Christopher Hitchens on the significance of the ex-Zarqawi.
Hugh Hewitt Talk Show
HH: To discuss the significance of it, Christopher Hitchens joins me. Christopher Hitchens, welcome back. You wrote a great piece at Slate. You are correct. This is a big day, and it means a lot. Why doesn't the left get that?
CH: Well, because much of the left is committed in advance to the idea that the advance of Islamic revolutions have cooled. Actually, it's a very reactionary counter-revolution, as you know. It's in some way unstoppable, when is in any case, the sort of verdict on American foreign policy. So not all of them take the Michael Moore view, that people like Zarqawi are as he put it, the moral equivalent to the American Minutmen. Roll that 'round your tongue for a minute or two. But many of them have a sort of sneaking feeling that these characters must be, in some sense, insurgents or rebels, whereas in fact, as we know, they're either the agents of a former dictatorship or the harbingers of the future, even more frightening one.
HH: Christopher Hitchens, you wrote at the end of your piece, if we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the peace movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. I think that's an incredibly important point. I also think it's...I'd like your reaction to something I wrote earlier today. Had we not invaded Iraq, Zarqawi would not be dead today, but rather esconced in some Baghdad safe house, or a larger encampment.
CH: Oh, yes, yes. I mean, you have to notice after 9/11, countries like Pakistan, for example, and Saudi Arabia, which had been far too close to Wahabi, Salafist training camps and ideologies, but before then, began to throw these people out of their countries.
HH: Right.
CH: As with our help, did the Afghans. But only Iraq started to welcome...and to some extent, Iran started to welcome them in. That's all the difference in the world. It's quite impossible to imagine that someone like Zarqawi is basically a Jordanian criminal, could simply just get himself to Iraq and start a major military operation without the help of the pre-existing Baathist secret police and paramilitary forces.
HH: There's also the significance that today, the three ministers were named in Iraq, defense, interior and international security.
CH: Yeah, it was about time.
HH: And they got it done. You think there's a connection here?
CH: Well, I'd like to think so, because a good friend of mine, Patrick Coburn, who covers Iraq very well, and has been doing so very bravely for many years, observed to me the other day, somewhat sarcastically, he said as of today, Iraq has a minister of tourism and not a minister of defense. That was a kind of ridiculous moment. I think maybe a bit more on the front foot today, and yes, the most dangerous and most horrible terrorist in the world, and I don't exempt Mr. bin Laden from this, I mean, the vilest of the lot, is dead. And if the defeatists had been listened to, he would by now be the most famous Muslim warrior in the history of the world. They keep telling us that only by fighting these people do we give them credibility and make them powerful and so forth, that we create them. This is a complete lie. If we had retreated from Iraq, Zarqawi would have claimed victory over a superpower, and his name would be on T-shirts. In bazaars of illiterate, unfortunate, Muslim children all across the world, he'd be a hero. Instead, he's dog meat, which is what he ought to have been a long time ago.
HH: Today, at the Washington Post...I know you don't read blogs, but I have to read you the first two paragraphs of Joel Achenbach's Washington Post blog, because he's their most popular blogger. He has quite a large audience. And he wrote today two paragraphs. The military briefing this morning featured footage of the bombing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout. We've become familiar with this kind of image - the jet fighter's view of the terrain, the target in the middle of the screen, the flash of light, the erupting cloud of smoke and dust. American fighters hit Zarqawi's lair with a 500 pound bomb, and then after pondering the situation, sent in another 500 pound bomb to bounce the rubble. Six bodies were later found, including that of an unidentified child. One body definitely belonged to Zarqawi. American Soldiers identified him every which way, from scars to fingerprints. Second paragraph. But no human beings are visible in the jet fighter footage. I actually couldn't tell what I was looking at. It could have been a warhouse demolition in Tulsa. It was an impersonal obliteration. You could argue that it was the opposite of the Zarqawi style of killing. He preferred to murder hostages by beheading them in front of a video camera. Christopher Hitchens, what is he talking about?
CH: Where do you start with so blasé, half-baked journalism. And I don't want to be in the same profession as someone who writes that way. I mean...well, I don't think I need to add. All you need to do is quote it, right? I mean...
HH: But do you think he's hinting that the violence is the same, that they're morally equivalent?
CH: He's not hinting it. He's openly stating it.
HH: Okay. I...
CH: So I mean, look. It's like Cindy Sheehan claims to speak for her son, who never gave her any permission to do so, and who died a hero's death on Memorial Day. The father of Nicholas Berg, who's been a MoveOn.org pain in the ass...the father, I mean...for some time now, long before his son went to Iraq, says today that his son was not killed by having his head sawn off by Zarqawi's people on a video. He was killed by President Bush. Well, fine. That's not making it morally equivalent. That's saying Bush is worse than Zarqawi.
HH: Right.
CH: People who think like this, and talk like that, they're perfectly entitled to do it, but they have to live with having said it. And that must be, it ought to be hard. It really ought to be hard.
HH: John Kerry said today that Zarqawi's killing, "is another sign that it's time for Iraqis to stand up for Iraq and run their own country. American troops have done their job in Iraq, and they've done it valiantly. It's time to work with the new Iraqi government to bring our combat troops home by the end of this year."
CH: Yeah, he always says that. He said that last month. He'd have left Zarqawi in possession of the field, and everyone would have said he'd won. I mean, come on. We can only say this two or three times. He says that, the Senator from Massachusetts says that every time. If he'd said it last month, which he did, we would have been leaving just in time for Zarqawi to declare victory.
HH: Now let's turn to the effects of the death of Zarqawi on the larger al Qaeda network, in your opinion, Christopher Hitchens. Is it demoralizing? They took Mogadishu this week. People aren't noticing that they scored a strategic victory this week.
CH: That's certainly true. And they're...we're faced with an extremely relentless force. Mind you, now that they've gotten Mogadishu, they have the problem of having to run it, which is what always discredits these forces, that they have no program for running any society. But that doesn't mean we can afford to be indifferent. Look, it is very bad news for them, because...I mean, Zarqawi was obviously out of the common run of fanatics. He had, really, done an enormous amount of damage to Iraq, and to the coalition, and to the U.N., and to the agencies, and all of that. So it won't be that easy for them to recover, but there is still this generalized force. And what interests me the most is the relationship between them and Iran. I mean, it's been plausibly alleged that Zarqawi may have got into Iraq via Iran, perhaps with Iranian help. Now if you ponder this for a second, this means that the Iranians are secretly helping someone whose public program is the massacre of Shiia Muslims. In other words, of their co-religionists, that their anti-Americanism is so intense, and so sickened, sorry, so sick, that they'll even collaborate with someone who regards them as a vile heretic, scumbag faction. This would be a very, very serious conclusion to come to in the present circumstances...
HH: Yeah.
CH: ...because it would mean that the Iranian government was dealing with the most evil forces, even those who murder innocent Shiia in Iraq. And if that can be shown to be true, then we have another bill to add to a long series of bills of indictment against the mullahs for what they do to their own people, as well as to others in the region.
HH: We received 40 seconds of rather blasé congratulation from Kofi Annan today, and relief in Iraq is what he said would greet this. I don't quite think he understands this. But yesterday, the deputy secretary-general slashed out at Fox News, at Rush Limbaugh, and basically at the stupidity of middle America for not esteeming the U.N. more highly. Your reaction to that, Christopher Hitchens?
CH: Well, I know Mr. Malloch Brown, and he's a kind of jovial, rather cynical character. I don't know what made him decide to amuse his luncheon companions in New York that way. But what Mark has missed, as a lot of people have, is the following. At the U.N. now, hypocritical, though, a lot of the talk may be, it is all about reform. Even Kofi Annan talks about nothing else. It's a bit like in Egypt. They may not do it, but it's in the subject of conversation. Well, that's a good thing. They admit that they were rotted out and corrupt in the Oil For Food program. They've had to admit that. They admit that they're not up much to the task of peacekeeping, let alone of enforcement of resolutions. They...all the conversation is about, the one big thing. This would not have been the case if the administration hadn't forced the issue and said look, how much longer can this body go on being insulted by Saddam Hussein, and collecting a thesaurus that mounts every day of violated U.N. resolutions?
HH: And we would never have stopped Oil For Food for dictators for terrorists. But my question, since you know Mr. Malloch Brown, you can answer this. Does he have contempt for the average American who watches Fox News and listens to Rush Limbaugh, and draws the conclusions there from?
CH: Well, the way I read it, what I saw, I imagine I read the same stories as you, would mean that I'd have to say yes to that, because taking his target of opportunity as Mr. Limbaugh, whose show I've never listened to, or Fox News, or anyone else who might like to trash the U.N., he appears to have regarded it as the job of the U.S. government to wade in and shut down Fox News, and rebuke Rush Limbaugh, and say you mustn't give a bad impression of the U.N. Well, I'm sorry. That's not the job of the U.S. government at all. Mr. Bolton, our envoy there, just very recently said look, we can't do everything about Darfur, but we can do some things. For example, we can name the known violators of U.N. resolutions in the genocides there. That's the least we can do, given the amount of time we've wasted being flouted here. And yet again, vetoed by Russia and China. They couldn't even get that far. Surely, their passivity in the face of Darfur is far greater an insult than anything Fox News could hurl at them.
HH: Christopher Hitchens, always a pleasure. Thank you. The Slate article is up now on the demise of Zarqawi.
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