Christopher Hitchens,
Tavis Smiley: Good evening from Los Angeles. I'm Tavis Smiley. Tonight, a man who's never afraid to speak his mind, "Vanity Fair" writer Christopher Hitchens joins us, plus, from the Parkers and "Showtime at the Apollo," comedienne and actress Mo'nique drops by. We're glad you've joined us. That's all coming up right now.
Christopher Hitchens
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Tavis: Christopher Hitchens is a popular and prolific writer with numerous books to his credit. He's also been a long-time contributor to a wide array of publications including "The Nation" and now, "Vanity Fair." He joins us tonight from Palo Alto, California. Mr. Hitchens, nice to see you there, sir.
Hitchens: Nice of you to have me.
Tavis: Glad to have you on. Let me jump right into, um, David Kay's testimony yesterday. Big news yesterday, of course. The former weapons inspector testified before Congress yesterday, and let me just suggest to you that if I were a cynic--I'm not. At least, I don't think I am--but if I were a cynic I'd say, Christopher, I told you so. This guy steps up yesterday in front of Congress and says 1--the President got bad intelligence. He got bad information, and number 2--nobody I found was pressured to give bad intelligence. I could have told you it was gonna come down this way.
Hitchens: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? Because in the last period we've also had the report of Lord Hutton, and, too, the regretful death of David Kelly, a man with a suspiciously similar name, also like David Kay, a former arms inspector. And that report has more or less vindicated the Blair government on the same charges that it was not, in fact, as the saying goes, sexing up the information, that it was taking what it was honestly given by its intelligence services and that you have to believe also that those intelligence services had no idea of what the government really wanted. That's where I would be a cynic, too. Uh, there's a way I could propose of resolving this problem, which is the following: Mr. Kay and Dr. Kelly had both been in Iraq in their time. They both see the evidence of Iraqi concealment programs. They've both known the Iraqis to break their word very often and on very important matters, and I think that they decided that the best way to operate was on, so to speak, the presumption of guilt. And I think that the Bush and Blair administrations made the same call in their minds. They thought, we're not giving this Saddam Hussein guy any more benefit of any more doubt. We're gonna act always on the worst assumption. We're going to operate, if you like, on the presumption of guilt. Uh...there would be many people in the intelligence community who, from experience, would have taken the same view. My view of this is that that's the only way to think. I mean, I--I would have been very critical of any administration that was likely to take any Baath Party claims at face value.
Tavis: So are you suggesting to me then that you do not believe, as many Americans apparently do, that President Bush lied to the American people?
Hitchens: No, I don't think either President Bush or Prime Minister Blair actually lied. I think that they made the absolute most of and put the worst construction on every piece of intelligence they were given about Iraq's connections to terror, which are undoubted, and Iraq's record on WMD, which is also undoubted, and I personally think that was the prudent way to go. I think it meant some exaggeration, and I would have preferred that they stressed things like Iraq's breach of the genocide convention and its human rights record and so forth, because I think it's better to educate people than to frighten them. But it's...better, perhaps, to do either than to make people complacent about a regime like that which was melting down and becoming an extremely dangerous thing in itself. Remember, the next thing we were going to be looking at was the Uday/Qusay regime in, um, Baghdad, and that wouldn't have been very much fun to deal with, and we know that Qusay Hussein was involved in a very extensive cover-up, and we know that he ordered things to be buried that have been dug up, including some centrifuges.
Tavis: But I wonder how I am to juxtapose your assessment of Bush and Blair's actions or reactions to the "bad intelligence" they received as prudent. How do I justify your labeling it as prudent with...the mothers and the fathers whose sons and daughters are never going to come home here stateside, and in the U.K., and for all the women and children and others in Iraq. How do I juxtapose those 2 things?
Hitchens: You know, that's an excellent question. Well, I would say confidently that, first, we now have disarmed Iraq. In other words, it's not going to be able to re-arm, which it certainly was doing. I mean, the evidence of the continuing programs and manipulation of scientists and data is very clear, as is the evidence that Iraq was trying to buy, until last February, weapons off the shelf from North Korea. And the North Koreans only backed off when it got so dangerous, when Coalition forces moved to the gulf. Since then, Iran has agreed to come to the table and make a full declaration of its hitherto concealed weapons and make preparations for removing them, and the Libyans have come forward and handed over all that they've got--an amount, by the way, that absolutely astounded the inspectors. There was much more even than they had suspected in their worst moments. So in my view, all of this is attributable, and the isolation of North Korea, to the Administration's policy of taking an absolutely tough line on this and not allowing any wiggle room and perhaps, yes, making too aggressive a presumption of guilt, but I return to the point: given the record of these regimes, that was the only way to go and, yes, the world is a lot safer than it was a year ago.
Tavis: Speaking of a tough line, prior to 9/11, you took a tough line as one of those liberals against everything and everyone on the right.
Hitchens: Hmm.
Tavis: 9/11 comes, and you switched on me. What happened? Now you're on--now can I call you--do I call you a neo-conservative? What happened here, Christopher?
Hitchens: Well, um...actually I had been in alliance with some of the people who are now called the neo-conservatives, people like Paul Wolfowitz, who I rather admire, I must say. Earlier than that, I thought it was right for the United States to stop the campaign of ethnic cleansing and fascism in the Balkans. And there, most of the liberals were quiet and most of the conservatives were quiet, too. That was a sort of alliance between some liberals and some neo-cons. The line I take is that...[stammers] sorry. Coexistence is the word I'm looking for--coexistence with totalitarian dictatorships, especially those that experiment with international gangsterism and WMDs is not possible, nor is it desirable. And that's a line I took well before 2001. I also took the line before 2001 partly because of my friend Salmon Rushdie and his experiences, that there was a growing threat of Islamic extremism in the world and it was time to take an intelligent opposition to that.
Tavis: But you're not denying to me, though, that your politics have changed since 9/11, though?
Hitchens: Oh, not at all. By no means, no. I mean, my allegiances have changed in the sense that I now find the noises made on the left--which are basically to the effect that we shouldn't have intervened in Serbia, we shouldn't have intervened in Afghanistan, we shouldn't have intervened in Iraq--would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore.
Tavis: You've lived here in the U.S.A. For, what, 20 years now?
Hitchens: About 23 actually, yes.
Tavis: About 23 years now, and you have written for some our foremost publications and one of our foremost thought leaders and opinion makers, so I guess you have a right to respond to these questions.
Hitchens: Kind of you to say so.
Tavis: Do you think that President George W. Bush deserves to be reelected?
Hitchens: [sighs] Well, it's a tough call for me. I wasn't-I certainly wasn't for his election the first time round. I didn't want Albert Gore, either, and I'm glad it wasn't Gore, by the way. One has to face that fact. I must say I'm a bit of a single issue voter on this. I want to be absolutely certain that there's a national security team that wakes up every morning wondering how to take the war to the enemy. I don't have that confidence about any of the Democratic candidates, but I think that a Kerry-Edwards ticket would be made up of people who have shown that they are serious on this point, yeah. So I'm not dogmatically for the reelection of the President, but I'm for applying that test as a voter.
Tavis: Do you think that a Kerry-Edwards ticket, since you went there, do you think a Kerry-Edwards ticket presents the best chance that the Democrats who you're not excited about do have to unseat George Bush?
Hitchens: Well, yes. I wrote a piece about Senator Edwards in "Vanity Fair" a little while ago, a little bit more than a year now, saying that I thought he was a man to watch, and I'm glad I did. I've met him a few times. I think he's a good man who's in politics for good reasons and with Senator Kerry, he did vote to give the President the authority to remove the Saddam Hussein regime. They've quarreled since over how it's been done and over the aftermath and, by the way, you didn't ask me, but I have many criticisms of my own of the way that was done, but yeah, on the point of seriousness, I think those two could be trusted and they have a record of a certain amount of principle.
Tavis: I recall reading the piece that you did on John Edwards, but I also recall reading the piece just days ago that's in the current issue of "Vanity Fair" that I found absolutely humorous about these arcane laws that you discovered in New York and how you spent time going around New York breaking every single one of them. Tell me the story about how that idea came about.
Hitchens: Oh, that's a good change of pace. Well, I'm a great foe of Mike Bloomberg who I describe as a micro-megalomaniac--in other words, a man of hysterical pettiness who likes to try behavior modification on his subjects and citizens. He wants to tell us where and when we can have a cigarette, where and when we can, for example, ride a bike. If you ride a bike in New York, you have to have a bicycle bell on the handlebars. Imagine trying to get attention in Manhattan with a bike bell, by the way. Can't take your feet off the pedals, you can't sit on a milk crate. These are not--many of them--laws passed by him. The smoking law was. But they're laws that are being invoked by his police department clearly under pressure to make a quota of arrests and fines...to try and give the impression of creating a sort of Disneyland in Manhattan, and believe you me, that's not what New York means to me or to the rest of the world. It should be a little bit lawless. It should be a little bit funky.
Tavis: Yeah. Ha ha. I like that word. Coming out of your mouth, it really sounds very funky. Christopher Hitchens, let me ask you this: I've heard that your next piece for "Vanity Fair" is about the controversial Mel Gibson movie. Correct?
Hitchens: Yes.
Tavis: Can you give me a little bit in a minute or so of what you think you're gonna be sharing with us about your take on this movie that has in fact generated a lot of controversy already?
Hitchens: Yeah, it's an historical film based on a very fundamentalist Christian reading, Catholic Christian reading, of the bible. And when I say fundamentalist, I mean that Mr. Gibson thinks that the present Pope has basically sold out. He's a member of a splinter group of the Catholic right wing. And it's an attempt to extract the maximum agony from the scenes of the crucifixion. And it seems to me very clear that it suggests the responsibility for this is human, that it largely belongs to the Jewish people who were present at the time. And this, whether Mr. Gibson knows it or not, is a very old and sinister argument that has been used in the past by unscrupulous people to criminalize an entire nation. And I think the results for it are gonna be very regrettable. I think it's gonna be an appalling moment of mistrust and ill-will between the Catholic and Jewish communities.
Tavis: I only got a few seconds left here, but it seems to me that what you're about to do with regard to writing this piece about Mr. Gibson's movie is exactly what folk like him want you to do, and that is to generate this kind of publicity and press so that it in fact drives folks to the theaters.
Hitchens: I know what you mean. He won't actually like what he reads. 'Cause I found him out on a couple of things that will make him, I think, very uncomfortable. But the publicity was already generated, and I think he knew--I think he sure must have known that it would be publicity of this kind. If that makes people go to see the movie, fair enough.
Tavis: Christopher Hitchens, always a delight to see you, and thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
Hitchens: Thanks for having me. |
