tame the concept of the free market society and the and the open market society that there would be money to spare at last when there was talk not idealistic talk only of a peace dividend in those days some of you will remember it perhaps with a pang what we were spending on weapons of mass destruction could perhaps be deployed to nobler ends and it might even be possible to have another look at the terms of trade the governance relations between the rich and poor world's it was not a bad little time in which to be alive in other words I haven't done the exact maths but you can do it in your head how long did this period last this period of feeling that there was only one future model and the whatever form it took it would have to take a democratic form a pluralist form that the age of the church a latarian despot was gone I would say the Berlin Wall fell on I think November the 9th Asian I shall Chester was dead by Christmas Eve of the same year we J did say from New Year's in 1919 I think it gives us about six and a half months of this illusion because in six and a half months Slobodan Milosevic's had invaded bosnia and saddam hussein had not just invaded kuwait people say invade had occupied kuwait even he had annexed to it made part of iraq what had up till then being a member state of the United Nations of member in good standing of the Arab League and an independent country and had said that it no longer existed an unprecedented form of promiscuous aggression and we found though we haven't got rid of the one party leader the man who believes that he is God we haven't got really in the Balkans of this and we haven't got rid of it in the Middle East and it's still restless and sleepless and it means us harm and within a year or so of that a similarly ideological party had seized control in Rwanda and decided to embark on a final solution of its own and the one had previously thought unsurpassable cult of the personality and of the One God one leader one party state had metamorphosed in Korea North Korea from father to son and all along and unnoticed by many people another ideology a totalitarian ideology based on race and nation and religion and absolutism was gathering strength unofficially in many other countries I mean to say by this the ideology of jihad the ideology of holy war where the one ideology is replaced by the one religion where the one infallible leader is replaced by the one God and we're only one book is required and we're all of human culture that doesn't conform to this book is to be treated as something to be dynamited or destroyed or profaned these people wish us ill now what was the response of Western democracies to this in Rwanda it was for Madeleine Albright I'll check them in no particular order Madeleine Albright or mr. Clinton's instructions vetoed the resolution from the Czech Republic but asked for a mere doubling of the tiny imaginations force in Kigali that might if it had been beefed up have at least warm the Rwandan government that his plans were known it was decided at the United Nations by Kofi Annan in person the man who received the faxes and warnings from Kigali to let Rwanda go it wasn't worth fighting for he took five years before it was discovered that the rule of slobodan milosevic in bosnia and the mad idea exists in serbia and the mad idea that he could make national and international borders conform to ethnic patterns and cleanse those who didn't fit was not compatible with peace in europe and after the eviction of saddam hussein from Kuwait it took a further ten perhaps - 12 years - for us to make the elementary discovery that we have to keep on making it seems every generation our life however much we may reserve our own right to criticize it how way of life is it sometimes called the things that we value in our society and in our own culture is not compatible with the existence of totalitarian aggressive expansionist dictatorship I myself am happy with the conclusion that our life and culture are not compatible with this because I don't think it's desirable that we should collude and collaborate or coexist with aggressive tochan totalitarian dictatorship and since our special subject this evening is Iraq I hope I've put it in some context to you I must explain as honestly as I can why it is that I came to the conclusion that a settlement of accounts with Saddam Hussein must be made and that the Iraqi people must be helped to move into the posted on the same era as I've just said I'm not a fetishist of the rules of the United Nations or of its procedures the ones that abandoned Rwanda and Bosnia for example and that allowed a Russian veto or a Chinese veto on any attempt to do anything about these things as well I remind you that in May of the year 2003 Iraq was going to become the chairman of the United Nations Special Committee on disarmament in other words the Committee on disarmament would have been headed by someone appointed by Saddam Hussein at the same period the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations I think had the chairmanship of Colonel Gaddafi the United Nations had failed is very badly in all these crises and I want you to keep that in mind as we go along but let us let us apply the criteria that the United Nations itself applies for discovering when a state has put itself outside the pale when it has lost its sovereignty when the international community may be called upon to intervene there are four conditions under which it may be said that a state has lost its sovereignty sacrificed one repeated aggressions against neighboring states or occupations of our annexations of same second violations of the Genocide Convention the Genocide Convention for those who sign it we are among the signatories mandates action without further recourse to any further resolution in the case of genocide either to prevent or to punish it that's mandatory third collusion by the relevant state with international gangsterism harboring in other words of terrorism and nine and fourth violations of the non-proliferation treaty or other shall we say promiscuous behavior in respect of weapons of mass destruction Durant meets all four of those conditions in a serial manner it had invaded Iran it had tried to destroy and abolish it but bliss raged the stage of Kuwait it still retained the ambition to repeat both aggressions it had violated the Genocide Convention by very well and exhaustively documented state campaign of murder known as the Anfal campaign which we have now all the incriminating documents in our possession to try and not just dispersed but to destroy the Kurdish population of northern Iraq using for the purpose as it had with the intervention in Iran weapons of mass destruction a principally of chemic description and type it had sheltered mr. Yasiin the man wanted most wanted for the blowing up of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 it had sheltered mr. abu nidal for the advent of mr. Osama bin Laden was the most-wanted international gangster in the world specializing in the assassination of democratic members of the Palestine Liberation Organization they've had in the name of its own President Saddam Hussein openly paid a bounty for every suicide bomber operating in the Israeli Palestine dispute and its agents and envoy's have been repeatedly meeting with agents and envoy's of al-qaeda in various locations in what I would describe as a kind of Hitler style impact between two discrepant forms of jihadist regime it had adopted itself the ideology of jihad dropping its old Baathist fascism and finally it refused stubbornly and repeatedly to come into compliance with any United Nations resolution governing weapons of mass destruction never came into compliance until the last day of its existence with a special Department of State for the concealment of weapons of mass destruction and had never given an account of the weapons that it had declared to the UN inspector some years before the option of further coexistence with such a regime simply did not exist and all this would have been the case long before we became aware in the abrupt way in which we became made aware of it of the really genuine threat of an Islamic fascism that among other things the the beggaring and destruction of Afghanistan the reduction of Afghanistan to a serf state with women as chattel and Shia Muslims as chocolates and a free fire zone bankruptcy misery starvation slavery not only has such achievements as that to its credit but imagine a small way to build a secret army within the borders of the United States I mentioned that crux point because I can't not mention it but I want to draw your attention to two things before the year 2001 it had been decided by a vote in the Senate the Iraq Liberation Act in the 1998 on the initiative of the clinton-gore administration that the policy of the United States government should be the removal of the governess that I was saying that was a pervert in which there was no contrary vote in the Senate a unanimous vote to adopt their up liberation as American policy the two best speeches given in fact about the certainty of an ultimate confrontation listen I was saying on the matter of weapons and terrorism if nothing else were both made by President tension of that period and if some very significant speech made by Prime Minister Tony Blair in Chicago in 1999 after the departure of slobodan milosevic to the hague where he quite properly stands trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity saying that this did not mean the struggle was over because down the road that was undoubtedly going to be a meeting with saddam hussein and his and his his party and the crime family with which he ran iraq as the psychopathic state that it was that the private property of a sadistic minority yeah two minutes very well I don't think I'm gonna need to if I haven't persuaded you by now that this was something that had to happen was going to happen probably ought to have happened in 1991 when the opportunity presented itself after the Kuwait war I may not be able to do so in the remaining 90 seconds what I want to dispel though is what I believe to be a very widespread impression that there was something improvised or faked or contrived or confection about this confrontation I hope I've said enough to persuade you or at least to invite you to consider persuading yourselves that what you're so glibly told about Iran becoming a sudden target of opportunity for the halliburton company or something to enhance the Bush administration's credibility after the reverses in 2001 is not really true and that those attacks isn't true at all and that those of us who some years ago decided to arrange ourselves on the side of the heroic forces of opposition among Iraqi Arabic and Kurds those who dared to think that it would be possible to take down and remove the disgusting unlawful regime of Saddam Hussein it can be proud of what we've done as I am was not only can Iraq now be certified as disarmed we should now at last count if you wanted to certified as disarmed before you'd have had to take Saddam Hussein's word for it which I would strongly recommend you don't do not only are those who perpetrated the genocide at long last being ranged in the dock and brought to justice and made face their victims not only are the neighboring countries to rob able to breathe more freely because they know that a sleepless aggressor and conspire across their borders is no longer there but better than all that and better than all the conformity with international resolutions that I mentioned before and I've had the opportunity to see something that I hope you wonder get the chance to see to which is what people looks like when it's been liberated there is no experience like that no experience like the look on the face of people who suddenly find themselves free who had up till then being the property of the state and the victims of torture and tyranny and should be able to do this and all those other things too thank you is something that I envy those who didn't do it Thank You mr. agency thank you dr. Parenti please I agree with Christopher Hitchins that is not just a a an incidental thing the Iraqi policy of the US but I do think that there is contrivance I do think there is confection I do think there that it's a policy that has been based on lies as so much of US policy has been predicated on lies not just misunderstandings not just faulty intelligence not just honest mistakes but real lies really going against the evidence when they knew the evidence was contrary to what they wanted to say and those who find it necessary to lie to us are not worthy of our support because they are advancing their own interests and not ours and I think Iraq is a recent case George Bush October 2000 to quote Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program that was a lie he had ample evidence from UN inspectors and everyone else but that just wasn't true Bush January oh three Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa that was a lie and he knew it was a lie when he said it there was no such a uranium being sought by Saddam Hussein from Africa Bush again Iraq has trained al-qaeda in poisonous and deadly gases that could allow the Iraq regime to attack America another lie if anything the CIA gave a contrary report that Iraq had no know as any kind of substantial connections to al Qaeda we mustn't forget that genius of strategic planning that giant among policy makers Donald Rumsfeld and he says we know where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are they're in an area around Tikrit and dead and east west south and north somewhat somewhat again no such weapons were found not in the east west south or north and not even in the somewhat Colin Powell in his shameful dog-and-pony act before the UN Security Council February oh three Iraq has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapon agents not one drop of that massive stockpile was ever found and what evidence that Powell offered he put up slides pictures of trucks parked in front of buildings and he said we think we these trucks have it it's in these trucks will all the sit there go oh there's something in those trucks and then the next slide came up and said notice six hours later the same building the trucks are gone whoa the trucks are gone the trucks had wheels oh they went somewhere oh the White House claimed that the US is bringing democracy to Iraq like the claim it's bringing democracy everywhere else it's a supremacist view upon which US policy is predicated patronizing of other people that we must teach these less adept people the blessings of American democracy that will bring them will uplift them from there in the case of Iraq from their 5000 years of civilization and we will show them how to do things well ladies and gentlemen in fact Iraqis brought democracy to themselves in 1958 they had a revolution a broad-based democratic revolution they throughout the US and British oil companies they began a program of social reform of not-for-profit public ownership and it was Saddam Hussein funded and backed by the CIA who destroyed that revolution torturing and murdering every progressive Democrat communist constitutionalist socialist every reformer kill them tortured them or drove them into exile or draw them underground with the CIA giving him names lists he even destroyed the left wing of his own Baathist party and during those years when he was doing that that's what I hate about these things you can't regulate your distance from the amplifier if you really want to get going it's good you can step back and shout but this comes with you during those years during those years when he was doing most of his torturing and most of his murder he was Washington's poster boy and at this point we hear well isn't it good that we finally moved against him yeah but there's something hypocritical about supporting a tyrant for over 20 years and even singing him on Iran pitch mentioned the Iraq Iran aggression I mean that was supported by the US then suddenly declaring him to be a mortal threat to the US and to the world never mentioning all the past support you gave to this murderer now now suddenly he's a tyrant and a danger to us when he gets out of line on oil prices and oil quotas as in 1990 when he starts committing economic nationalism and keeps the whole economy including the oil industry nationalized when he refuses to be a compliant comprador leader who would turn this country into a client state for us global investors where he fused when he refused to have when it proved that he wasn't going to let Iraq be a cow that would be milked by us global investment interests when he refused to do that when he started training cadres of Iraqi engineers when he started developing Iraq in the self-defining his own way that's when he became a tyrant and let's look at the White House claim about bringing democracy or what the media calls us sponsored elections the White House never wanted those elections Brent Scowcroft who served bush senior let the cat out of the bag in May 2003 Scowcroft said no we don't want elections what if they elect someone we don't like and can't work with you know it's wonderful when they speak with such honesty every so often a bit of candor comes out it was the Shia majority it was Sistani it was these massive demonstrations they had last year early last year that kept demanding these elections and it was the pressure on Bush and Rumsfeld even from people within his own party pressure with like asking questions like what's your exit strategy strategy what the hell exactly are we doing there what are you going to come up with something and that's what they came up with a reluctant they reluctantly settled on elections to show that they could come up with something but to now claim that this was our noble mission all along is again profoundly misleading you know in the old days they used to give you a glass a little dignity you could sip from the glass now you've got to stand here and swig from the bottle right in front of everybody hey saw my doing a salud we also hear the u.s. is fighting Islamic terrorism or Islamic fascists as Christopher Hitchens calls them which isn't such a bad term but that some people would have problems with that but ladies and gentlemen a full year before September 11 a full year before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon the project for a new American Century a right-wing think tank which was populated by the present players of the Bush administration published a plan making it clear that the White House intended to take direct military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was still in power so Saddam was not the issue nor was terrorism the issue since this plan was put forth before 9/11 well before the much-hyped but little done war on terror clared you know it's much hyped I call it little done because almost nothing's been done regarding terrorism no networks of terrorists have been unearthed by the bush people there hasn't been there's been only one court case of a terrorist in the u.s. brought to trial no defense of our water supply no defense of our nuclear plants yet that's been put up worthy of the name Bush's own Secretary of Agriculture in December the last December in a moment of honesty quote it's a miracle that the terrorists haven't attacked our food supply which remains totally vulnerable he's no longer Secretary of Agriculture Islamic fascists well yes indeed they exist we have Christian fascists right in this country we're calling for jihad listen to Randall Terry listen to Randall Terry above Operation Rescue just the other day he said when we come to power and we will and this becomes a Christian nation you will be tried and executed he was talking to doctors and medical personnel who were involved in abortions you will be executed for murder Randall Terry who said let a wave of intolerance wash over you he told the Christian audience we do not want pluralism we do not want equal time we want a Christian theocratic nation I mean he said it D John Kennedy of the Dominions the same thing we will have a Christian culture the the media will be Christian of schools our education our history books everything will be Christian there will be one way medical practices our science will all be Christian based they have a totalitarian theocracy there well should we then go and bomb Kansas and Mississippi and Arkansas to route them out that's what that's going to be my question to you hair checked with you know that and they're not just bluffing man they already have a very healthy control of the majority party a good chunk of the majority party right now they have the majority leader of the Senate serving up to them and the president United States doing prayer and Bible sessions with them now as far as Islamic fascists indeed there are some nasty vicious murderous people in the ranks of this Islamic Mujahideen movement worse than that much of that movement has been organized like a political party with cadres for political action and conversion and community service work along with armed units and suicide attackers and the like but I would have to say that in that as of two years ago that was much true of Hezbollah in Lebanon for instance than anything in Iraq as of two years ago if US rulers are really out to get these terrorists why did they attack Iraq which was a secular state why are they using a sledgehammer to kill mosquitoes and swinging the sledgehammer in wrong places the Islamic fundamentalist influence was weakly situated in Iraq until the u.s. invasion and occupation created a self-fulfilling Frankenstein monster the Musha thank you the Mujahideen momentum and strengthen Iraq has developed since the occupation and why not why that's not that's to be understood first you go into Iraq and you wipe out the democratic revolution you wipe out all the reformers you wipe out all the constitutionalist you wipe out all the socialists using Saddam Hussein to do the dirty work then you invade and you wipe out the military conservative secularist nationalist forces including Saddam himself so what's left where else to go for those who see their country and region going down the tubes to Islam to the fundamentalists who are ready to put their online against the infidel invaders and even so by the way Haven having said that Islamic reactionaries do not represent the entire resistance movement not by a longshot there are nationalists there's succulence reformist groups that are involved there there are ex Baathists you know you you demobilize 450,000 baths this may and i know that's a big a big number but if you count paramilitary security forces police and such it would come to something like that even if just 5,000 of them go into underground action that makes for very troublesome insurgent force so i want to launch it to another whole thing but i have now what 10 seconds 30 seconds so i US policy is then the question does come up what is US policy based on I am one of those who do not believe that US policy is stupid or foolish or misplace or confuse the fact they're trying to confuse you doesn't mean that they themselves are confused they know what they're doing and they do have an agenda and and certain ends that are very real and very obvious and I'll speak to them when I can grab my other ten minutes in the wild we have a microphone again all right Christopher Hitchins you now have 10 minutes to reply once again feel myself drowning in time look just on this question of the weaponry and you ought to you ought to criticize yourselves for laughing so easily had such cheap points here's the fact here is the fact here is a regime that has used them repeatedly on its own soil and the sort of neighbors that has a special Department of State for concealment that nearly defeated the heroic United Nations inspector a great Swedish socialist Rolf occurs the founder of the first runs calm in his attempt to discover what the truth of the situation was and always Constitution to at least a latent if not a blatant threat and was always a permanent threat if not an imminent one what have we found since the invasion I'll tell you why Francis the invasion dr. Mario Bedi Saddam's chief nuclear scientist whose book the bomb in my garden I thoroughly recommend to you among other things for its portrayal of the life of a scientist under the Baath Party regime buried in his garden and we we know he's not making this up because he's produced it along with several yards of instruction manual the elements of fact the whole constituent of a nuclear centrifuge the most important element in the creation of a nuclear weapon he buried it under the orders of Kushi hussein one of Saddam's two charming possible successors if we'd let it run who was in charge of the concealment program we have that centrifuge now the United Nations inspectors would never have found it even if they've been looking we also find the the ABS the CD account the whole minutes of a meeting is as late as March 2003 ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters in Damascus between Saddam Hussein's own voice and those of Kim jong-il to buy from North Korea off the shelf the long-range missiles that Iraq was prohibited from making by the sanctions I'm afraid to say dr. Parenti is quite wrong but both inquiries in Washington and in London have found that there were indeed ongoing attempts by Saddam Hussein's agents to buy uranium in West Africa perhaps for recreational purposes but there comes a point where one thinks that this regime is not entitled to the presumption of innocence and here's where you have to be responsible you have to imagine what you might have to do yourself if you were in power and you knew that there was a such a regime would you say well let's give them another chance would you say they're entitled to the benefit of any doubt remember at all times that are sniping quite correctly from those who say that the warning signs from Afghanistan a militarily negligible country were being ignored by the administration would anyone have decided to check Saddam Hussein's word for it in this context I'd like the the dwell for a court the reasons UN report on the evacuation of nuclear yellowcake sites in Iraq show that Iraq was at the time of this invasion a functioning WMD stage with all the latent potential and all the concealment all the expertise and all the technique that was needed to revive that program once the sanctions had ceased to operate which they were ceasing to do these are plain facts they're available to anybody and then not to be sneered at or about otherwise why would hands blitz have said before the war that he didn't know how much would be found what he knew there would have to be something why would go how surely as intelligence have said that Saddam Hussein was anything from five to ten years away they kept changing the figure from a functioning thermo nuclear weapon why would mr. Scirocco after all had built that I was saying a nuclear reactor knowing what he wanted it for while retaining his veto of the United Nations have said the same why did I have to debate the five months before the war began every night with members of the anti-war movement who said you can't invade Iraq their weapons of mass destruction will kill thousands and thousands of our soldiers you can look that up too if there's anyone here from move on Joerg or any other such heroic organization that's what you guys were saying then so this is not a confection it's a hit Alerian pounding has its own reward I see on the temple this is not a confection it's it's a reasoned judgment about the existence of an intolerable threat and it was very soundly evidentially based michael branches might somewhat to my shock says we should rather rely on what the CIA's evaluation of this was now I quite I must say I entirely fail to see why the CIA's almost invariably fallacious reports on this and other threats should be taken seriously by anybody let alone somebody claiming to be a socialist the CIA said Saddam Hussein wasn't going to invade Kuwait because it wouldn't be in his interest they said he wasn't flirting with al-qaeda when he was they said he wasn't doing weapons of mass destruction when he was and as you say they've helped him to get to power in the first place they had implied that the Iranians and not the Iraqis had conducted the chemical weapons massacre at Halawa and have been general done nothing right have got nothing right in this whole argument why quote them against the Bush administration when they are in fact the saboteurs of the regime change policy worse than that you quote bred Scowcroft a man who with his former boss President Bush senior with Lance Eagleburger with pat buchanan with most of the members of Kissinger associates in fact has always been completely opposed to the regime change policy I'm not surprised Scowcroft doesn't want an election I'm not surprised Bremer wasn't that keen on one but we did have an election and I'm not gonna I hope have to underline to anybody in this room how important it was to see what the Iraqi people are capable of where they're emancipated from the rule of a psychopathic totalitarian these are points that are made not even ironically it seems to me by dr. Bradley there they don't really rise to the level of sarcasm any more than does his false trail about the Christian right now you might search ladies and gentlemen at high and low among people like myself and Michael who make our living writing and speaking and thinking about this kind of thing you're not going to find anyone I don't think has made the record as often as I have in opposition to Christian fundamentalism in this country and everywhere else and in fact of all forms of religious nonsense and their and their application to the the church that they apply to human and civil society I've set my my life on this on this point the struggle for a secular state and the struggle actually for the Atheist worldview not the same thing you can be secular and be religious but it matters to me very much now what's wrong with the picture painted by dr. Parenti a Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson two guys whose political weight I think is for 25 years now being grossly overestimated who never quite do produce the voters of the punch that they claim to have but let's remember these are the two men who said that the World Trade Center was the deserved punishment that America had earned for itself for its so many iniquities it was they who carried the line of professor Chomsky that the United States had this coming these men prefer any theocracy to any kind of democracy of course they are our common enemy but if I want to go and make war and don't kid about it I'm perfectly willing to use force with these guys if they even threaten it with us more than willing would rather welcome the chance actually to do it I'm going to have a thin time during it if my allies on the Left are making excuses for Islamic Jihad all the while and discrediting their own democracy and isolating themselves within civil society the fact of the matter is that you either oppose religious dictatorship and its terrorist surrogates everywhere without distinction whether it's Messianic settlers on the West Bank or Christian nutbags trying to teach us though we trod the earth the same time as the dinosaurs or the forces of jihadi either opposed this kind of thing rooting branch or you don't and I'm sorry to say that the anti-war left has failed the chest it has made excuses for our totalitarian and theocratic enemies it is said that mr. bin Laden is the ventriloquist of long-forgotten Muslim grievances yes he is yes years I'll tell you what the grievances are the grievance of seeing an undraped female face the grievance of having a Christian or a Jew or a non-believer living on your soil that you claim his Muslim soil the horror of having lost the Islamic caliphate the Empire you want back he's an advantage imperialists the people who want back a lost Empire the people who blew up harmless party girls in Bali because Australia had helped to liberate East Timor from Indonesian oppression and East Timor as a Christian population and Indonesia as Muslim high on the list of bin Laden's grievances the outrage of our help for East Timor yes they have grievances yeah but it's nothing to the grievance we have with them and it should be we who they are afraid of it which should be our opinion that they are made to care about we should make it known to them that we too have unalterable values that yes we do care about the Enlightenment and we do care about the defence of our values and institutions under any government two minutes under a government and that failing to say this is apologetics and possibly worse and nothing nothing in what Michael said it seems to me would prepare you in any sense for the importance of the struggle of that kind close on another point of fact there are two ways of telling someone really neither knows nothing or cares nothing about Iraq one is if they start by saying yeah I know Saddam was a bad guy but you know right away they have no idea what the regime was like the second is if they say that was a secular state in what respect I ask you is a man who after the Gulf War the war with Iran that's to say put Allahu Akbar on the Iraqi flag where it had never been before built the largest mosque in the Middle East in his own name announced that Iraq was a jihadist state paid for the suicide bombers in Palestine in other words for Islamic Jihad to undermine the PLO who praised the World Trade Center bombings who invited Abu Musab al-zarqawi bin Laden's left Janet into Iraq before the intervention when Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were expelling such people from their countries Saddam Hussein was inviting the jihadists him to say this was a secular regime is to show that one doesn't know and I'm very sorry to say it shows that one doesn't care it isn't serious to argue in this way and it's time that those of us who want to defend our civilization do not say well we will defend it if only Bush wasn't president we might even think about doing a bit of work to stick up for the values of cultures against the values of barbarism this is frivolous frivolous and deserves to be voted down very heavily at a place of higher learning like this one thank you I wish I had an hour to to respond to every one of the points that mr. Hitchens brings up but let me let me respond to one of them that little phrase put in there about Saddam isn't the secular state look at all these things he's done he did slip in a phrase that that I hope you didn't miss he said after the Gulf War and that's exactly true hitch that's exactly true that's when was after the Gulf War Saddam Hussein did start mending fences with the religionist he needed the support of support he could get he suddenly he suddenly showed up he said on wall I want I want to get I want to get to I want to get to the real reasons why the US ruling class pursues the invasion and occupation of Iraq because they're roughly the same considerations that dictate US interventions in many other places first and foremost the goal of US policy is to establish a lock on the material resources and markets of the world over the regimes that might dare to chart an independent course those that might will try to move outside the neoliberal free-market global system any country that tries to use its land labor capital markets and natural resources in a self-defining and self-developing way and Iraq was one of those countries for whatever else we could say about Saddam Hussein that country will be targeted and its leaders will be demonized bombed or Elstad in soft coos or whatever the goal is the privatization and deregulation of everything of the entire world economy and the elimination of public sector services the elevating of the property interests and right above every other right well you really think you as rulers go in and all these places because they want to abolish public services in these countries and they want to cut back there their public sector and do those things what they're doing that here in this country of course they're doing it there Iraq had an economy that was completely publicly owned Donald Rumsfeld made a remark that I found interesting and even bitterly amusing in its choice of words he said it's a Stalin eyes the economy the entire economies the state-owned well not anymore the coalition authority set up a special commission whose job it is to privatize everything billions of dollars in public capital are being privatized hotels utilities Airlines air routes factories the few that are standing billions more being expropriated from another source I'm looking at that source right now from you from US taxpayers in contracts and contracts to Bechtel Halliburton and seventy other companies that may not be that might not be the motive reason for u.s. foreign policy but it's a factor could we not mention it instead of dismissing it that eighty billion dollars has gone to these companies that the word on the street is business Iraq is the hottest place for investments biggest profits we can get we could at least mention that can't we the Empire feeds off the Republic it's called creative destruction you destroy a self producing economy take it over and reinvest to rebuild with fat government contracts in fact you don't even have to bother to rebuild in some cases as the Pentagon itself said tens of billions of dollars maybe one-third of the money that was supposed to be allocated remains unsupervised and unaccounted for we don't even know where it is gone your tax dollars at work another reason for war with Iraq is that it was a bad example to other countries in the region that might want to chart an independent course it could emerge as a regional power it had the highest standard of living in the Middle East the US goal was to prevent the emergence of any strong regional power look at the way conservatives have wanted to target China they were targeting China in fact right up through 2002 until the Iraqi thing came over then that then that that then not got put on the back shelf the strategic goal is anti-development and graded dependency there's no need to develop a a middle class in this country or that country in the other country in the hope that they might not go communist or anything there's no there's nobody we're not competing against any Soviet any longer the goal is the forced third-world ization of everywhere including not just Asia and the Middle East and Africa but also North America and Europe itself another reason I think is the straight old colonial goal colonial grab of resources Iraq has high-quality crude 131 billion barrels of some of the top crude and at today's prices that's worth between four and five trillion dollars this represents the biggest oil grab in human history so all these somewhat different but interrelated motives are at work and the presence of one does not dilute or cancel out the other well well how do you how do how do you know that these u.s. rulers have this hidden agenda why should we think there's some kind of secret conspiracy theory immediately bring up the word conspiracy whenever you talk about rulers as working with intent and motive people say you're ascribing conspiracy you can say formers are organizing and pursuing their interests school teachers are doing it but the minute you suggest that the people who own the world are doing it you say oh do you have a conspiracy theory I mean I think there's a group of men of people sitting around in a room planning this you know that's that image is supposed to be so utterly devastating I say oh no then they're not sitting around the room there they meet on carousels you know or they or they or they are on park benches or they go skydiving together in hole hands and they and they talk about the Uruguay protocols and and and and opening up new military bases in Central Asia and all that no of course they meet in rooms where the hell else do you think they meet so this let me tell you about this secret conspiracy theory first of all it's no theory is actually happening they are invading they are building all these military bases all over the globe they are privatizing every place they are handing out fat contracts one it's not a theory the secret conspiracy theory - it's not a secret how do I know about it they themselves say they got it on the goddamn internet go go look a project for a new American Century and read they're rebuilding American defenses they say it they say all of this that the US has an unprecedented opportunity now to take hold of all the world's resources and determine policy everywhere two minutes dr. Parenti well who is the project for new American Century I'll tell you some of its members Donald Rumsfeld John Bolton Paul Wolfowitz Elliot Cohen and Dick Cheney George Bush and company I'm not just fighting Islamic theocrats they're fighting the whole world there are millions of moderate Muslims Democratic Muslims who end up supporting jihad when they feel that fellow Islamics are under attack and being oppressed you can look at Paul Monti and Princess Palma's book it's called one of those books the terror of God nor where they talk about this and discs and and and do a systematic study and not just Muslims are opposed in February of March 2003 we saw tens of millions of people in some 80 countries demonstrating all over Finland Lithuania Spain Italy Great Britain Japan Indonesia Mexico Nigeria all over people demonstrating now you talk about countries like Japan Mexico Finland in Finland Lithuania Canada these are not countries that have exactly a very close cultural or historical link to Iraq they don't have any much of any at all to speak up so they're demonstrating for two reasons one out of concern for the slaughter of human beings in Iraq the destruction of whole cities as we happening in Fallujah actually we don't see it happening it does it doesn't show it on US television you can see it in some countries but you can't see it here the first thing out of concern for them but they also demonstrated in great numbers out of concern for their own democratic sovereignty sending a message to the US rulers who would be rulers of the time and saying to them you do not rule the planet you don't decide who lives and who dies we have a right to be so defining thank you so we now begin with questioning from the panel professor Crenshaw yeah that's on now you can hear me yes you can hear me okay since I'm going to start off I'm just going to ask a very simple question and I'll leave all the incendiary questions to my colleagues here so it seems to me that it's really very hard for all of us to sort out who's right who's wrong in a discussion of the causes or reasons or justifications of US policy in Iraq and of course there's nothing we can do about it now anyway because the u.s. is there so the question I have is about the consequences or outcomes of US policy in Iraq if we put ourselves in the year say 2010 five years from now what's the situation going to look like in Iraq and in the region in the Middle East what would your prediction be as to what the consequences of American policy going to be now I think most of us hope to still be around five years from now and will then be able to tell who was right and who was wrong so that's my question that's to both both panelists want me to go first and so you could have sex you're well I'm it's up to you even something I'm ready if that's what go ahead go rather than have it thought that I was treading water for this question well I'll tell you what I think and what I hope 2010 you said well by then the alliance between both ISM and al-qaeda with the Alliance no one believed in before that's now staring us in the face every day and is still denied unbelievably the functioning working alliance between Zarqawi and Saddam nests will have been militarily defeated I hope with extreme humiliation and ruthlessness and that will send a message to a great number of people that that kind of force will cannot help to win they will never take over another country ever again we will not ever again be finding that we are stuck with a Taliban or bathtime regime no government supports these people can hope to survive tries to I'm a government no movement that tries to become such a government can hope for everything that hideous defeat and we will have acquired at what was a very large a professional but rather soft army for a long time there will be many many many thousands of American officers and soldiers who will have acquired the combat experience that's necessary to do this and don't tell me this combat experience when we needed again there's an al Qaeda attempt now being made to chaos and collapse Nigeria country we should be pay much more attention to than we do we will certainly need to be helping the people of Iran to free themselves from a paralytic disgusting a theocracy the skills of warfare that we're acquiring in this conflict will be tremendously useful to us I hope also that by then there will have been a great deal more that we've so far seen of a general Craddock revolution in the region a year or so ago wherever I went people would sneer at me and say so you want Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq as if they thought of it all by themselves pissed me off I don't mind saying I've just finished a book about Thomas Jefferson I said well no actually none of my Iraqi or Kurdish friends owned any slaves so it won't be a Jeffersonian democracy no but have you just noticed that America has never had a black or female president but the Iraqis the first term they have a chance to elect their own assembly and how real democracy 1958 don't believe a word you hear about that they picked the leader of the most despised and oppressed minority in the region to be their first president jalal talabani the leader of the people who until recently were being hunted and treated like vermin in northern rock I would say that wasn't bad I would even think it might deserve a round of applause I'll make this into a camp tepid but not bad progress I'll make this into a disagreement with Michael Parenti as well if it's all true about the oil oligarchy and the fantastic Imperial and feudal design which I don't think it is completely untrue to say how is it that Saudi Arabia is so much opposed to regime change why should it be that the most depraved the most medieval the most corrupt and the most swollen oligarchy in the region absolutely hates the removal of the Taliban which was its clown regime in Afghanistan absolutely hates the removal of Saddam Hussein who was its buffer regime in Mesopotamia why is it that some of the most sinuous members of this ruling class of ours George Bush Senior a pretty experienced guy in the oil business and his acolytes lie Brent Scowcroft have always been opposed to regime change in Iraq well if they think it's too risky I wouldn't be surprised if that was the reason and now we read every day that the Shia proletariat who do that heavy lifting in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia the Saudis are so dumb that they've used a Shia underclass to actually work their oil fields are also making political demands against the filthy Wahhabi clerics now what I hope is the United States is doing everything it can in Lebanon in Egypt and elsewhere to help these movements and to help them spread but I've been in the Gulf recently and talked to a number of the people from the democracy movements in all of these countries and I will simply tell you that with with givings in some cases but with enthusiasm in others they all say whatever we think whatever our prior opinion was the moment when this journal coat revolution began was the moment when the United States Marines destroyed the statue of Saddam Hussein in Florida's square in Baghdad in 2003 and that's time fact and that's what I hope will happen in the next five years and also believe I mean for the record I think we all are against the Wahhabi and these kinds of extremists and the terrible distortions that they committed a terrible crime they commit against women especially I just I just got a book can i plug it is that Alright - Christmas sure ok thanks I just have a book coming out in the fall called the culture struggle where where I have at least two chapters that deal with some of these these issues professor Crenshaw is that your name making sure we get it right okay professor Crenshaw you know what it's going to be let's just talk them in about where we are right now in Iraq because of the invasion and occupation unemployment is 70% villages and towns in many parts of cities are still without electricity except for a few hours in some cases water and sewage disposal typhoid typhus our threat a problem malnutrition more than it's ever been and this is a country that didn't have such such problems before the 91 and sanctions and such there's been a nearly complete breakdown of the healthcare system there's been large-scale environmental destruction with depleted uranium contamination especially the Iraqi agricultural base which is which had been one of the most fertile and prosperous in the Middle East you see some countries the Middle East have oil but no water some have water no oil Iraq had both of them and it's a it's agricultural base has been pretty much destroyed and there's been this as I said the privatization and deregulation of the entire economy ruthlessly suppressed I don't know what what mr. Hitchens means when he can throw a term like that out I'll tell you what ruthlessly suppressed meant in Fallujah dark Gemayel you know who wrote in the new generation is his eyewitness account and he speaks out he speaks Arabic his eyewitness account of what really went on in Fallujah when Marines were shooting whole families who with white sheets and flags to surrender and they were just getting gunned down people who were fleeing and jumping into the water rivet to switch somewhere really shot in the water one minute the Marines went in there and it was it was a free fire zone I don't care how ethical how principled your secular humanistic standards may be I don't think that can justify what happened in Fallujah that's a major city a decent City not a bad place to live and and and the people have been people were exterminated you know the Marines got kicked out of Fujita they got beat the report came in and said the Marines are evacuating Fallujah I said what are they talking about Army's don't evacuate a city in war they they they retreat and they retreated and then they went in for the final solution it was Vietnam all over again a free fire zone and they just hit everything that was standing there they came back in with a vengeance and they killed tens of thousands of people have been killed in Iraq tens of thousands of dead and wounded and five years or ten years from now I think you're going to find that Iraq will not have recovered because what has been decided in that country is not just a sewage system but its future this questions to mr. Hitchens you said that our post invading Iraq we found only AMD's do you think there was a substantial amount that we found to pose a threat and if so why hasn't the administration made this public was the question audible to all no I thought not do you want to give it some Wellington boot this time or should I repeat the question now if you'll trust me the gentleman asks in reference what I said about the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion whether these were enough to constitute a threat and whether or not they were I think he implied in any case why doesn't the administration mention them the other words why are you hearing about this from me if it's true is the subtext of the question but I hope that's a fair I hope that's a fair price see if we all yeah well it is a good question and I do know the answer to it the administration is despite the relative success of its presentation as a united front on message line of the day administration the most riven with internal hatreds and rivalries of any administration I would say since the second world war there is open hatred and contempt between the State Department and the CIA the CIA and the State Department state and CIA against DoD defense I've never heard in private anything like the sorts of things that they say they were traitors not a wrongheaded or there's a real blood about this and the domain quarrel has been over regime change in Iraq and the determination of the CIA to sabotage the rods the short answer to your question is this if the administration said that doctor may do Bailey's book should be read by everybody and they should pay attention to the fact that you jerk who say would you say Hussein were able to bury nuclear centrifuges the next day the CIA would say this had been exaggerated and the resulting leak would make it worse for the they said nothing at all so that's why ladies and gentlemen comrades and friends brothers and sisters your Republic is so messed up that the case has to be made by me I have to volunteer to do what the Bush administration can't do for itself how do you like that I don't like it that much but I'm willing to do it because we have an obligation to the truth and it simply is not true to say that there was no WMD problem in Iraq flat-out not true and I can give any of you any time documentary and evidentiary proof of that if I have another moment to spare I can't believe my ears when I hear it said Fallujah a great place to live if you could get Fallujah was the headquarters of the Iraqi Taliban it was the city that the Taliban al-qaeda forces had taken over and were running as a nightmare place for anybody to live and as the headquarters of the extension of al-qaeda Baathists terror for the rest of the country the crushing of the hold of those people on Fallujah was the necessary condition for those elections to be held and if it was bloody and if it was as bloody as dr. Parenti says you know the work cameramen there at all times that we even saw at one point a marine a soldier make a bad call and shoot someone he wasn't sure had surrendered enough yet I don't know that we could have been absolutely spared the chance of seeing this mass murder under white flags that we hear about I'd be very very surprised to hear it but if it's true it's because they didn't do Fallujah six months before which is when the US Marines wanted to do it it's going to be tough it was let to run because it was allowed to get out of control now you can have it one way without the other but the alternative to the current status quo in Iraq is not a peaceful Iraq a democracy it is the takeover of Iraq by Taliban and al Qaeda forces which would mean not just the death of Iraq as a society in a country but the deaths of countless Iraqis starting right then and there make no mistake about this my friend you can read about her this morning it's a terrible story the New York Times it's going to be done what just if I may it's a moment of our IP Marla ruika this is that lovely picture of him the New York Times this morning she was burned over 90% of her body the night before last by a suicide bomber she was spending her entire time in Iraq trying to calibrate civilian casualties trying to get indemnity paid by the US Armed Forces two people who've lost their families in in bad exchanges of fire and bad decisions made at roadblocks was the most sincere friend that the the Iraqi civilian had in this but he didn't save her from being murdered by some fascist as she drove from one appointment to another they would have cared if they knew it would been her they didn't care in any case we didn't save her to be concerned in this way don't be naive about this they would do that to you too they mean to if they can I want to say something about this mr. Hitchens keeps using the word we we might have to face Nigeria we might have to face this we might have to be I want to point out to you a rogue nation that we should really be facing and that's the present United States administration there's a rogue rule if you ever want to see one they have unilaterally announced that they will not adhere to any international treaties agreements of the past they're not bound by any of these things they have declared themselves above international law they've dictated terms to others and when the others do not immediately fall into line they say they're being uncooperative they've abandoned diplomacy and they rule by ultimatum is what they've been doing they are they published lists of nations as saying this is our hit list there's three axis of evil no there's ten no Dick Cheney said there's 40 or 50 maybe 60 so that's why these countries are opposing us which of them is safe if they can be where this super almighty God can get up there and say we shall decide who lives and who shall done now let me tell you about weapons of mass destruction let's go back to the George Bush Senior he was pursuing a war against Saddam Hussein and if you think that he was so moved to pursue that war at a concern for Kuwaiti babies I think you're being just a tad naive and the trouble was that in the fall of 1991 minute dr. Parenti for me one minute I said the unit the and the fall of 1990 US public opinion was was was was was was dipping around 30 35 40 percent to support military action 87 80 90 despite the monopoly barrage that came in propaganda that came from from the media eighty nine percent of the American people were saying we would prefer a diplomatic solution rather than sending US military forces then in November 1990 a poll was published and it said if it turns out that Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons the term weapons of mass destruction had not yet come in vogue if he has nuclear weapons would you support action against him and then the percentage went up to 75 percent after that it was right after that I swear I was watching and monitoring it very closely that's all we suddenly heard that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons that he could use them that he was worse than Hitler that he could blow us up playing on our fear again and again on our fear so that these leaders can do what they want and as far as Fallujah and all that I say we have not seen what's gone on there I had a mine yeah you gave him four minutes you're going to give me four an acquaintance by tree children easy oh he's an Italian in Italy he is he has a PhD in American Studies and he wrote me long letter saying you Americans are not seeing the war we are seeing it we can get certain sounds we see the carnage and the destruction of human life I don't see any of that on your television and we're not seeing it and you don't why we don't see it because if we saw it American public opinion would swing around just as it did in the bombing in Yugoslavia when they started bombing buses and killing people and when those things get on the air got on the air from Al Jazeera why then that's when Clinton lost 20 points in the support for that war and that's when Al Jazeera got bombed by US planes so they are controlling the information we get and and they are not we they are they we are opposed to that well this question is for mr. Hitchens even if the the justification is the end of a wait could I could I get some clarification I thought the agreement was that with every question each of us would have a chance to make some response that's also true so when you pose the question the implication is only one person is going to respond and then I feel like I'm crashing the gate to get my word okay laughs can redresses address to both it is kind of addressed to mr. Hitchens but you can certainly respond of course uh independently it's it seems like a very it makes a lot of sense that we would want to take out horrible brutal dictators - Saddam Hussein and and that ideally would want to bring up a better state of affairs a better kind of government to the Iraqi people this seems seems to make sense independently but what what reason do we have to believe that the current administration or reason we have to trust that they are genuinely seeking a democracy in Iraq dr. Parenti profit eyes the the idea that we went in there with with the with the idea of holding elections and creating a democratic Iraq from the beginning and we we certainly didn't do those things in the past when we're fighting the Soviet Union we we supported dictators why would we change our attitude now we're facing a similar existential threat whether you that you portray it yeah it's because I would phrase it like this it's it's because we're at a point which some historians would call a conjunction and where there's an opportunity at a rate which I've long urged it to cease for the United States to get itself on the right side of history I don't want to sound too regalia but this has always been my argument for regime change in Iraq the need to alter the balance of power and forces in the region which became a lot more evident to people I think after the events of September 11th was clear enough I think before it might be awful to have the oil resources of the region dominated by American monopolies perhaps but it's a good deal better than having Saddam Hussein threatening to set them on fire as he did in fact do when he left Kuwait and as he threatened to do with Saudi Arabia to take down the system and and to launch an ecologically catastrophic conflagration the Keystone State in this region this rotten arch of dictatorship and theocracy was Iraq if you take it out you immediately alter the situation in the war Hobbie despotism of Saudi Arabia and the crumbling Shia theocracy of Iran as it happens you might be justified doing that anyway if all you cared about was the oil for example the natural gas or all you cared about was the military threat but as it so happens we're in a good position to know that in Iraq in Saudi Arabia and in Iran and in Syria and neighboring countries there are a vast number of people whose opinion has not been asked yet by their governments who are fed up to say that very least we knew that the large majority of Iraqis would greet this as an emancipation as don't let anyone tell you different they did I saw it with my own eyes and you can now see it with yours the same will be true in Iran when that when that goes in as I've already said to you the same is already true of the stirrings in Saudi Arabia among particularly the Shia proletariat and Saudi women so we are cutting with the grain in two senses one is we're putting an end on period of despotism and stagnation which had taken a threatening form because failed States become rogue states rather quickly if they haven't become already and rogue states always become failed States I mean what makes Michael think that Iraq wasn't privatized already I don't know when Linda Kenny rut was the private property of the Saddam Hussein family it was already privatized and every citizen was the property of his state but not only in other words that we on the right side of history in that way but we know that there are many people yearning for it to happen and that thus we are releasing forces that we don't know we can control that's why I say there's something noble about the enterprise that's why George Bush and Henry Kissinger and general Scowcroft of the rest and Patrick Connor against it because they fear the release of popular forces in this region to take the chance that this will be positive I think is Noble and I hope I don't sound naive by saying so but it's really naive to think that there's any future in the status quo and if ever a status quo needed to be made war on this was the one so well on the right side of history I really think you should you should take into account besides the things he's saying Chris was saying I think you should also take into account the feelings of the Iraqi people to be sure given the kind of rule that Saddam Hussein CIA u.s. supported rule for 20 years or more there were many people who welcomed his overthrow but there also many of them will now testify we welcome his overthrow but we want you out we don't we don't welcome what's happened it's worse it's horrible just look at the April 10 issue of the Washington Post it was a it was a report on the April 9 massive demonstrations some of the largest demonstrations since 58 that went on she demonstrations right but quote after quote this is the Washington Post this is the Washington Post quote after quotes were the whole article I've got the thing of course it's sitting very securely in my hotel room I should have had it here what if the quote saying we want you out we don't want you here leave us alone we'll settle our own affairs I mean those are paraphrases in fact I do have the article right here let me just no no two of the Americans the crowd shouted yes yes to Islam great when will they be able to secure the country to bring us electricity water health services and schools two years of occupation and things are worse one banner reads leave out land we want to govern ourselves by ourselves another banner reads force the occupiers are occupiers out of our country yes for Islam yes for Iraq no to the occupation no to terrorism if you really want to oppose fundamentalism if you really want to pursue noble causes I think one of the things you might we might do is is listen to the people we're supposedly trying to save God God protect us sometimes from those who would come and save us you know that's it I won't even use rest would you accept a rebuttal to that of course well this demonstrations organized blood I'll give you one of my minutes yeah for one thing I mean I mean I it's my hometown newspaper I'm not particularly impressed by the quotes in it but they're all they're all correct and as you could tell even as you read them out these are the slogans of moqtada Saudis organization mr. Saur this organization won I think two seats in the assembly no it's tiny no this is not just as mr. Machado saw this demonstration you if you have the post it'll say so perhaps you should have told them that you can tell that from the slogans anyway mr. Sistani does not demand the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq mr sardick who does has a small group of supporters in the world okay you're absolutely right itself sorry well mr. sada I'm sorry to say has also wanted for the murder of a very senior Shia Imam Imam al koyu shot down a knife to outside his place of worship in a job he said he's what did that get the diesel in it well cows in Kaiser he's a thug get the hell out of our country I'm going to say that his supporters made have a higher opinion of him than um say I do but perhaps knows perhaps your opinion of him is even higher than theirs I can't vouch for one minute what I can do is tell you this the day after that demonstration I met with more fat al hroub I who is now it was a political prisoner at a torture victim a couple of years ago is now the national security adviser for Iraq and he described to me the the meetings that they've had at his office he said we invited Mukhtar Assad as members of parliament to my office we invited the Iraqi police force we invited some representatives of the coalition to make sure that mock child Estados demonstration against our government and against the occupation would go off peacefully with thousands of people at it in the middle of Baghdad he said this he said is one of the proudest moments of his life mister moqtada thought I never said a word when Saddam Hussein was in power he hadn't found his courage quite then he's found his courage now and he can have a demonstration and he can vote and he can publish a newspaper just like everyone else in Iraq but you couldn't do that under the previous regime and he wouldn't be able to do it under his regime either don't fool yourselves about these people okay don't um mr. Hitchens laid out four conditions whose violation would justify intervention and I wonder dr. Parenti whether you also have a set of principles whose violation would justify intervention by other countries and secondly mr. Hitchens whether you believe that whenever a ruler violates those four conditions intervention is justified even mandated and for both speakers whether to what degree you believe international agreement is necessary for intervention well I the people who do these interventions do not represent the interests of the American people or of the people of the countries they intervene in I mean do you really think that Bush Senior and Clinton after him went into Somalia because they suddenly was so seized by a concern for the welfare of the Somalian people when there was when there was famine going on in about eight or nine African countries I mean really serious famine you really think that there's suddenly suddenly so concerned about tyranny and country a or B when in fact they make alliances and give support to the likes of Pinochet and Fujimura and Marcos in the Philippines regime or in Peru Pinochet and Chile people of the people of this caliber murderers of all sorts and then in bed with tyrants and dictators all along and then suddenly saying we are so we're going to engage in a noble enterprise and bring freedom and pluralism to this country of that country Iraq which just happens to have a lot of oil and it's troublesome in the Middle East the u.s. is busy building a global Empire you know for decades what's what's happened is that terrorism is now being used as the way the newly it's a new world communist menace we say about the world communist menace and now it's terrorism and it's the jihad that's now being used for decades we heard that we had to maintain massive military bases all over the world because the Soviet Union was an implacable implacable enemy relentless was coming upon us and this is why we needed these huge military budgets and this is why we needed hundreds of military bases all over and there were some of us who said no that's not the reason that if the Soviet Union were to disappear never thinking that it was going to disappear but what it would have disappeared the u.s. would still have these military bases all over the world now that position we took was untestable we could not prove it and yet every so often history allows you to run a test a laboratory test they actually remove a key ingredient and hold and hold it concept the Soviet Union was overthrown collapsed however you want to describe it and what happened to US policy what happened I'll tell you what happened the US military budget climbed at a rate higher today is climbing at a rate higher than during the Cold War all those military bases have been kept one or two was shut and new ones have been opened in Eastern Europe in the Middle East and in Central Asia and we're talking about huge bases huge ones the one in Kosovo is is - is huge all the Cold War weapons will continue one minute and the US has pursued wars of intervention wars of control more violently and more frequently than ever and a whole host of new enemies have been conjured up in the years since that is the end of the Cold War we have invaded Panama and Grenada and and and and pursued proxy wars in in a variety of other countries and he invaded Iraq twice now and bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days around-the-clock by that great that great Liberal Democrat Bill Clinton there's no axis of evil there's no communist country there's no terrorist State has a record of that kind of bloody interventionism the problem ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters the problem is right here and we should look at what our rulers are doing to the people of the world and to ourselves the Empire feeds off the Republic two hundred and eighty billion spent over there the patricians expand the parameters of the empire while it gets bled Athens Athens is starved out so that Sparta can batten and become stronger and stronger you see that every day in your newspapers I go all over the country lecturing and every newspaper looks the same City Council considering cuts budget crises here County Supervisors are running out of money a huge debt in the state all we are we are impoverishing ourselves as we pursue what what might what my friend christopher hitchens thinks our noble causes well perhaps you thought it was a boring question but you slightly excuse yourself from asking yourself or answering the question about the the four conditions you ask me sir to say whether I thought those four conditions all applied all the time and I think that they probably do not in that for example a country that was accused of harboring a terrorist group might respond quickly to United Nations sanctions or to a resolution of warning or or admonition that there are a number of countries who consider they have at least the right to develop some forms of nuclear energy and won't have this misinterpretation or consider it they're a matter of their autonomy that's the case with the present negotiations with Iran for example and with also Pakistan and so forth but if a country more than once in other words repeatedly and systematically violates the Genocide Convention for not proliferation treaty international or governing the harboring of pirates and nihilists and and repeatedly invades its neighbors then I do think that yes the sovereignty has been sacrificed and can only be restored by some form of intervention they then said well by who now the United Nations has to be it has to be said as a prudence or very weak in this way I instance the terrible failures in Rwanda and I could in an instance the current crisis in Darfur now as far as I know I may be wrong about this there isn't a huge Western material interest in the Darfur question there was an interest in Sudan but that's probably been why we've done so little about the Darfur question but we are certainly playing at multilaterally enough I mean anyone who wants to follow all the norms and procedures of exhaustive international law and resolutions must be very happy indeed with the way that we are handling the Darfur question in other words letting the Janjaweed militia finish the job of butchering the black African population of that province this is nothing to be proud of there are I think local alliances actually i convictive euphemism I must be getting slightly Chinese of course it's not nothing to be proud of it's something to be very profoundly ashamed of now there are local alliances that I that I think can play a role the British Commonwealth actually was of some help in getting independence for Zimbabwe and for South Africa and I'll mention another example which will give me another opportunity to quarrel with Michael I'm sorry to say I think it's disgraceful to refer to Slobodan Milosevic's rump Serbia he Oaks only to Montenegro which had bombed and invaded and tried to ethnically cleanse Croatia Slovenia Bosnia Herzegovina and made menacing noises about the partition of Macedonia it's disgraceful for you to refer to that as Yugoslavia when lost which was the predator the parasite on the JED body of Yugoslavia Yugoslavia not bombed the Milosevic regime was bombed in it my view was quite well nature was well within its rights to say we cannot have the recrudescence of ethnic fascism on our borders this is a responsibility we're entitled the shoulder if Milazzo [ __ ] principles are allowed that people who the wrong ethnicity can be moved by force or murdered if they're living on the wrong side of the frontier then there'll be a war between Hungary and Romania next over Transylvania this could spread it could destabilize and poison the whole region we could be looking at another post Versailles pre fascist Europe no it wouldn't be responsible to see how that was going to come out you have responsibilities stock it now I think nature did exactly the right thing only it did it too late would it be much less cruelty and violence involved if it had been done more promptly but don't get this wrong the difference between dr. Parenti and mossad is not one of emphasis as you've heard him say he has some kind things to say about the ancien régime of the Baath Party and the Serbian Socialist Party and some struck me somewhat nostalgic things to sign the doom regime of Brezhnev ISM in Eastern Europe um this is a difference we would have even when we were if not in the same pew at least in the same congregation mr. Hitchens given your criteria for intervention and given that many countries fit this description and given this nation scarce resources both in terms of military manpower financial resources as well can't the argument be made that we as an agent should go after countries that are opposed more of a danger in the future versus whose past actions can be more despised because it appears now that Iran was more of the danger and that quite the contrary of being deterred it seems that they are more enabled by the fact that we are mired in Iraq so what do you have to say about this consequence you say that many countries meet all four of these conditions did I understand you correctly would you mind is specifying a couple of me know Iran is not violated the genocide prevention nor is it invaded any neighboring country those are two I would say quite large exceptions out of four so so aggression or the question was you mumbled also apologize more speak up and don't and see if you can produce any other regime that violates all four of the conditions I mentioned so are you saying that we shouldn't intervene it will make the question known to the audience first and then I'll give you my answer my question is that if if we're to follow these four criteria for aggression we have limited resources to pursue all nations that should be pursued shouldn't we pursue the ones that are more of a danger in the future to us as a nation well I'm still okay that was all that's audible to all okay if it's intelligible to you it isn't to me and I'm awfully sorry to say I mean I don't know what example you have in mind where these scarce resources might have been better employed Iran has not invaded neighboring countries it's been the victim of innovation and she the Iranians have been on the same side as we have been against Saddam was saying against the Taliban and against Milosevic they have not violated the Genocide Convention it's pretty clear to me they've been cheating on the NPT but that's only been found out because of the tremendous non-proliferation knock-on effects of the invasion of Iraq which if you notice as well as disarming Iraq itself and certifying as the sun-god Libya to capitulate and give hand over all its toxic and fissile stocks they're all down to lock in key no glitch genesee from those stocks it was possible to walk back the capture the AQ Khan nuclear Walmart in Pakistan and to find out the Iranians in the cheating that they've been doing which is our main quarrel with them now it's true that the Iranians sponsor international gangsterism and I think should be made to pay for it we know the names of the Iranian ministers who blew up the Jewish cultural center of Buenos Aires who send death squads to Berlin to kill the Kurds meeting in the Mykonos restaurant who tried to kill Salman Rushdie for writing a novel and many other things I think that shouldn't be without cost but you can't really invade a country just for that we know furthermore that Iran is a potential democracy that it has elections where the people vote for their candidates who just aren't allowed to take office or power this is not quite the same as the church a latarian nightmare of Iraq so I'm sorry I can't see the force of your question and even if there were some more and better examples it doesn't seem to me that there would be any case for exempting Saddam Hussein from the judgment that must fall a minute of 'men that is a serial violator on these four crucial questions I don't set up criterion inside which countries we could intervene and invade in which countries we shouldn't and how we should do it because what I've argued my burden of my art tonight has been that we have that us first of all we aren't operative it isn't wait as these u.s. rulers and they don't represent our interests no more than they represent the interests of these countries they are not motivated by mr. Hitchens four criteria they're motivated by interests that have been long-standing they have invaded about eighty they have intervened in about 80 or 90 different countries around the world in Africa alone about fifty countries there's only fifty three on the whole continent fifty countries have received US military aid the US has supported about eleven major wars in Africa over the last 30 years and consistently doing that about seven million people have died in Africa is one of the most war-torn continents in the world because of yours interventions and to sit there with the presumption and say well who should we invade who should we invite who should we not well this well know Iran Iran maybe qualifies for one of those criteria but not the other three or maybe none of them at all oh and to do that kind of game is to overlook really the huge picture and the terrible crimes that have been perpetrated and the more war ravaged Africa is in Africa is a very valuable country we get we get about 70% of all major minerals from Africa from cobalt to chromium to manganese to any bunch of all sorts of other thing gold to - do not see that the more the more war-ravaged these countries become the more torn apart they are by US interventions in part it's not the only messing that's the only factor the poor they are and the more willing and ready they are to sell their resources and their labor at pitiful prices and that's the goal the goal is to keep the world poor the more hungry the more impoverished you are the harder you will work for less and less and that's the goal of this administration the reactionaries in this administration today the reaction is they're not conservatives a conservative is somebody will resist any Aguila terian changes because he wants to maintain his particular privileges these people aren't they aren't resisting change they are vigorously pursuing changes they are reactionaries their goal is to get us back to 1900 why do you think that Americans don't work for seventeen cents an hour the way people do in Haiti or Indonesia is it because we're so much more self-respecting no it's because we have reached a stage of historical struggle where we don't have to do that and the goal is to get us back in 1900 the United States was a third world country half a century before the term had been invented we had typhoid epidemics in the eastern cities we had mass underemployment we had hardly any public education to speak of there were almost no human services may human services consisted of a soup kitchen in the back of some church maybe a Salvation Army or something like that and people did work for for subsistence wages and that's where they'd like to get us back not just the Africans not just the Middle East not just any place else the goal is a class victory the goal is to get you working harder and harder for less and less which means more for them to get rid of these bad habits of you thinking you have a right to a paid vacation to job security to healthcare to environmental protection or that all the money spent on those stupid things is one less dollar that goes into my pocket and so the goal is to make the world safe for the fortune 500 not just economic plunder and money as such but it's a whole class society and system and one minute one you could have a minute okay well as we are running a little bit long I think we're going to try and bring this debate some sort of a conclusion as much of occlusion as conclusion as we possibly can I'm not going to ask a question instead we're just going to skip two closing remarks three minutes crucifixions if you would pose one question to dr. Parenti and dr. Parenti would then pose one question to christopher hitchens that would be the end of our evening we can we skip that bit of have questions from the audience if that didn't have questions from there yeah I already good well everyone then we can do that I mean I would wait why don't we leave I wouldn't mind if we both did a wrap-up but I think that the last bit of the ballet I know this really wants to do that I don't think any of us and up here will object why don't we leave it to you guys to ask some question when you call it ballet I really don't want to do it Christopher why don't you ask the first question what I thought I was being asked questions well by the audience why don't you call on the first audience men oh well how would you know I hadn't planted somebody you call on them no it's in videos while we're just making this complicated I could call on somebody look at the nearest one well I certainly would have done something nothing was done about Row one the question was what would he have done about what would I have done about Rwanda I certainly would have certainly would have tried to put get together a a multinational peace force to stop the massacre and slaughter definitely and then I would have gotten out I wouldn't have tried to I wouldn't bomb I tell you what I wouldn't done i wouldn't have bombed the whole country and i wouldn't have made a massive invasion and i wouldn't of stayed there for the two years declared victory and talk about our noble cause that's all I'm gonna say their frenzy why don't I just go yeah I'm calling I don't you okay if you see if you see at the fourth row yeah you point into yourself Oxenberg ya know it's it's a huge victory for and concession to the buffest al-qaeda alliance and I think it shouldn't have been made in its present form there was a heartbreaking story in The New York Times I think yesterday or the day before the front the city of her Lovejoy that's now known to everybody we're happy seen the effects of the chemical weaponry attack there which was the for obvious reasons own a demonstration case and the United States had promised by now that it would have clean water because not only a people still dying from the chemical effects but it isn't clear with some of the symptoms recur whether these are masking symptoms produced by the polluted water the the excrement to be frank about that finds its way into the Greenwood well now we're not going to be able to conduct that experiment because that money is going to have to go to fighting what some people call the resistance or the insurgency in other words theme the bath Taliban al-qaeda force this is the sort of thing that we are up against these are people who would far rather the country be destroyed then that it be liberated and it made that clear throughout every moment of their rule and that's why it's absolutely essential that it's made very obvious to them that they will never have a run back that they'll never get it back you'll never become their property again and they will be killed for trying without pity and without compunction and that we will get better at this and have more and more Iraqi and Kurdish allies with which to do it but it's a very bitter thing that this sabotage has been allowed to have the affected housing it's even more embittering that there are people who use pretty words for this force when they discuss it in the United States they should see what it's doing and you've just described one of the effects which was intentional which was intentional to be under a misunderstanding about that could I just say that the word on the street in Iraq is where's all the money going again and again again where's all the money going that you're supposed to be bringing into this country when we still got this terrible sewage situation and the water we're drinking is undrinkable the kids are getting sick and and hospitals have no no medications so that's that's the question where's all the money going and I think a game where it's not going on forty-eight palaces anymore which it was before under what you describe as the model regime that was a good example for the reigning caller and Mallory said is a good example for the region sorry when or g8 palaces well people were dying under the sanctions and there was sewage in the streets and there was about three hours of electricity and that was in Baghdad if it was in Basra be about now don't be don't be silly why forty-eight palaces were going why are Americans we're not doing that anymore why are Americans so hated is what I want to know talk to my son he's been he's been there three times now much to my grief and want him not to go but and he's written a number of articles for the nation and he was asked the other day by someone could we go if Americans went to Iraq and went door-to-door and started asking people things what would happen he said you'd be killed they really so hate Americans now so many of their really so fed up they've seen so much death and destruction they don't want us there you know you may have a good goal but it but if the methods become so brutalized and I don't think it is a good goal you may have a good goal but I don't think the guy in the White House has your goal if the methods if the methods are so destructive if the methods are so destructive they destroy whatever your intentions might have been we lived through all the all through this in in in Vietnam you know again and again noble professions about the horrors of of communism how we're saving these people from and how well-intentioned and mean while destroying that country and destroying its future and then we also hurt well you can't just get up and get out now yes you can let me tell you what happens if you got up and got out life would immediately begin to improve the next day the next day there would be less killings no houses would be wrong and the people would begin to repair themselves how do you cut now cut that cut go on top that you don't how do you help look the Christian you've trapped everything else why not clap that you can you can bait you can bait me you don't have to build a green gentleman where's your popping gong let's get to let's get it you heard it I think we're all getting a little cranky why don't we have too much questions together to my question you getting late okay it's getting live to hear it scares anybody upstairs cuz I feel like yeah let's have somebody from upstairs huh go ahead it's time because you said our that I answered both you and Michael about this point because I agree with him that one must be careful about saying our and we especially where as a state or a superpower is involved and there is a lot of concern about the United States becoming a unipolar or hyper power Empire but I just feel that that concern has to be qualified a little bit in the in the actual world the alternative superpowers or potential coalition's of superpower are Vladimir Putin's Russia The Liberator of Chechnya the Mafia state no combining probably now in its form the worst of capitalism and the worst of collectivism in its politics in its society aggressive repressive racist and bigoted state corruption bankrupt China which actually is sucking all the spare capacity out of the Asian market and beggaring what used to be garment industries in for example Sri Lanka all the the China will now outbid and undercut any market with its mass dumping a strategy and is not a by any means of democracy and threatens both Vietnam and Taiwan while occupying Tibet or perhaps some coalition of European Union countries let's check for example mr. Sharat who bombs French colonies in West Africa including both Central Africa too because he supported the intervention on the side of the genocide in Rwanda uses force in West Africa every day without consulting the American nations conducts open-air nuclear tests in the Pacific and represses the Polynesians who campaign for it has had to run for his own presidency in order to preserve his immunity from prosecution on very grave charges of corruption which I am convinced if investigated would explain why here was how to die and to see who sane for holidays as his personal yes these are the choices we have and we have to be realistic about them that's all the question of our interests if you say we does at what point would the cost in Iraq they come to great I would say that no such point could possibly arise the battles been open now in the region we know that there are democratic forces have been released and are beginning to burgeon and show themselves from Beirut to Cairo tomorrow it will be Tehran we've taken our side with them others are neutral others have taken their side with the forces of totalitarianism or jihadism those forces cannot be allowed to triumph at any cost and it's not just a duty to destroy them but in some ways rather a pleasure I just want to say it's late I've been on the road for five days and maybe it's because I'm not getting paid as much as my opponent but I'm really tired and I gotta I really got a stop and I thank you all for your kind attention you want to go on with a questioning you don't let me stop it thank you both thank you thank you everybody are you okay and on the subject I was wondering if you have any advice for all of us our own on this age group right here what's the best advice you can give us right here and get over this Michael Mauritius this really would wouldn't waste another day on any of that

Channel: CaNANDian

Views: 154,071

Rating: 4.8650842 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher, Hitchens, Michael, Parenti, Wesleyan, University, Iraq, and, the, future, of, US, foreign, policy, 2005

Id: nik0273l8K4

Length: 117min 2sec (7022 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/krumpkin]

Hitchins is the prime example of how Trotskyism leads to neoconservativism.

[u/CitizenDK]

Hitchens outs himself as an absolute fascist and racist in this video and Parenti destroys him.

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah fuck hitchens I used to think that trot clown was cool but man was I wrong

[u/used123456]

The main issue with the zizek debate is that he wasn’t really treating it like a debate and Peterson was. Not saying Peterson won, considering the amount of asinine bs that came out of his mouth, but zizek was sort of treating it more like a formal examination of his side and not a debate where he had to defend his side.

[u/crimsonblade911]

Hitchens is a fucking bundle of propaganda, platitudes and deep state (by that i mean alphabet agencies, owners, donors, media directors etc) talking points.

Everything he says sounds rehearsed- and i really hate to use this friggin term thanks to the people associated with it recently- but he's just gishgalloping his way through each question.

What a mouthpiece.

[u/lights-in-the-sky]

Thanks comrade