I came across this just a minute ago while looking for something else. Hitchens is without a doubt the most eloquent defender of the Bush policy in the Middle East and the war in Iraq. The video is a liberal production, so of course it is only about 3 frames per second RealVideo, but the audio is perfectly clear.
As usual, Hitchens mops the floor with his anti-war opponent.
It's great to see the libs get their asses handed to them on their own shitty little show.
Democracy Now Debate: Hitchens vs. Ali
Here is a taste (the audio/video is 33 minutes):
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined in our New York studio by Tariq Ali and in Washington, D.C. studio by Christopher Hitchens. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Why don't we start off with Christopher Hitchens. Your assessment, Christopher, right now, of what's happening in Iraq.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I think that the United States and coalition forces are not militarily defeatable in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what you mean?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes. I mean, I think it's important to know first what can't happen. I mean, it helps just to begin [inaudible] elimination. Military superiority -- I've been mocked for saying this in an earlier report from Iraq, but I'm reprinting it in my upcoming collection. Military superiority is something you have to see to -- to believe. Unless the United States chooses to be defeated in Iraq, it cannot be. Therefore, the insurgency, so-called, will be defeated. And all logical and moral conclusions you want to draw from that, should be drawn.
AMY GOODMAN: Tariq Ali.
TARIQ ALI:Well, I think Christopher is right on this, that militarily, it is virtually impossible to defeat the United States. After all, they were not defeated militarily in Vietnam, either. It was a big military offensive by the Vietnamese. But had there not been a growing opposition to the war in the United States, a big anti-war movement which penetrated and percolated into the heart of the American army, that war could have gone on. What brought the Vietnam War to an end was the combination of the Vietnamese military offensive and just a refusal by the American public, and in large sectors of the army to accept that this war was winnable. The question is this: The United States army cannot be defeated militarily; they're incredibly powerful, but can the Iraqi people be defeated? Can Iraq be anything else but a lame colonyÐa mixture of Gaza and Guantanamo under foreign occupation? So it's -- it's a difficult one, this. And I think a low-scale, low-level intensity guerilla war could carry on for years; and the attrition finally could reach such a stage that the United States would say, it's not worth it. I mean, as it is today, many conservative people, Edward Luttwak, the Brookings Institute are saying we should cut and run. It's not been worth it. It's going to end extremely badly; and we should leave before we are humiliated. They don't mean a military humiliation. What they mean is a failure to achieve the goals which this administration set itself. I mean, we shouldn't forget that early on we were told it would be a cakewalk. Rumsfeld said, maximum, this war would only last for six months. Pro-U.S. administration Arabs in Washington said they'd be welcomed with sweets and flowers. None of that has happened. And what has become obvious is that the Iraqi people don't like being occupied. They may have loathed Saddam, but they don't like being occupied by the United States itself. And so one has to move to a situation of U.S. withdrawal, and the emergence of an elected Iraqi government, which will determine its own future, including control of its own oil. There's no other way out.
AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Hitchens?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, I mean just as a point of honor, because this is so often used as a taunt, you would have to call me a liar if you said there was no greeting of American troops. I can't actually vouch for the sweets. But I can sure vouch for the flowers. And for mass outpouring of rejoicing and welcome. I've seen it myself. I'm not going to be persuaded it didn't happen. It may be an unimportant thing; but it seems to have become a regular jeer. It did happen. I saw it myself a lot in all parts of the country. Second, the nature of the enemy is what defines this war, I believe, and makes all comparisons with Vietnam ridiculous. I was on a show I'm sure you sometimes listen to, AmyÐLaura Flanders's show, in fact. She began (this is about six months ago, I imagine) she began by quoting someone who both Tariq and I respect, Patrick Cockburn of The Independent, who's also -- I mean-- It doesn't matter to me that she's his cousin, I think, or perhaps his niece. I mean, I've known him longer than she has. And he said about Najaf, the struggle over the mosque there, that if this was the Vietnam War, the Najaf moment would be remembered as its Tet offensive. And I therefore presume -- I have to presume -- he means that the ridiculous mullah involved would be, I'm not quite sure, Ho Chi Minh? At any rate, Mr. Sadr has now been isolated, discredited; his forces have been killed in very large numbers, without pity or compunction, I'm glad to say, by American and British forces. He's been broken and they've been broken morally, too. They're rattled. They're shattered. And they're -- Even today we read, in Sadr City itself, the heartland, so-called, in Baghdad, they're cueing up either to sell or give away their heavy weapons. Now that may be a bluff. That's been promised before. But it is not where the Vietcong were six months after the Tet offensive. So all of this is nonsense, in other words. The United States will not break domestically. Edward Luttwak represents nobody; I'm not sure he even represents himself in this point. The Brookings Institution is virtually irrelevant. People know they're looking down the gun barrel of theocracy of a particularly violent, disorderly, cruel, sectarian, fanatical kindÐsomewhat worse than the Taliban. Since this is an enemy across the globe and in our own society, there is no possibility of surrender with it or of negotiation with it. So that's another respect in which the Vietnam analogy is futile.
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