This March 25 Hitchens interview covers a lot of ground:
- Hitchens conversion from Trotskyist to supporter of the Bush policy in the Middle East;
- Vietnam;
- Iraq;
- Iran;
- North Korea.
The interview transcript is here. An MP3 audio file is here for download.
An excerpt from the closing remarks follows:
Peter Robinson: 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 Wolfowitz vision 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?
Christopher Hitchens: There’s every reason to think that it could be, yes.
Peter Robinson: Lebanon?
Christopher Hitchens: In some ways, Lebanon already is a functioning democracy. It’s a?
Peter Robinson: Will there be a Palestinian state?
Christopher Hitchens: Yes, there certainly will be a Palestinian state.
Peter Robinson: A decade from now?
Christopher Hitchens: There should have been one two decades ago. There will be one a decade from now.
Peter Robinson: But that’s in prospect?
Christopher Hitchens: Yes.
Peter Robinson: Good. Happy to hear it. Describe the reputation of George W. Bush a decade from now. Last question.
Christopher Hitchens: I’m going to a debate in England in a few weeks, sponsored by the Economist, where I was asked to go 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 the motion. 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 Mr. Schroeder or Mr. Chirac or Mr. Kofi Annan. And I think if I phrase it like that, I’ve answered your question.
Peter Robinson: You have indeed. Christopher Hitchens, thank you very much.
(ht: Normblog, Instapundit)
Sad it is to see Mr Hitchens on the same side as George Bush, whom he apparently thinks will be “treated more kindly” by history.
Never a mention in Hitchens’ discussions of Bush’s willfully arrogant violations of UN resolutions, time after time [the 16 year continuing embargo on Cuba – Democrats too], by the government of the US; of the most serious violations of international law [unilateral invasions of other countries, for one; Guantanamo, torture, and renditioning for others] and therefore of US law; of the Geneva conventions, et al. Although I’m certain that Hitchens’ response would be along the lines that necessity demanded that the US remove Hussein, no such necessity has historically dominated our concern in other parts of the world - - - in the Dominican Republic or El Salvador, Chile or Argentina, for example. Nor does such concern manifest itself in the case of Mobutu or any of the “stans” currently run by dictators. And, contrary to his opinion, water boarding is a form of torture, as anyone who has the reading capability can see from the broad definitions laid down in the Genevan Conventions, et al. The technique was in fact one of the central charges in the capital trials of Japanese officers after WWII, and has been regarded as torture since the Inquisition, of which Mr Hitchens has perhaps heard.
Next he’ll be telling us that Alger Hiss wasn’t framed.
II No matter how brilliant some of us may deem ourselves to be, the fact is that the rest of us do not know better than the legal minds from dozens of countries who sat down together after WWII to hammer out the agreements that led to the UN Charter, to the principles of US law, all inspired by the dominance of regimes like Hitler’s and Mussolini’s [and, yes, like Hussein’s]. Nor are most of us so arrogant as to presuppose that we know better than the democratic opinions of the UN representatives of all the other nations of the world. No doubt Hitchens will shock us with the news that such votes are “political” in nature, as though the process of voting itself were not political. Alas, not the only sign of his naïveté, since he apparently thinks that Bush & Co really believed that what they were doing was the right thing, that the intelligence was “simply wrong,” most available evidence to the contrary. And as though a Vatican office in DC would indicate that the US is a Catholic country, so he thinks that an Al Quaeda presence in Bagdad was proof of Saddam’s being in bed with them, or perhaps a more suitable analogy would be a Cuban government official coming to the US for medical treatment making us Communists, or Cubans. Perhaps a Catholic bishop coming to Washington DC for treatment at Walter Reed - - - does such an action put us in league with the Catholic church? Ian Peasley coming here …. in league with the Irish Protestant revolutionaries? Or perhaps the fact that we are “harboring” an antiCommunist Cuban terrorist in Florida, refusing to extradite him to Cuba for blowing up a plane would qualify our government as terrorist. Not quite so simple as Mr Hitchens and the neocons make it out to be.
III Trotsky, no slouch at slaughter himself, would perhaps have been impressed with the level of violence and destruction currently being wrought on the Iraqi people by the Bush regime, that which Hitchens supports, somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 Iraqi civilian dead at minimum, with 4 millions of refugees having fled into neighboring states. Even Saddam, an expert at the processes involved, even Saddam, left to his own devices could not have achieved as much in this regard. No, it is Bush and his minions who are the Mothers of All Slaughterers, and Hitchens his willing Ganymede.
Next he’ll be telling us that Alger Hiss wasn’t framed.