Christopher Hitchens comes out against the Iraq War!!!!!! pt 05

PSYCH!!! here Christopher Hitchens debates Morton Kondracke on the first Gulf War.
Hitchens is here in an older, anti-imperialist mode, a la Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Howard Zinn etc...
Interestingly, the sense of outrage/horror at the state of Iraq and at the Baath Party dictatorship is just as palpable as in the post 9-11 debates.... One doesn't get the sense that he's simply jumped ship in the latest fight. He's take the evidence in full and decided that it's better to partner with American power (and all it's baggage) against an aggressive genocidal fascist dictatorship, than to partner with left-wing anti-imperialist movements and leave said regime in place.
Kondracke comes out on top in this debate IMO. Hitchens sounds especially outdated with his boilerplate anti-globalization/anti-capitalism rhetoric, more so than Kondracke does with his boilerplate Christian poltics. There is a weird break in the recording while Hitchens is talking at some point (I forget where), but I don't think that much is missing.

Please rate. thanks.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Christopher
• Hitchens
• Kondracke
• Gulf War
• Iraq
• terrorism
• War on terror
• George Bush
• Saddam Hussein
• bin Laden
• foreign policy
• military intervention
• chomsky
• edward said
• kanan makiya

[ZBrisk]

ahahaha that guy sounded reasonable at first then he went nuts

[Setzer]

@QwidgyboMan Yeah up until this point he was doing pretty well. He destroyed himself on this question.

[michaelcjordan]

Why did he change his views? I like his politics so much more when he was a socialist.

[QwidgyboMan]

Morton discredited himself by opining that the US is not an empire and does not station troops in countries where they are not welcome - What a fucking jerk.

[eugdog106]

i respect Hitchens because he is intelligent but i passionately disagree with 90% of what he says!

[eugdog106]

hardly he already made it clear that he changed his mind.

[luwala23]

@theripper715

Apparently this was a debate from 1991

[theripper715]

Hitchens say he doesn't want to USA to occupy Baghdad? Wow, what an about face. I bet he wouldn't like this audio creeping up.