HITCH-COCKED: A Conversation with Christopher Hitchens

today an uncommon knowledge christopher hitchens meet funding for this program is provided by the John M Olin foundation [Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson our show today a conversation christopher hitchens for decades a dedicated leftist and a contributor to the left-wing journal the nation Hitchens broke with a magazine in a very public dispute over the war in Iraq and he is now a firm supporter of conservative president george w bush's foreign policy during the war on terror Hitchens has reported extensively from Afghanistan Iran and Iraq some of his reporting is collected in his newest book love poverty and war today then the evolution of Christopher Hitchens American Heritage Dictionary trotskyist a radical who adheres to the theories of communism advocated by Leon Trotsky usually including the principle of worldwide revolution neo conservative a member of the political movement in favor of political economic and social conservatism that arose in opposition to the liberalism of the 1960s Christopher Hitchens a radical in your youth have you now joined the conservative reaction against the values of the 1960s that you yourself once celebrated someone asked me that if I become a neocon and I thought well I don't consider myself any kind of a conservative and I think that the problem may be originally in the definition it was Michael Harrington who was a famous American socialist invented the term neocon I believe did he add that that I'm worth to describe those of his former Trotskyist friends so has Irving Kristol yes who had evolved out of socialism altogether and towards a kind of market-based anti-communists liberalism sometimes inflected by the writing Rios charts there are several charts gifts have made that transition right well if you look at what the neoconservatives have been doing and saying in the last couple of years you'd have to say they were the most radical faction in American politics it seems to me I mean out of and I've lived to see not just some of the triumphs of the 60s I undergo diminishing returns but it's literacy people on these supposedly left say but if we removed Saddam Hussein it would destabilize the Middle East now whatever whatever you want to call that position you can't call it a radical work you'd have to call that a conservative all actually I would characterize it as a reactionary position people who will take the bet on revolution and democracy and on the release of repressed political forces are not conservatives not by a definition known to me you in the sixties versus you today again I'm on let me quote you to yourself I attended many rallies in favor of the victor of the Vietcong we we on the Left objected to Washington's imperialist war all right why should you pose totalitarianism in the middlee which is what you call the one of the words you've used for the Islamists approach in the Middle East why would you oppose totalitarianism in the Middle East but support the totalitarian intentions of the Vietcong toward the South Vietnamese why should you have considered American involvement in Vietnam imperialist when you consider the American involvement in Iraq liberationist well that's easy okay how do I hear it well for one thing the Vietcong in many ways were the South Vietnamese nuclear isn't it what there is no doubt in my mind now there wasn't then that the revolution in South Vietnam was a well part of in all Vietnamese religion I don't think the were ever two states in Vietnam that's not official partition imposed by the superpowers oh and the this is the item use revolution among other things cut with the grain first of reification of the country right and secondly expulsion of foreign colonial forces it was the continuation of the struggle that began but the problem of you Vietnamese who got expelled as well how do you handle the sizzle on that sir well I believe myself that if there hadn't mean if they'd ever not be subjected to a quarter of a century of imperialist war the wouldn't have been a large amount of this terrible suffering okay so so your argument then is that theme but I but I will say I saw you still forced me to say and I will say go ahead with I mean with great reluctance but so as not to seem to be avoiding your question that the terrible there the sufferings of the book people were not being in Vietnam and talk to many of them that may of whom have come back man it's nothing to the near destruction of the whole ecology and Society of Vietnam that the planned destruction of it by American imperialism that occurred within the 1960s all right so that's the second very serious war crime and very serious political crime why why is that imperialism well because it's the direct descendant of the French colonial enterprises I mean the American intervention invasion actually Vietnam is designed to rescue the French position which is a disgrace er that's what after the F it's already been proven wrong Roosevelt leans on Churchill trip art of the reason that they are cold toward each other or much less warm than they were originally by the end of the Second World War is that Roosevelt will have nothing to do with colonial or how we Eisenhower Rajoo on Eisenhower refuses to permit the Suez invasion to go forward and by the time it comes to Vietnam they're not trying to prop up any imperialist French colonialists venture they're trying to stop the Communists in China and and the Soviet you say there that's right is that Roosevelt was very much opposed not just to colonialism in general mhm but very opposed to French colonialism in Indochina it's fascinating to speculate what might have happened if Roosevelt had been around for the post-war settlement but there is if the facts cannot be other than what they are the United States offered at one point to use nuclear weapons to defend the French French position in Vietnam it was paying for the cost of the French war until the shattering defeat of GM Bien Phu from which it did not and it then took over the French colonial world including the imperialist partition of the country was a operation that deserved to be defeated here here we go now Christopher Hitchens on the axis of evil beginning with North Korea as far as I know you're the only journalist who in recent years has traveled to all three members of george w bush's axis of evil' North Korea Iraq and Iran and I'd like to talk about each North North Korea when were you last there and how did you get in in the first place well you can't get into North Korea so journalist so I went on to my other professional capacity of being University lecturer I got the new school to write a letter I was cosa - I mean I I wasn't faking an identity but I was concealing the fact that I was I have to go on an organized trip what year was this this was just before the election of President Bush and so it was 99 or late 2000 yeah it was Joe the Clinton was hoping to go to North Korea before his term was up but he messed things up so badly by they didn't have time Madeleine Albright arrived a week after I had left I see and that was I think the last trip she made and so we're talking about the cusp of the right of one of the millennium among other things and you're right of North Korea it is exactly as if it was modeled on 1984 Orwell's novel the leader worship the terror the uniformity the misery the squalor all true still yes it was the state was founded Aish I think the year the 1984 was published and it's as if they so took the book and thought I wonder if we could make this work right right I know why one tries to avoid cliche I remember I went to Prague during the old days the bad old days of the communist regime to attend a dissident meeting I thought whatever happens to me I'm not going to mention the name Kafka on what I write I'm going to be the first report' who doesn't invest it probably doesn't bring up after does that say the policeman came in the super police broke into the meeting house and slammed me up against the wall and said you're under arrest and I said what for they said we're not telling you what for and I thought damn now I have to resort to cliche I have to mention kaffir to take up well if you go to North Korea determine not to mention well or well II will anism or 1984 you will I'm sorry you'll be forced to they make you do it Clinton administration engaged in bilateral negotiations with North Korea and brought the nuclear program to a halt the Bush administration has refused bilateral negotiations with the result that every informed expert of whom I'm aware says the North Korea now has two three four some low numbers but they have nuclear weapons who was better Clinton or Bush well I think he'll to questions um pull apart on each other you may be right there some if they do have a nuclear weapons now will the capacity to make them which I have no reason to doubt then they that program can't have been brought to a halt finish well no as I understand I think the whole was illusory I think it was a feint the North Koreans have never abandoned ambition they put they put things up on that they were pretty close under Clinton they did set things up on the shelf and under Bush they bought that for them is is a mere and the attractive what I'm probing out here is has Bush messed this one up well we don't know yet um whether his strategy of working with China is going to be a success or not okay objectively it could work out for this reason if the North Koreans go on in this manner you remember the way they tested their first missile was to fire it across Japan without warning yes Japanese think Christ as a missile on the other side of us and half from North Korea bang if the North Koreans go on in this way Japan which can make a nuclear weapon in no time will do so it is not in the interests of China the Japan becomes a nuclear power and they they must understand that the North Koreans are forcing this continuously upon them so it seems to me there's a reasonable chance of triangulating the diplomacy in the region but you don't feel any you're not willing to protest outside the White House and say look you must do something you're quite aware well I think what I think we should be protest against this North Korea is a slave state it's people of state property and they're not only they used to be fed in return for being slaves now they're starved in the chanting so this is intolerable we should be helping to open an underground railway for these slaves into China and forcing the Chinese to change these refugees and then allow them to transit to South Korea they didn't have what the Chinese have to change so we should be pushing multi-party doing that a Chilean ground we certainly should and making it next Christopher Hitchens justifies the war in Iraq katha pollitt your former colleague at the nation quote talking about you you set up the equation so that there is no way to oppose invading Iraq except to be a coward or a covert admirer of dictatorship and theocracy well I don't think it's cowardly to be extremely wary of war especially pre-emptive war close quote now no matter how things how well things may seem to be going in Iraq after the election of January 30th 31st the war was optional the war was optional and nobody ought to engage in a war when he has other choices correct no-fly I read a short book about er up the title of the tractor which is the long short war on the postponed depression where I could have called it a short long war but I thought the long short was better we'd award Saddam Hussein since the day that he crossed the border of Kuwait not to invade it remember but we're even - occupied but - an exit to make it ceased to exist an unprecedented level of aggression destruction of member state of the United Nations not invasion of it as a condemned of the Arab member in the Arab League and of his atomic summit countries that the promises are right there are um the promise of around the his withdrawal from there was negotiated under various conditions that not all of which he agreed to meet so he had to be monitored by international sanctions which meant that the rock had lost his sovereignty and enforced by no-fly zones which meant that two-thirds of US airspace no longer belong to him and he fired at those coalition planes every day for ten years so we were in a state of armed truce at the very best right at some point someone's going to make a decisive move to end this state the state of suspended animation on past form we would have left to Saddam to decide what the next crisis was going to be and we always had right I thought it was trying to say no we'll end it in this time would be on our chance you you will find out when it soon we know in a way for you changed and but that's not preemption did the Bush administration make a mistake in using that word preamble Bush in which in one State of the Union or the other used the word preemption pre-emptive they used that several times and everybody laughs was that an error yes because it was an attempt to make the analogy with Afghanistan now what about the talk about weapons of mass destruction was that also an error that is to say you've just laid out an argument I myself consider it not only plausible but compelling in fact I consider it decisive however the Bush administration did not make quite that same argument they could have but they didn't was that just ham fisted miss mr. bush and mr. Blair I'm sorry to say both decided that it was a little easier to frighten people and persuade them this is a common political temptation it's that way I would what I just described you would make it possible to define Saddam Hussein as a permanent it seemed to me yes because he had done the four things that mean that a country can lose its sovereignty and be invaded invade other countries right Persia Iran Kuwait committed genocide this case in Kurdistan right a fool around with weapons of mass destruction which he used on his own soil I will not say on his own people because they were not his own people as all the same his own soil and in Iran and Harbor international terrorists now he done all of these four things and was addicted to all four activities as a matter of fact amazing really extraordinary he was not as mr. Paulette said that we picked a fight with him but that we allowed this to go on for so long and had Blair and bush now lied on the permanent threat yes but the imminent threat is scare tactics not a it's but you want to say you're not willing to cut them a little bit of slack because they did have intelligence saying there are weapons of mass destruction rule the worldé weapons of mass destruction I'll go further than that I mean the common view now that was the is that the punch of weapons of mass destruction pulled up an empty net did nothing of the kind and didn't find stockpiles on a shelf but it found a very well-organized program for the for the making of nuclear and chemical and biological weapons and for the concealment of that program as indeed the New York Times as in a rather ham-fisted a confirmed for us now is confirmed in a brilliant book by Absalom Hussein's chief a nuclear physicist dr. Abadi who it wasn't just making claims of this kind we should go someone who survived the regime might expect you to do but was able to lead people to the ingredients the ingredients I'm sorry the elements yes of a nuclear centrifuge buried in his own back garden under the orders of cosine who's saying whose job it was to run weapons concealment for the Baath Party now you explain Christopher Hitchens has visited Iraq since the fall of Baghdad let me ask him what Iraqis think of Americans now explain to me the psychological state on the ground which Americans which I find so difficult to understand we they the population did indeed hate Saddam Hussein nobody doubts that correct and the population at the very minimum is intensely resentful of Americans here to explain that that conundrum the Welcome that I've seen American and British forces get in parts of Iraq is something I want to start I want to mention first because there are people who say that that never happened it's commonly said by political philosophers like Maureen Dowd say that the where were the Swedes where were the flowers well I saw it happen with my own eyes and no one's literally that I didn't I saw it with months after the invasion people still lining the roads especially in the south in the south and especially in the south still lining the roads and waving and the children waiting which is always a sign means the parents don't want to they don't write for miles it was like going it was like was the nearest I'll get of taking part in the liberation of a country to writing with it with a liberating army never I'll never forget you know I would not allow it not to be said that that did not happen mm-hm and in the marshes to the mush mush our area of the country which was drained and burned out i poisoned by Saddam again almost hysterical welcome and in Kurdistan in the North so extraordinary but remember you said the population hated sand I was saying that's true really true but more than anything they feared him they were terrified these are people who not just forced to obey under terrible and believable threat but made to applaud major participate made to come out and vote made to come out and demonstrate that they loved him made to applaud when their relatives were executed you feel if your kids were going to be shot you had to attend and you had to applaud okay a pornographic regime in other words now people have been through that are humiliated they're disgusted with themselves and depraved just understand well when they get a chance to show their courage David Hoffman well even if it takes somewhat ignoble form right right so now that mr. Machado sadha for example who was as quiet as a mouse when the lace reel now he now he knows there isn't going to be able prize oh he can throw a bit of a chest right okay so in some sense all this is healthy yes it's purging yeah and it's and as we show so in the in the elections the way that people actually hung together and developing a moral sense of a communal solidarity I have heard Paul waffle would say that one a mistake that the United States made was that we didn't hold the elections a year earlier it's absolutely right absolutely right well the despise document chubby who's still a friend of mine into my stood Morrow wood was arguing that at the time you know many a chance was missed to transfer sovereignty and to have an election well nor will we get back the months that we wasted not doing and behaving like occupiers in step but you're generally optimistic now about Iraq will it's been moved into the post-saddam era and it's helped you know the Celtic neighboring countries to exactly a fault it's not going to break into three pieces i this is the flag of kurdistan in my lapel but i my kurdish comrades say that the their main responsibility is for the new iraq now and they're they who would have every right to say we want to get out of this prison house of a state are willing to instead cooperate to help to emancipate the rest of it i think that's an extraordinary sacrifice on their front deserves more recognition than it's had third member of the axis finally the last member of the axis of evil Iran like North Korea year or two ago Iran is embarked on a nuclear program the Bush strategy let the Europeans negotiate with the Iranians while the Americans make threatening noises a policy that it could well be argued has so far proven 100% in effective sir how how rock that is let's remember by the way that the nuclear program in Iran was started by the Shah the Bushehr reactor for insult was built by him and megalomaniac days and if he'd been a little faster he might have been able to hand over an entire fully finished nuclear program to Ayatollah Khomeini remember any any nuclear in any state that goes nuclear in a sense makes its successes and sometimes its enemies nuclear powers as well all runs at risk so their differences however I think one is we had every reason to think of Saddam Hussein had a thermonuclear weapon he'd have found it an early occasion to use it by either use it or use it for blackmail right I don't have that fear actually about the Iranians there's no one they can go to war with and incidentally we've just done them the rather large favor over and moving their two greatest enemies the Taliban and the Iraqi Baath Party play they're not going to have a nuclear war with Israel because they would lose it yes and furthermore nuclear weapons aren't usable even by the most fanatical Islamist in Palestine because you'd have to blow up the Alexa mosque and the Dome of the rock as well as the Wailing Wall and kill the Palestinians as well as the right Jews another one so the immediate danger isn't that terrifying I'd you're pretty the problem is the one doesn't want to reward the cheating and concealment and theft and smuggling and black-market acquisition and the open contempt for international law that's involved but the regime might also give way in time to a successor regime that would be more international list and warranty that option was not going to occur naturally in Iraq and it certainly isn't going to occur naturally in North Korea you've said that in North Korea the Bush administration the United States ought to be pushing much harder on the humanitarian line yes now my colleague at the Hoover Institution in boss Milani himself an Iranian who spent some time in the Shahs jails points out or argues that the young people in Iran and the population well over half the population is 25 or younger is immensely favorably disposed toward the United States that what we ought to be doing is engaging in a kind of rhetorical comradeship with the democracy movement and waiting that the principal job of the Bush administration is to show its friendship toward the young people of Iran and not mess it up do you agree I'm very much of your friends opinion and I grew this beard on the advice of the graduate student of mine Iranian who was my guide say if you want to go to the Friday prayers and the death to America events you better look a scruffy as you can so I did and so did hebert and and it seemed to work but also it made life very difficult often taxis wouldn't stop for us was it the with Hezbollah and relatives of his would would say you know we went to dinner with them can't you shave that off you look like some doesn't Republic right now you could get spat on you know it's the the hatred for the regime up among the young is the delightful thing to see as is the friendship towards the United States and I have a word for it yes when it's the baby boomerang you see the rulers threw away so many of their young people in a suicide wave war with Saddam Hussein which people I think still remember the throwing away of handfuls of the younger generation I know it what turned into the pointless war they had to do a running women incentives to make up the deficit okay now there is a baby boom but it's a baby boomerang because these this younger generation despises the mothers and the state that they run wants to live in America once if it can't do that wants to live an American life the regime me was becoming visibly senile it's not it's not reproducing itself I palpably see now and so even the Revolutionary Guards are getting a bit long in the tooth so you're quite confident I'll give it give it ten years and yes they will it will metamorphose into something like a secular middle-eastern democracy but the timeline of Hezbollah and of the nukes isn't a ten-year time I suppose well we well it's would be very if you were the president United States that I think let's just relax but around for about ten years I can see people saying well mr. president do you want it later to be said that right you ignored the building of a secret tunnel in Isfahan for that consumed it would be a tough call so pushes he needs to make his threatening noises and he needs not to mess it up he's doing all right there's no set of policy than in the administration there's I mean they're doing this not as a policy because they they do because they haven't been posting up as they have so I can't I can't praise it but it's not doing you much harm it doesn't make me want to go and demonstrate now thank you very much one less the White House gates chest final couple of questions describe the Arab world as you believe it will exist a decade from now alas I need what I'm after here is is the wolf of which vision the Wolfowitz and Bush vision of democracy blossoming let me just ask you a couple of questions Iraq will be a functioning democracy a decade from now if there's every reason to think that it could be Lebanon it's always Lebanon already is a functioning democracy and will there be a Palestinian state yes they'll certainly process I shouldn't should have been one two decades ago there will be one two here from now but that's in prospect good happy to hear it describe the reputation of george w bush a decade from now last question i'm going to debate in and in england in a few weeks sponsored by the economist well i i was asked to come and take the side of the motion that said thank God for George Bush and I wrote and said since I'll be at the same festival saying there's no God to thank could we not rephrase being motioned and I said what I would prefer to have it said that history will be kinder much kinder to mr. bush and mr. Blair than to her Schroeder or mr. Schirach or mr. Kofi Annan and I think if I phrase it like that I've answered your question you haven't eat crisps Dupree Hitchens thank you very much I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge thanks for joining us we welcome your comments on this week's show our email address comments at uncommon knowledge TV for more information about uncommon knowledge please visit our website wwlp.com [Music] [Music] funding for this program was provided by the John M Olin foundation [Music]

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 100,448

Rating: 4.8633094 out of 5

Keywords: hitchens, war, iraq, axis of evil.

Id: lpIY5_o1O5E

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 17 2008