PDA

View Full Version : So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?



Pindar
03-22-2007, 01:02
This is a piece by Christopher Hitchens as it appeared in Slate Magazine March 19, 2007: an interview with himself over his support for the War in Iraq.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.



"Four years after the first coalition soldiers crossed the Iraqi border, one can attract pitying looks (at best) if one does not take the view that the whole engagement could have been and should have been avoided. Those who were opposed to the operation from the beginning now claim vindication, and many of those who supported it say that if they had known then what they know now, they would have spoken or voted differently.

What exactly does it mean to take the latter position? At what point, in other words, ought the putative supporter to have stepped off the train? The question isn't as easy to answer as some people would have you believe. Suppose we run through the actual timeline:

Was the president right or wrong to go to the United Nations in September 2002 and to say that body could no longer tolerate Saddam Hussein's open flouting of its every significant resolution, from weaponry to human rights to terrorism?


A majority of the member states thought he was right and had to admit that the credibility of the United Nations was at stake. It was scandalous that such a regime could for more than a decade have violated the spirit and the letter of the resolutions that had allowed a cease-fire after the liberation of Kuwait. The Security Council, including Syria, voted by nine votes to zero that Iraq must come into full compliance or face serious consequences.


Was it then correct to send military forces to the Gulf, in case Saddam continued his long policy of defiance, concealment, and expulsion or obstruction of U.N. inspectors?

If you understand the history of the inspection process at all, you must concede that Saddam would never have agreed to readmit the inspectors if coalition forces had not made their appearance on his borders and in the waters of the Gulf. It was never a choice between inspection and intervention: It was only the believable threat of an intervention that enabled even limited inspections to resume.

Should it not have been known by Western intelligence that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

The entire record of UNSCOM until that date had shown a determination on the part of the Iraqi dictatorship to build dummy facilities to deceive inspectors, to refuse to allow scientists to be interviewed without coercion, to conceal chemical and biological deposits, and to search the black market for materiel that would breach the sanctions. The defection of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, the Kamel brothers, had shown that this policy was even more systematic than had even been suspected. Moreover, Iraq did not account for—has in fact never accounted for—a number of the items that it admitted under pressure to possessing after the Kamel defection. We still do not know what happened to this weaponry. This is partly why all Western intelligence agencies, including French and German ones quite uninfluenced by Ahmad Chalabi, believed that Iraq had actual or latent programs for the production of WMD. Would it have been preferable to accept Saddam Hussein's word for it and to allow him the chance to re-equip once more once the sanctions had further decayed?

Could Iraq have been believably "inspected" while the Baath Party remained in power?

No. The word inspector is misleading here. The small number of U.N. personnel were not supposed to comb the countryside. They were supposed to monitor the handover of the items on Iraq's list, to check them, and then to supervise their destruction. (If Iraq disposed of the items in any other way—by burying or destroying or neutralizing them, as now seems possible—that would have been an additional grave breach of the resolutions.) To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq. Thus, we can now say that Iraq is in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty. Moreover, the subsequent hasty compliance of Col. Muammar Qaddafi's Libya and the examination of his WMD stockpile (which proved to be much larger and more sophisticated than had been thought) allowed us to trace the origin of much materiel to Pakistan and thus belatedly to shut down the A.Q. Khan secret black market.


Wasn't Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations a bit of a disgrace?

Yes, it was, as was the supporting role played by George Tenet and the CIA (which has been reliably wrong on Iraq since 1963). Some good legal experts—Ruth Wedgwood most notably—have argued that the previous resolutions were self-enforcing and that there was no need for a second resolution or for Powell's dog-and-pony show. Some say that the whole thing was done in order to save Tony Blair's political skin. A few points of interest did emerge from Powell's presentation: The Iraqi authorities were caught on air trying to mislead U.N inspectors (nothing new there), and the presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a very dangerous al-Qaida refugee from newly liberated Afghanistan, was established. The full significance of this was only to become evident later on.

Was the terror connection not exaggerated?

Not by much. The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

Was a civil war not predictable?

Only to the extent that there was pre-existing unease and mistrust between the different population groups in Iraq. Since it was the policy of Saddam Hussein to govern by divide-and-rule and precisely to exacerbate these differences, it is unlikely that civil peace would have been the result of prolonging his regime. Indeed, so ghastly was his system in this respect that one-fifth of Iraq's inhabitants—the Kurds—had already left Iraq and were living under Western protection.

So, you seriously mean to say that we would not be living in a better or safer world if the coalition forces had turned around and sailed or flown home in the spring of 2003?

That's exactly what I mean to say."

ShadeHonestus
03-22-2007, 01:39
You can't ask yourself specific questions to get answers...you have to be so cryptic that the only answer you can give is the one you want in the first place. This won't be well received well by tin hatters.

Pindar
03-22-2007, 01:55
You can't ask yourself specific questions to get answers...you have to be so cryptic that the only answer you can give is the one you want in the first place. This won't be well received well by tin hatters.

The questions seem reasonable to me, but when dealing with the swamp fever crowd it is hard to anticipate the reaction.

Tribesman
03-22-2007, 02:27
You can really tell hitchens is a confused ex-trotskite with a drink problem can't ya .

the presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a very dangerous al-Qaida refugee from newly liberated Afghanistan, was established. The full significance of this was only to become evident later on.
:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: oh stop it hurts :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

ShadeHonestus
03-22-2007, 02:32
The questions seem reasonable to me, but when dealing with the swamp fever crowd it is hard to anticipate the reaction.

Oh they are very reasonable, but they don't fit the genre for the swamp fever tin hatters...as they lack the ability to be answered in only their preferred fashion

Lemur
03-22-2007, 04:52
There's something strangely Rumsfeldian about holding an extended Q&A with yourself.

Meanwhile:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v489/Lemurmania/magazine062506.jpg

Blodrast
03-22-2007, 04:55
Was the terror connection not exaggerated?

Not by much. The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

Erm... The first part of the answer is not even addressing the question...
The terror connection was exaggerated. Bush made Iraq part of the War on Terror - which was all centered around, and triggered by, the attack of 9/11.

The fact that he never claimed Iraq had a hand in the attacks is irrelevant here - it does neither deny, nor reinforce, the fact that the terror connection was exaggerated.
What does affect that issue is the fact that he made it part of the War on Terror. Iraq was suddenly a major terrorist threat... O rly ? How about Saudi, Syria, Pakistan, all of which at that point had been happily handing money to terrorist organizations for many years ? Nah, those connections we should not exaggerate. We should choose carefully the ones we want to exaggerate. :yes:

Damn right the terror connection was exaggerated...

Adrian II
03-22-2007, 07:53
Was the terror connection not exaggerated?

Not by much. The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones.

Can you point to any statement by the Bush administration that Saddam 'acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, including the most militant ones'?

Well, no, not right now... not at all, in fact...

Every other report after 2003, including all official American reports, have denied claims that Saddam cooperated with islamist terrorists. Even the Bush administration never made this claim. Why would you?

I admit it came to me in a stupor. I mean...

An alcoholic stupor?

Yes. Give me a break, will you? I am part of the shrinking middle class that supports this war, any old war, and my shrinking brain told me there was no harm in a self-interview...

Isn't this interview the final stage in self-delusion?

Can I have a drink please? Just a small triple whiskey ...

Vladimir
03-22-2007, 16:42
Interesting. This is the same magazine that had Joe "Mr." Wilson and Valerie "the game" Plame on their cover?

Apparently Mr. Inquisitor believes that war is a popularity contest? Reminiscing about the days of yore and yellow journalism?