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Analysis: Arguments For And Against War In Iraq
 Arguments For and Against War In Iraq
NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
This weekend, demonstrators converge on Washington and other cities in what organizers hope will be a massive protest against a possible war in Iraq. The protesters are gathering for several reasons. Some worry that a war would be longer and bloodier than the administration suggests, that thousands of Iraqi civilians would suffer in the crossfire. Others believe the US has no business in Iraq's affairs and think US intervention will further enrage the Arab world and distract from the war on terrorism. Still others say a war would trigger a spike in oil prices that could hurt the US and the world's economy.
On the flip side, hawks say a confrontation with Saddam Hussein is inevitable. They say the longer we delay striking at Saddam Hussein, the more chances he has to acquire and develop weapons of mass destruction. They also argue that intervention could liberate the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
This hour, we'll hear both arguments. Later in the program, columnist Christopher Hitchens on why he supports a US-led regime change in Iraq. But first, we'll hear the case against a strike on Iraq, the moral arguments and the strategic ones. Have you struggled--(clears throat) excuse me. Have you struggled with your own conscience on the issue of a war with Iraq? Do you feel differently about a possible war with Iraq now than you did in 1991 at the time of the Gulf War?
Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255; that's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
And joining us now is Stephen Zunes. He's a politics professor and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies program at the University of San Francisco. His most recent book is "Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism." Stephen Zunes joins us from member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
And welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
Professor STEPHEN ZUNES (University of San Francisco): Good to be here.
CONAN: Also joining us is William Galston. He's a professor at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy at the University of Maryland. His most recent book is "Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice." Professor Galston is with us here in Studio 3A.
And thanks very much for coming in.
Professor WILLIAM GALSTON (University of Maryland): Good to be here.
CONAN: Stephen Zunes, why don't we begin with you? And let's start with this weekend's protests, which are going to be taking place in Washington, DC, and elsewhere. What are the messages you hope people are trying to convey, at least the principal ones? I know there's a lot of them.
Prof. ZUNES: There are a lot. I think what's on a lot of people's minds is they see this as a qualitative shift in US foreign policy, basically an unprecedented repudiation of the international Lille Conventions(ph) that American presidents, like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, helped create to build a more stable world. I mean, if you read the neoconservative journals that the architects of these policies have written just prior to coming to the Bush administration, they're essentially embracing the concept that used to be exclusively a pejorative of the left; that is, America as empire. And there are a lot of Americans, not just the traditional leftists and pacifists, who've been critical of US foreign policy intervention elsewhere, but a broader section that believe this is a pretty dramatic shift they don't want to support.
CONAN: What about the state of the peace movement today? You've studied that. Are there leading groups? Is it as organized as--well, you know, obviously, you go back to the days everybody remembers, the anti-Vietnam war protests, and those took a long time to get off the ground, but once they did, they got quite large. Do we expect anything on that scale?
Prof. ZUNES: Well, then, as now, the groups are pretty disorganized, but there are a lot of people, and it's quite impressive, actually, the fact that so many unions and mainline churches have come out against the war before it started, and it took '69, '70, '71 before they came out against the war in Vietnam. And I've been to a number of college campuses recently, even in some fairly conservative areas, and I've found more activity than was going on by '67 after several years of fighting in Vietnam. So already it seems to be a movement that is really taking off.
CONAN: William Galston, you've been speaking recently on the concept of just war and a possible conflict in Iraq. What are the criteria for morally justified military actions? And do you think what people are talking about in this context meets those criteria?
Prof. GALSTON: Well, the core of the idea of just war, which is also, by the way, the basis of the current international legal system and the United Nations Charter, is the idea of response to an act of aggression. Now there are some limited exceptions to that, but that's the core. And I think the problem that a lot of people are having with this proposed intervention in Iraq is that it doesn't seem to fit in either with the idea of response to aggression or the very limited exceptions to that.
Let me state briefly what the exceptions are. There is an emerging doctrine of humanitarian intervention--what we did in the former Yugoslavia, what we should have done in Rwanda. There is also a limited doctrine of anticipatory self-defense, where you have very good reason to believe that something, a very serious blow directed against you, is about to occur, and you have the right to act to ward that off.
And try as I might, I have not been able to fit the proposed intervention in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein into either of those two exceptions.
CONAN: Now you were a supporter, for example, of the Gulf War back in 1991. Was the act of aggression in that case the invasion of Kuwait?
Prof. GALSTON: Yes. It was a clear and unequivocal act of aggression, and the international community, quite appropriately, mobilized a huge coalition to reverse it. That was a classic example of what the United Nations was organized to resist and reverse, and it was a classic example of what just-war theory states to be not only a right but, in many respects, a duty as well. I think that was an unequivocally appropriate and just and moral enterprise.
CONAN: Well, let me--one more point, and that is the humanitarian situation in Kuwait--rather, in Iraq; obviously, a lot of the people there have suffered under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Under the theory of humanitarian intervention, does that qualify?
Prof. GALSTON: Well, I will say this: that if we had intervened at the time that Saddam Hussein was gassing his own people, if we had intervened at the time or close to the time when many of the worst atrocities were being committed, then I think a case could have been made. Now coming 10 or 15 years after the fact, it's a stretch. The humanitarian intervention doctrine was not designed in order to justify intervention into regimes that are authoritarian, that throw people into jail without provocation. It was intended to ward off ethnic cleansing and genocide, as occurred in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, and has occurred in many other places around the world. So it's a stretch now and a stretch too far, I believe.
CONAN: Our telephone number again is (800) 989-8255; (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org. And let's get a listener involved. Kate joins us on the line from Athens, Ohio.
KATE (Caller): Yeah. Hi, Neal. I really appreciate you doing this show. And I just wanted to say that I've been to--I'm a 50-year-old woman with three daughters, and I've been to numerous marches in the past during Vietnam and Martin Luther King marches in DC, and the last three or four years I've attended the IMF march and the Israeli-Palestinian march this past spring. And you certainly don't see much on the media about the thousands of people--many of these people over 40--showing up at these marches. It's not ending up in the media, and that's why I really appreciate you doing this show. In fact, I was over at Bush's address in Cincinnati, and I talked to the police officers there and they had estimated the crowd at around 3,000. And in the papers, the reports were around a thousand. So I really think fellow listeners, citizens in the US, aren't really getting a clear picture at the diverse groups of people who are attending these marches.
So I appreciate you doing this show, and I wanted to ask both your guests--this is a question--I've called the Iraqi Embassy. I've talked to the permanent representative to the UN from Iraq, and I've been searching, trying to find the numbers, and no one can seem to answer this question I've asked many, many people: How many civilians died, innocent civilians died, during Desert Storm? And it seems quite suspect that no one can give an answer.
CONAN: Well, Stephen Zunes, do you have an answer for her?
Prof. ZUNES: No. There've been a wide range of estimates. Generally, they're between five and 15,000. Only a minority of the bombs we dropped were smart. And even though the proportion of civilians killed in the aerial campaign of 1991 was less than any bombing campaign in world history, it was also by far the largest bombing campaign in world history, several times all the tonnage dropped in all of World War II by all sides in just a six-week period. So it did, indeed, do quite a bit of damage, but most of the deaths actually took place because the water filtration plants, the irrigation systems and a lot of the civilian infrastructure was destroyed as well, leading to diseases and all sorts of after-effects from the bombing. That's where the really large toll comes from, particularly when compounded with the very strict economic sanctions that followed that made it impossible to repair some of the damage.
CONAN: OK. Kate...
KATE: Now when I talked to...
CONAN: Kate, really, you know, we're talking about the next war with Iraq, if there is one, and not the past one, so I'd like to get on to another caller, if I could.
KATE: OK. Well, thanks for doing this program.
CONAN: OK. Thanks for the call.
Let's go now to Kenny, and Kenny's on the line in Indianapolis.
KENNY (Caller): Yeah. For many years, I've had a copy of the UNSCOM report, and my opposition to the war is based upon my reading of the UNSCOM report. I know the Bush administration would like to ignore that and even not let inspectors back in at this moment, but any reading of that tells you that there's nothing in there that indicates that we should be bombing Iraq or that that's required. Also, Jane's Defence publications, which is the world's foremost accumulator of military data in the world, also does not indicate that and says quite the opposite.
As a practical experience, our experience in bombing Iraq itself over the last 11 years every month without fail, Iraq has never been able to effectively put up any defense, either against its military targets or even civilians. Many civilians have been killed. And one doesn't have to support Saddam Hussein, and that's certainly not what anybody who's against this war is doing, but you don't have to support Saddam Hussein or tyranny to know that the idea of pre-emptive defense, as George Bush is presenting it, is illegal. It's against any doctrine that the world recognizes, and it's certainly against any moral principle that decent people can understand.
CONAN: William Galston, I know you've written about that.
Prof. GALSTON: Well, I think that we shouldn't fool ourselves about the facts on the ground. I believe that it is overwhelmingly likely that Saddam Hussein has something pretty significant to hide. If he didn't, he'd be behaving differently. I, therefore, favor the return of the inspectors with an expanded mandate, with total and unfettered access to everything that they're looking for, and I believe that the United Nations, having discharged its responsibility to send the inspectors back in, will have to back them up with force, if necessary, unless Iraq cooperates. That is to say, I believe that, from the standpoint of both international law and basic human morality, that the United Nations has both the right and the responsibility to enforce its own mandates.
KENNY: Well, I think there's no question about that, but the issue is the mandates should be enforced in Iraq. They should be enforced throughout the Middle East, including Israel. And that's the issue, I think, that the world sees, that we in this country don't like to acknowledge, that, yes, inspectors should go back into Iraq. They should have also been allowed in Israel this past year when the United Nations tried to go into Israel and shed some light on that situation. They should also be allowed in other places where we know that arms are building up: Korea, all sorts of places. The United States supports the United Nations arms inspection regimes, no matter where they are, including Iraq.
CONAN: Kenny, thanks...
KENNY: And also...
CONAN: Kenny, thanks very much for the call.
We're talking about objections to a war against Iraq that is in advance of planned demonstrations here in Washington, DC, and in many other places around the country this weekend. Later in the show, we'll hear some arguments justifying it. Of course, we're taking your phone calls all throughout. (800) 989-8255; (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
I'm Neal Conan. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
There are anti-war protests planned for this weekend. How do you feel about a possibility of a war with Iraq? We're discussing the moral and legal arguments, and you're invited to join the discussion. Our phone number is (800) 989-TALK; that's (800) 989-8255. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org. Our guests are Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies program at the University of San Francisco. His most recent book is "Tinderbox." And also with us is William Galston, professor at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
And let's get another phone call in. Our next caller is Scott, who's on the line from Chicago.
SCOTT (Caller): Hi, Neal. Thanks for taking my call.
CONAN: Sure.
SCOTT: I have a question about the motives for this war in light of the recent allegations that there's a plan for a post-Saddam regime. What do our guests think about the allegation that the real motivation behind all of this is really simply to get control of Iraqi oil?
CONAN: Professor Zunes?
Prof. ZUNES: It's hard to say. The architects of this policy have been those who've wanted a more aggressive foreign policy for quite a few years. I mean, these were the same folks that--you know, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others, who were advocating an invasion of Cuba and Nicaragua during the 1980s and a first strike against the Soviet Union during that period. But they've come front and center today, I think, largely because they've been able to take advantage of the sense of fear and anger and nationalism that Americans have been feeling since 9/11.
It's hard to speculate. I mean, if--they do seem to--the plans we've seen leaked is a long-term US vassal state, if you will, in Iraq, which could exert enormous influence over Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, other neighbors; could certainly have an impact on OPEC prices, given that Iraq's the second largest producer of oil. I see it as less a, you know, purely economic motivation in terms of doing the bidding of the oil companies or any conspiracy theory like that, but I do see it as a kind of Pax Americana hegemony kind of a situation that's quite disturbing, because what it--it makes some logical sense, but in a 19th-century strategic sense, a Hobbesian sense, and not the kind of foreign policy that we have been, at least in theory, trying to follow for so many years.
SCOTT: So you're saying control for control's sake, simply to extend our entire arena of influence.
Prof. ZUNES: Yes, though I would quickly add that the fact that most of the world's oil is located in that region is probably more than coincidental.
SCOTT: I would think so.
CONAN: OK. Thanks very much, Scott.
SCOTT: Thank you.
CONAN: I know that both of you have made arguments as well on the theory--worrying about the precedent that this might establish, and particularly in the case of the United States policy, as promulgated by President Bush, I guess going back to June at his speech at West Point, of pre-emptive strikes.
And, Professor Galston?
Prof. GALSTON: Well, one of the aspects of the doctrine that troubles me the most is the fact that whatever the United States, the world's sole superpower, says will instantly be picked up and appropriated by regimes around the world for purposes of their own, many of which we shouldn't approve of, and don't. We are, in effect, legislating for the world by creating a precedent. We are creating a new global order by the way we act and the way we justify how we act. And I am terrified by the thought that the Russians, the Indians and others will appropriate the doctrine of justified pre-emptive or preventive war and use it for their own purposes, with perhaps nuclear consequences in the case of the India-Pakistan exchange. So the precedental consequences of this could be enormous and very negative.
Prof. ZUNES: If I may, I'd quickly add here...
CONAN: Sure.
Prof. ZUNES: The articles, you know, 41 and 42, of the UN Charter are quite clear that the only way that UN Security Council resolutions can be backed by military force is if the United Nations Security Council, as a whole, finds a country in material reach that determines that all non-military options have been exhausted, and then specifically authorizes the use of force. This was done back in November 1990 in terms of Iraq's violation of UN Security Council Resolution 66C and subsequent resolutions demanding they withdraw from Kuwait. But that became moot when Iraqi troops were driven out. None of the subsequent resolutions, including 687, which is the most detailed in UN history, has supported any kind of unilateral military action.
So given that there are 91 other UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated around the world, the vast majority by US allies, with the United States protecting them from United Nations enforcement, this president could allow, for example, Britain to invade Morocco, France to invade Turkey, Russia to invade Israel, because these countries are also violating UN Security Council resolutions. And in terms of Article 51, self-defense, that's real clear: only in the case of armed attack. Can you imagine what the world would be like if every country could say, `This country over here might be developing weapons they might someday use against us; therefore, that gives us a right to invade.'
CONAN: There was a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, I guess, some 22 years ago. That was when Israeli aircraft--I guess it--American aircraft flown by Israeli pilots anyway, bombed the Osirak reactor in Baghdad, French-supplied reactor that they argued at the time was being used to develop nuclear weapons. Given what we know about the nature of the Iraqi regime since then, was that a good thing, Stephen Zunes?
Prof. ZUNES: I don't think so because it basically went against the law-based forms of non-proliferation; enforced a kind of nuclear apartheid, this idea that we can have nuclear weapons, our allies can have nuclear weapons, but you cannot. And the trouble with that approach, it just encourages demagogues like Saddam Hussein to rush in and try to develop weapons of mass destruction.
CONAN: Well, he was already trying to develop them.
Prof. ZUNES: But--yeah, Israel had them beforehand. Pakistan's nuclear program, in fact, was before that, and the United States has brought nuclear weapons into the Middle East on planes and ships since the 1950s. So again, I'm not justifying it, and I certainly think nuclear weapons...
CONAN: But we would be better off if that reactor was up and running and Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal.
Prof. ZUNES: No, we'd be better off if there was, as UN Security Council Resolution 687 says, `In addition to Iraq's immediate disarmament, it needs to be within the context of regional disarmament.' And that's the best way to security, but the United States has not been interested in this sort of thing, in this kind of--their double standards and hypocrisy breeds its own kind of resistance that dictators would just love to take advantage of for their own demagogic purposes.
CONAN: OK. Let's go to Jeff, who's on the line with us from Sacramento, California.
JEFF (Caller): Hi, Neal.
CONAN: Hi.
JEFF: I, like probably a lot of your listeners, am struggling with this internally as to whether we should be going in and taking action against Iraq or not. But one thing that I'm having a problem with is you have to seem--quite a few callers that are comparing the situation in Iraq with the situation in Israel. And I think there's three major differences between what's going on in Israel with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the other factions, and in Iraq. One is Israel is a democracy, a true democracy, and perhaps the only one in the Middle East, but it's certainly much more of a democracy than Iraq is. Number two, Israel may or may not already be at war internally within its borders. And number three, whether it's real or not, Israel certainly doesn't pose a threat to the US, as Iraq may or may not. So I'd just like your comments on that, of these listeners that are comparing Israel to Iraq.
CONAN: Professor Galston, if you would.
Prof. GALSTON: Well, as politicians in Washington say, I'm glad you asked because it gives me an opportunity to say something that I very much want to say, and that is I think that it is wrong and dangerous to create anything like a moral equivalence between Iraq and Israel for many of the reasons that you stated. And this is one of the features of the so-called peace movement which troubles me the most, and it's why I find it very difficult to associate myself with it.
I also believe that the justification of pre-emption depends on the severity of the threat that a nation faces. Israel had every right to believe that the development of the nuclear bomb by Iraq would pose not just a trivial or moderate threat, but a genuinely existential threat to the very survival of the state of Israel and the millions of people who have gathered there from all corners of the Earth. If I believed that the United States faced a genuine danger to its territorial integrity and its continued existence as a nation and as a people from Iraq or any other nation, and if I believed that there were no other way of dealing with that situation save pre-emption, then I would be in favor of pre-emption.
CONAN: Stephen Zunes, did you want to get in on that?
Prof. ZUNES: Yes. There's--it's important to think about the concept of deterrence. We have thousands of nuclear weapons threatening our existential existence, and I don't, frankly, think that Stalin or Mao was any less evil than Saddam Hussein. The only thing I trust about Saddam Hussein, in fact, is his ruthless desperation to survive, and the idea that he would unilaterally do a first strike against Israel, United States or any other US ally is, I think, really stretching it because he knows it would be the end of him and his regime and his family and the like. He was certainly willing to use weapons of mass destruction in the form of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians, but he knew that Iran without allies and the Kurds ignored by the world and, in fact, the United States advising Iraqi troops and Iranian positions for these strikes and covering up the Halabja massacre and related things by falsely claiming it was Iranian troops would essentially cover Iraq from the consequences.
And Saddam is a coward. He's willing to use weapons of mass destructions when he knows it's not going to hurt him, but the idea that he would do something suicidal as to attack the United States or Israel doesn't really make any sense. The only scenario, in fact, I think of him actually initiating such attacks is if this logic of self-preservation was no longer in existence because Baghdad was surrounded by advancing American troops, he knew he and his family and his regime would be wiped out anyway and he had nothing to lose.
So in other words, an invasion of Iraq, instead of preventing the use by that government of weapons of mass destruction is the most likely and only realistic scenario I can think of that they might, indeed, be used.
CONAN: So you think he does have weapons of mass destruction.
Prof. ZUNES: I think--we haven't seen absolute proof, but I would not be surprised. The inspections regime probably got a good 95 percent of it. He's not near the threat he was in the 1980s when we were quietly supporting the regime, which makes these announcements that he's a clear and present and immediate threat, we have to invade now, rather preposterous; again, just a shell of the power he had back then. But, yeah, I wouldn't doubt if when the inspectors come back in, if the US allows it before the bombing begins, that they would probably come up with some residual materials, particularly bacteriological, which are the easiest to hide. But again, we don't know for absolute sure. This is not like Adlai Stevenson before the UN in '62 with clear photographic evidence.
CONAN: OK. Jeff, thanks very much.
Let's see if we can get in Geneveve. Geneveve's on the line from Petaluma, California.
GENEVEVE (Caller): Hello.
CONAN: Hello.
GENEVEVE: Thank you for taking my call. I am against the war on Iraq, and my son has joined the Army and is leaving on November 19th. And since September 11th of last year, he has been insulted, as most of us have been, by the propaganda and the issues around the attacks on the World Trade Center and the relationship to Saddam Hussein and his possibility of using weapons of mass destruction. And my question is, very quickly, is there a way for me to direct him to a resource to separate the propaganda from the truth?
CONAN: Well, we could spend a long time on that, but why don't you each give one of your favorites.
And, Professor Zunes, we'll start with you.
Prof. ZUNES: Well, I had an article in The Nation magazine of September 30th which looks at the eight major arguments for the war put forward by the Bush administration, and I try to debunk them one by one. The Foreign Policy in Focus Web site has a whole series of articles on that theme there at www.fpif.org. It's a kind of a think tank without walls--user-friendly.
CONAN: OK. William Galston.
Prof. GALSTON: Well, on the precise point that the caller raised, there have been two front-page stories in the past two weeks, one in The New York Times, and the other in The Wall Street Journal, no friend of the peace movement, debunking the idea that there was a significant relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and the September 11th attacks.
CONAN: OK. Geneveve, thanks very much for your call.
GENEVEVE: Thank you.
CONAN: And good luck.
And I'd like to thank both of our guests. William Galston was here in Studio 3A. He's a professor at the University of Maryland and its Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy. His latest book is "Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice."
Thanks very much for coming in.
Prof. GALSTON: My pleasure.
CONAN: Stephen Zunes, thanks to you as well.
Prof. ZUNES: Thank you.
CONAN: Stephen Zunes was with us from the studios of member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He's a professor of politics, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies program at the University of San Francisco. His most recent book is "Tinderbox: US Foreign Policy and the Roots of Terrorism."
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And now we're going to switch sides and hear the other side of the argument. With us to discuss it is Christopher Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair. He previously had a long-standing relationship with the progressive magazine The Nation. His most recent book is "Why Orwell Matters," and we'll get to that later in the program, but he joins us now on the line from Manhattan.
And good to have you on the program.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (Vanity Fair): Well, nice of you to ask me.
CONAN: We'll--why do you think--you point out in some of your articles that you were--spoke out against and marched against Vietnam and Chile and South Africa and many other causes. What's different this time?
Mr. HITCHENS: By the way, not against them. I was in favor of the Vietnamese and the Chileans and the South Africans. But sorry...
CONAN: I understand.
Mr. HITCHENS: ...to start with. That's the kind of person I am.
CONAN: OK.
Mr. HITCHENS: May as well get used to it.
CONAN: I will.
Mr. HITCHENS: In this case, because, of course, one is not confronting an insurgency by people deprived or oppressed in the Third World or anything of the kind; instead, one is confronting an aggressive totalitarian dictatorship that's proved its credentials both as aggressive and as totalitarian many, many times and whose megalomaniacal leader quite obviously does not understand as, say, Professor Zunes does, or thinks he does, the rationality of things like deterrence and containment, who's repeatedly proved he's not a rational actor in his own country or outside.
And so the question will be, for anyone willing to confront it seriously: Would you rather confront such a person now or later at a time of his choosing and under circumstances where he might, as Kim Jong Il now can, himself practice deterrence, or would you just rather fold the whole tent and say, `Well, let him get on with it'? And, after all, as people who, like your last caller and as many of the peace movement, as they like to call themselves, say, not have a war with Iraq at all, except the war is not going to be with Iraq or on Iraq, and the propaganda betrays itself in the slogan just as the Iraqi people were humiliated last week--publicly, massively degraded by being forced, I mean to say, to affirm that Iraq is Saddam and Saddam is Iraq. All those who say we don't want a war with Iraq are making the same mistake. This is a confrontation with someone who doesn't represent the Iraqis, but who does represent a totalitarian, aggressive principle. Let's get that, at least, off the table at the beginning.
CONAN: We just have a few seconds left in this segment. More after a break. But there have been some very interesting demonstrations in Baghdad since the release of political prisoners there.
Mr. HITCHENS: Indeed. I think myself the appetite for regime change in Iraq is greater than it is in Washington, and it may very well be that there are planners in my hometown who will think `Oh, my God, there's about to be an outbreak of popular insurgency against Saddam Hussein. Wait, wait, we're not yet ready for it. We haven't built our airstrip, we haven't--our plan isn't designed yet.' Well, I--that would--the laugh on them would be the same as the laugh on the peace movement.
CONAN: We're talking with Christopher Hitchens about the justifications for a US-led strike on Iraq. You can continue this conversation online if you'd like. Go to npr.org, click on the discussion section, then scroll down to TALK OF THE NATION. (800) 989-8255; (800) 989-TALK.
It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Tomorrow, join Ira Flatow on the next "Science Friday" for a conversation about the life and scientific accomplishments of Rosalyn Franklin plus ballistic fingerprints using technology to match bullets to guns. That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION.
Today we're talking about the debate over a possible war on Iraq. Our guest is Christopher Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine. He contributes to other magazines as well, but no longer to The Nation. If you'd like to get in on the conversation, our telephone number is (800) 989-TALK, and our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
And, Christopher Hitchens, not only in The Nation, you've written opinion pieces in The Washington Post about your displeasure with the leadership of the left on the issue of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Where are the flaws in the arguments?
Mr. HITCHENS: Do you mind if I start by correcting you again?
CONAN: Oh, yes, of course.
Mr. HITCHENS: I've done it once before. You again introduced the discussion as saying a war on Iraq. I don't know why people do this, but they do. When people say `collateral damage' for civilian casualties, I always object. I say don't call it by a pretty name when it's an ugly thing. The reverse applies. People must do this to their own language is part of the point of my own (unintelligible) book. Don't say `war on Iraq' or `with Iraq,' there is no sense in which it can be said that Saddam Hussein represents the Iraqi people. That's just been proved again--once positively, once negatively; once by his own insane 100 percent turnout in referendum, and second, by the rebellion of the jacquerie, if you like, the insurgency that took place when he attempted to relax for a second his abysmal rule. Just to challenge the assumption, in other words, it underlies a lot of this discourse.
As to the leadership of the peace movement, well, I don't think it's a peace movement, for one thing. I respect a person who is a Quaker, for example, and says, `I would rather do anything, suffer anything than take another human being's life. I'd rather lose my own.' I mean, those who take that view, who are genuine pacifists, I think, hold a ridiculous and masochistic opinion, but I can admire it for its integrity. I do not admire people like Ramsey Clark, who--and the International Action Center, as it calls itself, a front organization for the Workers World Party who, in the name of a sort of pacifism or anti-warism, are actually carrying water for Saddam Hussein, as they did for Slobodan Milosevic, and as they will do tomorrow for Kim Jong Il of North Korea. These are not pacifists or anti-war people at all. They are supporters of the old idea that utopia is brought about by a party-state with a supreme leader where the right of the citizen is to be the property of the government and states that not only carry out but plan attacks on their neighbors, as well as atrocious treatment of their own populations. I am through with that, and I wish there were more people who saw through it. And I'm afraid to say that The Nation tries to split the difference, and I thought, well, I'm not interested in splitting this difference any longer.
CONAN: Our telephone number, again, is (800) 989-8255, and our next caller is Steve, who's on the line with us from Minneapolis.
STEVE (Caller): Hi. Yes, Neal, thank you for taking my call.
CONAN: Sure.
STEVE: I'm very dissatisfied with Mr. Hitchens' approach. I mean, it seems to me that he's spending a lot more time attacking the left than he is actually attacking the very, very weak case that the administration has made for the war against Iraq. And he might have marched, and he did march, against the war against Vietnam, and I think that that was a good thing; but I don't have to remind him that even then the administration and detractors of the protesters were also saying that marching in support of people of Vietnam was a way of defending Vietnamese totalitarianism and it was a threat to the United States in one form or another. And I think that it's very unusual that he spends so much time attacking the left when, in fact, the people who should be attacked are the people like the Bushes, who keep on putting out rumor after rumor after rumor which, within the course of about 24 hours, ends up getting completely discredited.
And we don't have to remind people of also Gulf War I, the incubator baby lies, the lies about the supposed Iraqi troops poised to march into Saudi Arabia--all of these little--you know, what else can you call them but lies in defense of war that people on the left have traditionally debunked. Now Mr. Hitchens is basically spending all his time slandering people on the left and not spending any time critiquing the utter nonsense that's coming out from the Bush administration. We have to rely on conservatives like Scott Ritter to actually tell us and to actually take apart, and takes apart very easily, the utter subterfuge that the Bush administration is feeding us.
CONAN: Well, let's get a response from Christopher Hitchens.
Mr. HITCHENS: OK. Well, I mean, it's a good question. I'm not--I mean, I don't expect everyone to know everything I write or anything like that, and I would be, you know, self-flattering if I did. But actually, I have a feeling the questioner probably does know what I've written about, say, John Ashcroft or, say, the failure of the Bush administration about the wonderful developments in Iran which it still calls an axis of evil country where the reverse is the case, where there's a great democratic revolution taking place, and its failures on Palestine and so forth.
Something tells me--I may be wrong, but I think that the listener actually--the caller knows what I think about that.
STEVE: Well, yeah, but what about...
Mr. HITCHENS: The question about Vietnam. Well, you see, the attack by those who believed in that criminal war that those who were against it were half sympathetic to Vietnamese Stalinism, was like many things in these arguments, a half-truth. Some people were not just sympathetic to the Vietnamese and didn't much care if it eventuated in a Communist victory. Some positively did like Ho Chi Mihn's regime. The point was that the United States had no right to be the inheritor of French colonialism in the region in the first place, and was waging a war against a popular nationalist revolution, and I wouldn't take back a thing I said about that.
STEVE: Yes, but...
Mr. HITCHENS: When you say that some of the things said about Saddam Hussein are also untrue, you are, in fact, in a formal sense correct. Some accusations made against him aren't, in fact, the case. I think it's probable that his secret police have had contact with the al-Qaeda network if only for a non-aggression pact between themselves. I know it for a certainty to be true that his secret police have engaged in the Abu Nidal world of terrorism, which, if I might remind you, is principally directed against the PLO. It was an organization that spent its time shooting democratic Palestinians.
But, yes, of course, there are hysterical exaggerations. Scott Ritter doesn't know what he's talking about. I say that because he can't know what he's talking about. He cannot possibly certify that Iraq is free of the ambition or the success of weapons of mass destruction. And the last time I was in North Korea--I've done my axis countries, by the way--I've been to North Korea and to Iraq several times--the last case. The last meeting I had in North Korea was with the inspectors who told me, `There is no nuclear capacity in this country anymore. We've taken care of it. We shut it down.' That's the last time I'm going to believe an inspector. You want to bet your own house that the people who say that Saddam Hussein means it about weapons of mass destruction, you bet your own house. Don't go betting mine or anyone else's. The likelihood is that whatever you think you think, that you've been duped. Saddam Hussein has staked not just his own life but quite callously the lives of his people and the survival of his society on the ambition to acquire these weapons.
STEVE: Then what you're saying...
Mr. HITCHENS: Whether he has done or not, the policy that says, well, we're not going to find out what it would be like if he could use deterrence, as Kim Jong Il now can, there--seems to me to be a very sound policy. We're not going to let him invade Kuwait again and this time say, `You want to push me out. I can use crude nuclear weapons to destroy the Saudi Arabian oil fields.' Would you then say no blood for oil?
STEVE: Well...
Mr. HITCHENS: Would you be content with a fatuous, banal incantation like that at another time? I don't think actually that you would. It's just that you really do seem to find Mr. Bush more irritating than Mr. Hussein. In that respect at least, you disagree with the majority of the people of Iraq and Kurdistan.
STEVE: No, but by your logic, then I should also support the bombing of North Korea tomorrow because we have actual evidence that North Korea...
Mr. HITCHENS: I'm afraid not because--oh, I'm...
STEVE: ...has weapons of mass destruction...
Mr. HITCHENS: Excuse me, by the very logic I had embraced, you would be in a foolish position to do that because, unfortunately, the North Korean regime is able to face the world now and say, `Well, whatever you did to us, even if we lost the war, the war would begin with the destruction of Seoul,' a very large capital city, only 25 miles south of the DMZ. The thing's been war-gamed many, many times. The North Koreans do have deterrent power. They can say, `You attack us, we may lose, but Seoul will be destroyed and all its people.' That--if that doesn't give you pause, it should. So, again, you see, you're trying an idiotic--oh, I don't mean to insult you, but I do mean to make you try and think again. You're trying a foolish...
STEVE: I'm an idiotic...
Mr. HITCHENS: ...double-standards comparison where one doesn't apply. Do you wish Saddam Hussein could be in the position where he could do the same as the North Koreans now do? If you don't, you should say so. If you do, you should admit that you are giving a great deal of license to someone who doesn't deserve to be able to threaten you or his own enslaved subjects.
CONAN: Steve, I don't think we're going to settle this argument right here and right now, but thanks very much for the phone call.
STEVE: I don't trust Bush the way you do.
CONAN: OK. Thanks very much, Steve. You're listening to..
Mr. HITCHENS: You see, it ends with the cheapest point, I mean, because there are some people, I'm afraid, who simply can't believe that it can be true that the United States could be morally right about anything. And, believe me, I know why some people have that feeling, but I think they have to outgrow it in part, or at least to be able to criticize their own position.
CONAN: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
We're speaking with Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, who's on the line with us from New York City. We've been talking about Iraq and his disagreements with the left.
We now want to switch gears and ask you about your latest book "Why Orwell Matters" which came...
Mr. HITCHENS: Ah.
CONAN: ...out last month. And George Orwell, of course, the great writer best remembered, I guess, for "1984," but you write a great deal about his experience in Spain and how that was very formative and about his intellectual legacy. Why does Orwell matter now?
Mr. HITCHENS: Well, thank you for putting it like that. I mean, yes, probably the crucible moment was Spain for him. He was one of the first European intellectuals to decide to volunteer to fight in Spain to make a physical barrier against the advance of fascism in Europe and to shoulder a rifle and feel the weight of a pack. And it was exactly while he was doing that and was involved in the most revolutionary end of the Spanish and Catalan resistance that he discovered that there was a false friend involved, and that the Communist Party and Stalin's Russia, who pretended to be the friends of Catalonia and the Spanish Republic were, in fact, trying to undermine and betray it and were willing to use the most extraordinary police methods and methods of terror to do so.
Now you may think I'm just saying that; most of the partisans of Orwell do. But in my book and in other writings, it can be shown that--now we have the open archives of the Russian Communist Party and also Franco's regime--that actually everything Orwell said in "Homage to Catalonia," probably his best book, can be factually verified now. It's all true. Everything he suspected was true. And because at the time it wasn't convenient for many people on the left to believe that a betrayal of such a scale could have taken place and because most people had no idea yet how ghastly and how futile the Stalin regime was, of course, he was accused everywhere of being a traitor. And it's taken a very long time, first, to establish just what the facts were and who was telling the truth and who was lying and, second, who was right morally and on principle about the grand hallucination that Stalin's Russia was a utopia.
CONAN: You write, obviously, a lot about Orwell's evolution, at least politically, if that's the right word, if not morally; you seem to have a pretty good moral grounding all along. Have you fashioned, to some degree, your life and thinking after him?
Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, no. My God, no. I mean--I suppose I should be flattered by the question, but actually, I'm more embarrassed by it. I mean, Orwell never made more than, you know, about 50 cents a day, about, from journalism. I mean, I'm ashamed to say ...(unintelligible) say I do a bit better than that. My life's been rather comfortable. I've certainly never had the guts to volunteer in a civil war against fascism or anything of the kind, or to face what he faced, which was regularly being told, `If you were to say that, then we won't publish you.' And he continued to, you know, defy that all the time. I like to think that if I was really told by an editor, you know, `If you say this, you're fired,' I might have the nerve to say, `Well, I'll say it anyway,' but I'm not going to find out, I don't think.
There's an element of moral and physical courage in his life that involves a test that I've not had to pass. Whether or not--as to how he wrote, which I think is exemplary, what I tell my students in my class in the New School in New York is, well, the interesting thing about his writing is it's something you could wish to emulate. I mean, not everyone can be Marcel Proust, not everyone can be George Eliot, say, but you could aim to write on a very, very good day in a way comparable with Orwell because what he said was, you know, you must use plain language and you must make your views and opinions transparent. You mustn't use euphemism; mustn't use prose that is deceptive or surreptitious. Well, that is within the reach of ordinary people, and I daresay I could claim that much.
I might just add, as the other shoe to drop from your very good first question, you're right, most people have read "1984" or "Animal Farm" in the United States, mostly because they've been made to. In my experience, the schools make you do it. Initially, that was because, you know, schools and the authorities thought that it would be great propaganda for the Cold War, exactly misrepresenting Orwell again as he was once traduced from the left; misrepresented from the right because he explicitly said that these warnings about Stalinism were not supposed to be construed as an attack on the New Deal or the British Labor Party or the socialist left in Europe or the anti-colonial revolution. So it's an odd thing, in a way, that so many people in America have been made to read Orwell and made to read him as propaganda.
CONAN: Well, you can read...
Mr. HITCHENS: ...when the whole point of his work is exactly to resist that kind of statified, collectified thinking.
CONAN: "Why Orwell Matters" is Christopher Hitchens' new book. Thanks very much for being with us today.
Mr. HITCHENS: Thank you very much for asking me.
CONAN: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
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