Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan on Russert Show: Transcript

TR: Tonight, a conversation with Andrew Sullivan, senior writer for The New Republic magazine, and Christopher Hitchens, who writes for Vanity Fair and all sorts of other publications as well. Gentlemen, welcome both. Andrew Sullivan, how do you see the presidential race?

AS: I frankly am very depressed by this election. I mean, I think the evidence of Bush's incompetence in Iraq is just mounting by the day, and yet I don't have any real confidence in John Kerry to fight the War on Terror. So, I think I'm like a lot of people: looking at the incompetent versus the irresolute, and it's not a very inspiring choice.

CH: I just finished a little book on Thomas Jefferson. And do you know that in the election that pitted him against John Adams, the electorate had a choice between the president of the American Philosophical Society and the chairman of The American Society of Arts and Letters? It makes you weep, doesn't it, to think about that? Um, what's impressed me most... I've just come back from Afghanistan, so I'm getting back up to speed again, but when I got back I found that the obituaries for John Kerry were already being published. The 'what went wrong' articles had started to appear. Particularly the one about Bob Shrum in The New Yorker that I'm sure you saw. They had a roundup on the The Times op-ed page with [inaudible] Democrats, you know: "How can Kerry pull it out?" "How can he save himself?" This is pretty gruesome, I think, to be reading if you're a Democrat. That stuff really shouldn't be in print until November, when it's all over. (Sullivan laughs) But I have yet to meet a Democrat who wants John Kerry to be president of the United States, or thinks that he should be. I've never known this to happen before. There is not one of them, if you ask them directly: "Do you think John Kerry would be a good man [to put in]--?" "No." But 'anything but Bush' carries them over that temporarily. It's a pretty bad position to be in. How can they hope to persuade the rest of the country of a proposition in which they do not themselves believe?

AS: I was thinking of selling a T-shirt for John Kerry on my website. Just calling it: "John Kerry For President - He'll Do". And that's the rallying cry of the Democrats: he'll do.

CH: Um, they wouldn't be mine, so I'll have to guess what the Democrats' would be. Well, he was everybody's second choice at the very best in the primaries, before the primaries were front-loaded and more or less fixed up by Terry McAuliff, who wanted an early nominee--why, I can't think, but did want one. And the view of the people who swallowed their pride or their preference for another candidate was, I think: "Well, on his military record, he's elect-able." I mean, I think that's so wrong-headed in every possible way. Um, then, of course, because Mr. Kerry seems to have some kind of narcissism about him. He makes his personal record not just a theme in the campaign, but the centerpiece of it.

AS: It was a moment of, I think, complete capitulation of the Democrats to run not on 'We're going to run a strong war', but that 'Our guy once served in Vietnam'. You should, and the Democrats really need to, I think, reconfirm their credentials as a national security party, but to pick an anti-war Vietnam candidate and place the entire emphasis on his own record is the opposite of what you should do. He's also a terrible candidate, Tim. I mean, listen to him. The man can't say anything clear. He'll never say in ten words what he can say in thirty. He gives off this feeling of... You feel the energy sucked out of the room the moment he starts speaking.

CH: I heard that people were sending the checks to the $10,000-a-plate dinner, or whatever it was--they were sending the check, they wouldn't come to the dinner. That's too much. "I'll pay you not to have me to dinner with the nominee." That may be a rumor, but it did appear in the NY Times fairly authoritatively, and it seems somehow horribly true. Also it seems to me astonishing that the test of a Democratic liberal now is to be gung ho, or have been gung ho, about Vietnam. Of all wars. And then, did he think Mr. John O'Neil had died? Did he sort of check? Because the last time he tried this, it's agreed by all that John O'Neil gave him a pretty good run for his money back in the seventies. Whatever you think about the merits of the case.

CH: Yes. Exactly. He knew these guys were around, and some of them were pretty solid and serious people who did not believe his version of events and didn't like the way he presented it. Did he imagine that everyone would just say, "Oh fine, we give you a free pass. We take your record at your face value." It's impossible.

AS: Yeah, but you can't--I mean, you can't run a campaign assuming that kind of stuff is going to hit you, therefore not put yourself forward. He should have been much more quick to respond to those... smears, essentially. But I don't think it's his fault these people are nailing him day after day.

CH: He looked terribly shocked. It was as if, "They've got no right to say this. They're charging my patriotism--"

CH: If you run that way, you can't expect people to say, "Well, we're not allowed to impugn your--"

AS: You've got to be aware that this stuff is coming and be able to hit back. But to my mind, I mean, I've read as much as I can, you know? I was a child when this stuff was going on. Yeah, I think the vast majority of it was smears. I think there were a couple of discrepancies in the record. And, generally speaking, every war medal can be disputed, because what they're rewarding is stuff that happened in chaotic situations. I just find the whole concept, frankly, even it were all true--I find, the idea of going back and trying to smear someone who fought for his country is really just so low and vile, that I don't even want to [inaudible] it.

CH: So, Andrew--I mean, I'm not gonna make their case for them, but what had riled them about him was that he had been smearing, at the time, those who were fighting for their country and saying that they were all war criminals. And then he switches to saying, "No, it wasn't a band of war criminals after all, it was my band of brothers." There's something shady about that. And unconvincing.

AS: If they had just run ads on his congressional testimony and said, "We object to this kind of... and we want him to apologize", then I think that's perfectly legitimate and fair. But I don't think they would have gotten the leverage if they hadn't gone first of all to the smearing of the war medals, and that's what I found repulsive, to be quite honest with you.

CH: Well, I'm a Navy brat. My father was in the Royal Navy for... he was a career officer and had a very tough war. And I was brought up on Navy military bases and heard a lot of chat from my father's friends, and one thing I definitely remember is this: it was considered very bad form to even mention you got a medal. On ceremonial occasions you had to wear them. But they'd say "What's that?"; you'd say, "Oh, they just give that round with the rations. Everyone's got one of those." A very important element of integrity. And so, boasting about them--it brings out the critic in me anyway, whether he earned them or not if you see what I mean. And then you ask yourself: Well, he volunteered to go where the action was, it's true, but it's possible to believe that he had in mind a quick exposure to the sharp end, and then out again and back into politics. You can think it if you study the rest of it. You're almost forced to think these kinds of--

AS: You may be forced to think it, but you can then un-think it. You can think--

AS: But here we have a candidate, Bush, who went into the National Guard, and he's the one who's benefiting and probably, at some level in his campaign, coordinating at some level with his cronies back in Texas this kind of attack. The chutzpah involved in someone who didn't go to war attacking the war medals of someone who did--I'm sorry, I just can't get past that.

CH: Now you're making me do it again. Because President Bush is not running on his record at that period and has said several times that the first three decades of his life were pretty much a sordid washout. [inaudible] And he's said that he would rather have John Kerry's record than his own.

CH: Now you can't really hope for much more than that in an election year, I don't think.

TR: . . . . here we are debating Vietnam in the middle of the presidential election of 2004.

AS: Well, maybe it's appropriate. Maybe what's going on in Iraq brings to mind all sorts of those questions and issues, and maybe subconsciously that's why we're returning to that, because here we do have two men who had different approaches during that war who are now having different approaches in this one. So maybe it's unconscious associations.

TR: You started our conversation by talking about mismanagement by President Bush in Iraq. Explain that.

AS: Well, look. I'm, like Christopher, very enthusiastic about this war: believe that Saddam's tyranny was disgusting; believe also that he had almost certainly weapons of mass destruction; and believe that we didn't need to get the French and Russian's agreement to do what we had to do. But I assumed that we'd go in there with sufficient troops; I assumed we'd be able to seal the borders; I assumed we would be really deadly serious about controlling that country and transitioning it to democracy. I didn't assume that you'd go in there with clearly not enough troops to keep order; have no idea or concept an insurgency could arise; commit blunders that have only alienated the entire Iraqi population, with the exception of the Kurds and some Shi'a, against us; attempt to retake Fallujah and then abandon it; and now abandon whole swaths of the country to Islamist and jihadist forces; and now tell us, "Well, nothing's perfect," in the words of Donald Rumsfeld. It makes me furious that they have attempted such an important, noble and vital enterprise and botched it, and not taken the care to make sure this darn thing was done right.

CH: Well, I'm compelled to agree with all that and have said most of it in different times and places myself. And would add, actually. . . Well, one thing by way of qualification and one by way of intensifying what Andrew said. It's true that we had no idea how disastrously corroded the Iraqi state and society had become, but we have found out just how bad it was. You know, there's nothing to put a Band-aid on. There's no way to put a splint on this place. It had been looted and beggared and depraved, degenerated by being owned by a psychopathic crime family. Probably we knew it was bad, we didn't have any idea how bad. I think this strengthens the case for a regime-change, by the way, and not just paradoxically, I'm not trying to be clever. If we'd let Iraq run any longer if would have gone into a black hole, it would have imploded; and we'd have gone through the Uday-Qusay succession struggle, which would have been very pretty to watch I have no doubt, and opportunist interventions from Turkey, from Saudi Arabia, from Iran--certainly the playground of every jihadist in the world, because Saddam was already moving those people in under his own regime, notably Mr. Zarqawi. So, my worry is the whole intervention took place too late. I've always been one of those--no I can't say I've always been one of those, but I have for some time been one of those--who thought that '91 would have been the time to take down Saddam. If we're going to do a grand post mortem on where everyone went wrong, well we should start there. And I think that would be fair. That indeed is where this argument picks up--

CH: But there is another element to this, I think, where Mr. Bremer and Mr. Rumsfeld and President Bush are very culpable. The Iraqi election should have been held by now. The transfer of sovereignty in Baghdad should have taken place a long time before it did. Every Iraqi I knew wanted that to happen. And what have we gained by delaying it? It doesn't seem that we've. . . I suppose the alibi would have been, "Well, things are too chaotic to do it now." Well, see how that works for you when you look at the situation now. It's awful that the American people are having to vote without knowing the outcome of the election in Iraq. I think that's actually very nearly criminal. We will know soon the outcome of the election in Afghanistan, as we should--which, if you like, I can tell you a bit about. I've just been there to cover it. But that's--

AS: We're going to be voting without our even knowing what the president's strategy is. Are we going to retake Fallujah? Are we really going to subdue the Sunni Triangle in order for there to be national elections, or are we not? Secretary of Defense is saying, right now or yesterday, a couple days ago, "Look, no, maybe not." Well, what is it? Shouldn't we know? And the president is refusing, and has consistently refused, to be candid about what's going on on the ground. And I think this is a real opening for Kerry, in the sense of. . . even though I share with Christopher, you know, my disappointment and dismay at the Kerry candidacy. I still think he has a very important task, which is to flush out what we're really [going to do] and put it in front of the people.

TR: Can you have a true national election if, in fact, you don't count six or seven major cities?

AS: No, you cannot. And not only that, the potential for the country to disappear into some sort of factional civil war under those circumstances is really quite severe, because, basically, you'll then have some sort of elected body draw up a constitution which only represents two-thirds to three-quarters of the population. And the Sunni problem has always been the problem. I agree with Christopher. I think what we did was we underestimated a little bit--and look, I got all sorts of stuff wrong, too--how much we needed to get the legitimacy of this invasion right. I think the Iraqi people were undoubtedly thrilled to be rid of this thug, and we had a window of opportunity to build on that and to prove our bona fides, and we failed.

CH: I just have to add to that, though, that Imam Al-Khoei, for example, the very great Shi'a moderate leader who'd been in exile in London and helping to [inaudible], was brought back on the first day of the liberation of Najaf and Kabul and the south, and he was murdered on the first day he got back. There are people who go around giving the impression, and Senator Kerry I'm very sorry to say is one of them, that the resistance is a product of the occupation--that it's, in other words, a natural human response. They even give it quite flattering names like 'resistance' or 'insurgency'. Well, the Zarqawi gang, and the Muqtada al-Sadr people, and the Baathist remnants, they were never going to allow, if they could possibly help it, Iraq to have one minute's breathing room. They were going to remind people, "Remember what it was like living under us. Don't be so sure we won't be back. Don't stop being scared yet. And we can prove it. We can make that stick." So there's all the difference in the world, I submit, between what I've just said and the whining, defeatist and just flat-out false line taken by Michael Moore, Moveon.org, a lot of that rubbish, a lot of which the Senator is not above borrowing if he's in a tight corner.

AS: No. And that is one of the most depressing parts. When Kerry starts saying we should be spending this money at home (Hitchens scoffs) which we're spending abroad. This kind of demagoguery and isolationism, essentially, in support of what he's saying is an interventionist policy is just sickening. And every time I want to believe Kerry's critique he says something that makes me just completely wince and cringe at him. But I don't want to let this president off the hook. I'm tired of being told by my conservative friends, "Shut up."

AS: Yeah. They say, "Bash Kerry for six weeks, then we'll bash Bush for four years." I think that's the most politically dishonest, disingenuous argument I've ever heard.

TR: We've got to take another quick break. Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens. (Music plays)

TR: ...so when John Kerry says, "No weapons of mass destruction, we weren't greeted as liberators, we were misled by the president. The wrong war, the wrong place."

CH: All actually half-truth. And half-truth isn't fifty percent truth, by the way, it's a mixture of truth and falsehood. Not so great. Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction. His regime in March 2003--you can see it in the Kay Report--was trying to buy weapons off the shelf from North Korea, just for an example. He'd invited one of Bin Laden's chief lieutenants into his country to help prepare for a fight against our civilization. The only assumption on which you could address Saddam Hussein, it seemed to me--or presumption--was that of guilt. He'd earned the right for the presumption of guilt. I wanted there to be at last in the White House a president who would think the worst of Saddam Hussein--who would make the worst assumption. Because all the other arguments contain the implication, at least, that if he said he had no weapons we're honor-bound to believe him. 'Cause he wouldn't prove what he'd done with the ones he had once declared having had. Presumption of guilt works for me in this circumstance.

CH: Kerry adds something else that annoys me very much. He gives the impression, sometimes overtly, that our policy has maddened people against us, incited hatred in the Arab-Muslim world, and so on--in which, again, there's an element of truth, but mixed with a lot of other stuff. If people say, "Let's have a foreign policy that does not anger Bin-Ladenists, that doesn't make them cross, that doesn't make them want to fight us," what are they asking for? They're asking for a policy that's in some way inoffensive to people who've sworn to destroy our way of life.

AS: I have no regrets about supporting the war to liberate Iraq. Absolutely none. And, even now, with mayhem in large parts of the country, the number of people being murdered is lower than it would have been under Saddam Hussein.

AS: And, yes, the alternative is not some sort of beautiful, Michael Moore 'flying kites in Baghdad'. It was an imploding, collapsing, anarchic situation under, as Chris would put it, a Mafia family. So, the idea that we had this calm versus instability--no. We could do with a little instability in certain areas. My problem is that the United States, the biggest power on Earth, the most hegemonic military power, can't keep order in a country like that? Can't seal the borders? I mean, why aren't we demanding more of our government's capabilities? We have all this huge spanking military, and all we hear from the Secretary of Defense is excuses?

CH: By the way, what we hear when Senator Kerry switches to his other mode, he's demanding more troops be sent to Iraq. And he's criticizing it for being insufficient. Now, it's impossible for me to determine which of these represent his genuine view, if indeed any of them do.

TR: The Democrats--many will now say it's more dangerous now, however, because we've created a true haven for terrorists. At least under Saddam, he was contained, and there was no strong element of Al Qaeda operating out of Iraq.

AS: Maybe he could have been, quote-unquote, "contained" to some extent, but his capability to collude with these people was always potentially. . . Someone had to face up to it at some point. I congratulate the president on being the first one to really say no.

CH: I mean, look, the last backchannel negotiations, the last offer that came out of Baghdad to try to forestall the invasion--which was made through a sort of backchannel route--offered among other things the surrender of Mr. Yasin, the man who mixed the chemicals for the blowing up of the World Trade Center in 1993, who'd been living in a safe-house in Baghdad ever since. They said, "Okay, we understand you probably would like to interview this guy. He could be part of the package if you'll let us stay in power." No, thank you. We'll come and get him ourselves. And there will no longer be a state that can give safe-houses to people like this. If they come to Iraq, they come at their own risk. That's quite different from having, as they had in Afghanistan, an international airport, a place where they could get passports issued for themselves, police and military protection--

AS: Not only that, but if the United States had backed down, the signal that would have sent to the fascists in Iran, to Libya, to who knows who else around the world, to the people running the nuclear black market in Pakistan. I mean, I think that our decision to say we're serious finally was an important decision and has borne fruit in many areas. I just think they have failed to nail down this Iraq occupation.

TR: The question that many Americans are going to be asking is: How long do we stay in Iraq? Senator Kerry's already talked about perhaps withdrawing troops within a year, total withdrawal within four years--

AS: Statements like that are why John Kerry should not be president of the United States. (laughing)

TR: ...what do we do about Iraq? What's going to happen? When American people are confronted, day-in and day-out: a thousand soldiers killed, seven-thousand wounded and injured. There's a sense obviously in the world that the United States will eventually say, 'Enough, we're getting out.'

AS: I hope to God not. My feeling is, no, if we need more troops, put more troops in there. We have to retake the insurgency areas, we have to move forward with national elections--and I mean national elections--and we have to do whatever it takes to do that. I'm not one of these people who thinks we should wimp out at this point, and I think the consequences of doing so would indeed confirm some people's ideas that this has made matters worse rather than better. You can't do this half-baked, you've got to go through with this. And I think there's still a twenty to thirty percent chance of our succeeding.

CH: Let put the case that the election takes place in the a form that's not too contemptible--that people would say, okay, it's a good deal better than nothing. And that election is won by a party, or a coalition of parties, that request the United States to withdraw. What then? That would persuade me that you probably couldn't hope to hold on in the face of that. If, instead, we're fighting a war against people who are deliberately trying to sabotage the election, then there's obviously no question but that one must say and mean that under no circumstances will we turn over a country of the importance of Iraq, with the responsibilities that we've inherited there, to the Clockwork Orange fascists or fundamentalists. They'll never get it. The day will never come when they will own Iraq. And there will be no one in the United States who will be able to disagree with that even if every one of their sons has been killed in this war. Because it's self-evident. That's why, I think, there isn't more reaction to this combination of gross administration incompetence and these heart-breaking casualties. People know in some way that Iraq cannot be given over to Bin-Ladenism. It doesn't need any further explanation. The president actually doesn't need to add any more. People have got this point.

TR: What if the Iraqi government, though, can't hold on--they're just not capable of governing the nation?

AS: Then we have to stay there until they can. And we have responsibility. Look, we do have responsibility. This president is not good at taking responsibility for anything, but he sure has responsibility for Iraq and no one will forgive him if he lets it slide into chaos. The truth is we are essentially the government. The government in any geographical area is the person who has the monopoly of force, or the most force. So we are whether we like it or not. And the question is whether we can train the Iraqi police and military to do the job for us. But I don't think that that task is going to take anything less than five years. At least. We're talking about a commitment of ten to twenty years in Iraq, in my opinion. That's what I believed going into this. The idea that we're talking about getting out within six months is insane.

TR: But you have 140,000 American troops over there, forty percent of whom are National Guard Reserve. How does the country sustain--

AS: We have to... the president has to be very honest, and say, "Look, we're in a war, and for the first time I, George Bush, am going to ask you to make some sacrifices. We are gonna actually put money into the military. We're going to increase the size of our military. We may have to rescind some tax cuts for the very wealthiest in this country in order to afford this operation." What I can't understand why. . . You see, this president is both pro-war but unable or unwilling to provide the resources and leadership to win it. That's my worry.

CH: Look how-- the people who'd come to his rescue are invariably [inaudible]. For example, look what happens to France. They do everything they possibly can to save the Saddam Hussein regime and to impede, actually, the transfer of sovereignty. Iraq was not sovereign under sanctions and under no-fly zones. It's not under sanctions and no-fly zones anymore. The French obstruct this at every point. Mr. Zarqawi, the beheader and kidnapper, now declares war on France. Why? Because of its domestic policy on separation of church and state in the schools. Well, does anyone think there's a bargain to be struck with this person? It's out of the question. And I would add something that might sound a little too, uh, butch perhaps, if you'll allow the expression, Andrew. . . (Sullivan laughs) Here's the thing. Another thing I think people are quite capable of understanding without having it further explained to them. The United States Armed Forces is gaining incredibly useful experience in Iraq/n.

CH: If I did that was a hideous pun. "In Iraq." We now have an armed force that is learning on the job how to combat fundamentalist terrorism and its cognates in a collapsed, part-failed/part-rogue state. Do we think this dilemma's not going to come up again in our future? There's no other country where we'll have to think about doing that? Oh, yes there is. That's maybe why I was slurring the word Iraq. This is going to come up again. And it's very good that we have a battle-hardened force that is gaining fantastic military experience.

CH: Ah, well, gosh. I wish. . . That is night and day, if you like. I mean, to see people already lining up in long lines in the sun--forty-one percent of them female, by the way--is a very touching thing to see. It really is. It's very confirming for someone like myself who believes in regime-change.

AS: And it may be, one hopes and prays, that in January in Iraq the resilience of ordinary Iraqis to show up and vote will itself be a transformative event.

AS: It's one thing to say democracy matters, but the process of democracy, the actual trying to vote, the images of that will with any luck change the atmosphere in that country to show ordinary Iraqis that we really do want them to have their own country back; we really do want to turn the corner on all this [inaudible].

CH: In the Afghan case, which I hope will help to spread this impression, it'll be impressive not just to Iraqis, but to quite a number of Afghanistan's neighbors to see this happening. And there's also quite a lot of reconstruction. Kabul is really booming now. So is Herat where I went in the west during a rather unpleasant time of disturbance there, but this place is still booming. It's really amazing--a huge road is being built from Kabul to Kandahar, has been built, a great highway. The definition of a warlord, by the way, is someone who can control a piece of road. You can't do that with a proper highway. You can't just roll up barricades and say 'I own this bit' anymore. That's over. There should be much more money of that sort going in. Three-and-a-half million Afghans have come home from refugee camps; they've volunteered to come back. This is a pretty impressive vote of confidence.

TR: ......we have read in numerous places that the goverment of Mr. Karzai controls Kabul, but the rest of the country... chaotic, controlled by the warlords... and that the heroine crop is the largest in the history of the country, and it's creating all kinds of chaos and lack of stability.

CH: Well, it's certainly not true to say the first thing. The authority of the government is quite--as I've just mentioned, the Kabul-Kandahar road brought Kandahar within range, so to speak. The governor of Herat--a very important, independent-minded warlord, if you like--Ismail Khan, caved in with remarkable meekness when he was fired as provincial governor by Mr. Karzai in a couple of weeks. He told him, "You've got to come into the tent. You've got to forward your revenues to the central government from now on." He, then, dropped a warlord-type from his ticket, replacing him with a much more, as it were, civilized candidate. He's actually doing quite well against the warlords. He deserves [inaudible] support to do more. [He's breaking his way.] And he's going to be confirmed in an election, which is not nothing. As to the opium, look, do you know what Afghanistan was exporting, the largest crop export, twenty-five years ago? It was grapes and raisins. It was a vineyard country. It was a garden. All the trees have been cut down now, most of them have; all the vines have been torn up. Plant a vine now, it's five years till you'll get anything from it. Plant some poppy, the pods are ready in six months. It's their living. The War on Drugs is, I think, the single most insane policy that the United States has ever pursued--and not exempting the war in Indo-China. It is completely mad. Nobody believes in it. None of us here would be more than one phone call away in Washington, as we all know, from buying anything we wanted in the narcotic line. We just don't, but we all know how we could. That's just the demand side. At the other end, we burn the only crop these people have, and tell them we're trying to win their hearts and minds. We should instead be paying them to grow it, as we do pay the Turks now to grow this stuff. Painkillers have to come from opiate. Opiate has to be produced. If you legalize it, refine it, purify it, tax it, then the revenue does not go to narco-crime families, it goes to the coffers of those who grow it and those who consume it.

AS: I absolutely couldn't agree more. This is one of the paradoxes of our political positions: we don't belong anywhere--

CH: I'll just add one thing. If anything's a distraction from the hunt for Bin Laden or the War on Terrorism, it's the War on Drugs. What a waste of resources and of people. Could be instantly switched, 'cause it involves surveillance, tracking.

AS: But it's also true that our politics are almost conspiring against all sorts of certain positions. I mean, for me to support the war, I also have to support an administration that has John Ashcroft as Attorney General, or I have to support an administration that would strip me of any rights in my relationship as a gay person. It's a horribly difficult environment to operate in if your position isn't simply a partisan one on either side. And I think that's the really hard task. I mean, a lot of Americans, for example, do want this war to succeed, are critical of the president, but do not trust the Democrats. Now where do they go? (laughs)

TR: If you had a ballot in front of you right now, for president, what would you do?

AS: I'd probably write in McCain-Lieberman. Because I want this war to succeed, I want it to be a bi-partisan war, I want the Democrats to support it ; I do not want this war to be fought in order to get Karl Rove a super-majority in various states, and I am appalled by the way in which someone like Karl Rove is using the war for partisan political purposes. It just shows such a low level of civic imagination, put it that way.

CH: I favor the reelection of the president. But I am, as it seems we've all discovered judging by this discussion anyway, a single-issue voter. I am. And I think we're talking about a single-issue campaign. I don't like John Ashcroft at all, and I think Andrew should have the right to get married.

CH: There's no question about it. Well, no, the. . . Dr. Massouda Jalal, a wonderful Afghan physician woman who is running for president--if Karzai doesn't win I wish it would be her. And we were talking about it, she's an old leftist in some ways. I said, "Oh, it was interesting the Afghan [inaudible] supported the intervention in Iraq. Did you?" She said, "Of course I did." For us, the struggle against dictatorship and the struggle against terrorism are exactly the same thing. I would call it jihadism, by the way. I don't believe it's a war on terror. It's a war with jihad, which they will lose. The wailing in their camp will be so terrible when we're done with them. That's what I think.

TR: You used the term "old leftist". I'm always curious about your journey and your journey. You used to write for The Nation magazine, considered to be a liberal intellectual, tell us about--

CH: When I was actually neither. (Russert laughs) Certainly not a liberal anyway. No, I was a Marxist.

CH: Oh, well, I still think like a Marxist. I believe in the materialist conception of history, certainly. I still use those categories of analysis. They work, too. They've never been improved upon. But I'm no longer a Socialist.

CH: A lot of people think that I'm a sellout (Sullivan laughs) would be one very crude way of putting it. Some people think I may have become slightly unhinged. I just say to them, "Look, I think the United States is worth fighting for, and I think it needs to be defended unapologetically against the forces of jihad." There is no possibility of having a moral equivalence discussion here. I won't listen to a bar of that song. And no one's yet pointed out to me where the flaw in this very simple-minded reasoning of mine is.

CH: Oh, yeah. You can guess what it was. It had been coming. I was a friend of Salman Rushdie's, for example, and for me the fatwa in 1989, Valentine's Day, was a warning. I didn't realize it as much as I should have. "We are headed for confrontation with Islamic totalitarianism. Yes." There's a civil war going on in the Muslim world. We must not let the tyrannical side win there. We've already demonstrated in Afghanistan that we have many more Muslim supporters in Afghanistan than they do. Many more. We haven't been able to prove that in Iraq; it's partly our fault. But everything rides on this. That civil war must not be won by the other side.

TR: How 'bout you, Andrew, your journey. When did you have a moment that you said, "You know what? I'm not this liberal intellectual--"

AS: I was never a liberal intellectual, Tim. My political awakening was in the seventies in England when I was a kid, and I was a Thatcherite when it was really not at all popular to be a Thatcherite. In my high school I wore a "Reagan '80" button. So I've always been what I think of as a small-government conservative in the sense that I believe in restraining government through empowering individual freedom, I believe in a strong defense. And over the years, the one evolution I have had--and it was partly I think related to my coming to terms with being gay--is that my old sort of very rigid religious and moral views about what's right and wrong I realized were a little too crude and that human nature is a little less uniform than I wanted to believe. And the first way I figured that out was my own life. You look at yourself and say, "Well, hey, this is who I am." So the entire intellectual apparatus that says 'this is a choice and evil' is obviously wrong. So that led me to question a lot of that. But my basic political philosophy is still a small-government conservative. That's another issue I have with Bush--I'm libertarian in some [ways] too: to have a big-government, big-spending conservatism that is also allied with the Christian Right, that's not the conservatism I grew up on.

CH: You've given me the opportunity, if I can grab it from you, to say something I'd really like to say if I could. It doesn't get said enough.

CH: Another thing that's very important to me about this war is that it is in effect a war for secularism. President Bush may believe that God saved him from booze and so on. He's quite entitled to that belief as far as I can see, but he must know, and certainly the people in this administration do understand, that our only real allies are secular--that, in Afghanistan, we must hope for even more secularism. It's interesting to me to argue with my leftist comrades. They neither know nor care, really, that the Iraqi left and the Afghan left are thoroughly enthusiastic about the regime change. They know it saved their lives, apart from anything else. They're on our side. This is an irony that's sort of at everybody's expense. I know, exactly, that I'm on the right side about this. I'm for secularism and separation of church and state. Everywhere. I want more of it here, not less, and much more of it there. And it's a perfectly consistent thing. Even if John Ashcroft doesn't realize it, it's objectively--as we used to say in Marxist discussion--true. It's objectively true.

AS: Chris is a militant atheist. I'm actual a Roman Catholic. But I couldn't agree with him more. I really don't believe that people of faith should be leery of secularism. I think the separation between church and state is the best thing for religion ever. And I feel no qualms at all, as a believing person, in supporting secularism.

TR: ...Talk about the role of religion, as you see it, in the conflict we are now involved in.

CH: Well, people attack the president for all kinds of things that he's said or appeared to say about religion--some of which have been rather ill-considered, including the statement that Islam is a religion of peace, which I would say was a statement that was non-true rather than untrue. The Christian churches, almost in their entirety I believe, were opposed to the regime-change in Iraq. And so was the president's own church, the United Methodist Church. It was very interesting to me to find how completely useless Christianity was in a struggle of this kind. It was awful to find that Christianity was a religion of peace, or at least of pacifism and of surrender. The Church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any war as just since it supported General Franco's invasion of Spain to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the thirties on the side of Hitler. I think this is a wonderful occasion to discuss what the real value of religion in politics and international affairs is. The difficulty for me is that while we are objectively committed to secularism for our own society and others', if you take just the case of Palestine and Israel, American support has up till now gone to the Wahabi royal family that pumps out anti-Semitic propaganda and anti-American propaganda but is considered our ally in the Middle East; to Israeli settlements which are run by messianic fanatics who wouldn't be able to do this if it wasn't for American aid; and to extreme Christians, mainly in the United States, who hope that out of this conflict they can bring on Armageddon and the Apocalypse. What is otherwise a perfectly soluble problem, the division of Palestine between its Arab and Jewish inhabitants, is made impossible by monotheism.

AS: It may be poisoned by the fusion of monotheism with politics. That's the issue. The issue is not the relevance of faith, the issue is the fusion of faith with political power. And this is something--

CH: Well, if you believe that Jesus is coming back very soon and is going to kill everyone who doesn't agree with him, how do you keep that out of politics?

AS: No, it's not. It is possible, if you believe John Locke--maybe you don't--but it is possible and should be possible, in fact essential, given our human experience. . . Christianity is not innocent in this regard. The 16th and 17th centuries were religious wars. People were murdered in large numbers. And out of that experience, that some things you may believe in are still not so important they're worth killing other people for, came liberal democracy. Our very system of government came out of resistance to the power of religion in politics.

AS: And what we're fighting for in this war--I wrote this at the very beginning of this war--is the possibility of religion outside of politics. And when you read the Gospels, I think that the overwhelming message is exactly that: "My kingdom is not of this world, [inaudible] and there is a distinction between what Caesar is and what I am." And the idea that Muslims could create a warrior theology out of Islam is much less amazing than that Christianity might do such a thing. And I also believe that that kind of fundamentalism and zeal, in which you think your truth is so important you should kill another person to save his soul, is as dangerous in this country as it is anywhere else. It's not gotten to the same lengths, but I see the same glint in the eye of someone like Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson, and some of the forces that this president is riding to victory on, and I worry. I do not want this to become a war between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam. It is a war between fundamentalist religion and liberal democracy, and I say that as a believing Catholic.

CH: A civil war also within the other monotheisms. After all, more than half of American Jews and more than half of Israeli Jews always favor a two-state solution that grants self-determination for Palestinians. They just can't get their way because of this nutcase zealot minority--

CH: There has to be a civil war within Judaism, if you like, and there is one going on in Islam very clearly and the fanatic side wants to export that war to where we live to try and win it. So they've really involved us in their war. And, it's not my province, Andrew, but the Christian churches can't seem to make up their minds whether we are fighting for our civilization or not, or whether we should feel guilty about existing--

TR: (Holding up his hands) To be continued. Wish we had another hour. Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, come on back.

How about a recap for the groggy?

Sullivan: Bush is a failure because he refuses to endorse homosexual marriage. 5 billion reasons will be given by Sullivan during the next three weeks as to why he supports Kerry but it boils down to Sullivan being incapable of thinking about anything except a personal preference for same-sex sodomy.

That does appear to be Mr. Sullivan's grievance, doesn't it? He was very gung-ho on President Bush there for awhile. Then suddenly gays getting married is the most important issue in the world and he has no use for President Bush. Rather ridiculous if you ask me.

Boy I love Hitchens. He is so smart. Being that he is so smart, it is frustrating that he believes some of the things that he does.

They both took potshots at John Ashcroft

I just don't get why John Ashcroft is everyone's favorite whipping boy. He seems like a decent man working hard to protect this country. Well maybe I just answered my own question.

I've never seen Mark Steyn on the TV except for once on CSPAN. Boy would I love to see a set-up like the one between Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan--only instead of Sullivan have Mark Steyn in his place talking with Hitchens. I will have died and gone to heaven if that ever happens.

Interesting and cogent argument from 2 Brits.

It contrasts profoundly with the mindless 'bumper sticker' drivel you get from the 'rats. They don't not have one spokesperson who can put together a coherent argument against the President.

These guys keep on saying "Bush didn't use enough troops" and then complain that the National Guard is being used too heavily. Where do they think these troops were going to come from? Perhaps we don't have the troops we once had. Perhaps Clinton shrunk the military substantially and now were having to deal with it. I also love how everyone thinks we should be able to "seal" the borders. Both here and in Iraq. Virtually impossible. People watch too much TV and think our leaders can wave a magic wand and make it so... Reality is otherwise. People now expect wars without setbacks. No actual war works that way.

And last but not least, they talk about how taxes should be raised on the wealthy so that the wealthy can sacrifice for the war effort. Too things. Everyone should sacrifice for the war effort. Two, There is more to revenue than simply taxing the "wealthy". If your economy is shrinking then you will not be able to afford the war regardless of taxes. If our economy is growing, so is revenue for the war along with the resources to win it.

I mostly skipped over Sullivan's comments and read Hitchens. His views on Kerry are superb. I love the anecdote about people sending 10,000 dollars for a campaign dinner but not wanting to show up. "I'll send you 10,000 dollars but please don't make me show up and listen to Kerry." It says it all.

Let not your heart be heavy. John Ashcroft can take the heat! It is actually funny! These two columnists, sissy boys, whiniing about George Bush and his mistakes.
John Kerry is a national joke and an embarrassment. Such a
dork!

To address the early request from the groggy - not sure it's entirely possible. Both these guys are entirely too bright and the discussion too nuanced - rendering the task fairly difficult.

"Anyone but Kerry" probably does best address the largest portion of of the discussion and readers' primary interest, but misses out on other signifcant parts.

Other highlights - continuing in Iraq is not only necessary, but essential. We cannot afford to lose. It probably should have been done in '91, but far better late than never. (Never would have been far worse.) It will take years to do it right. Religious zealotry is muddying the waters for all players. Islam is obvious - Christianity and Judaism versions also affect politics - specifially how US and Israel international policies end up internally conflicted.

Altogether a powerful example of why even those not "strictly conservative" should be attended, they have much to say worth hearing.

I saw Russert last night w/ C Hutchins and Boyden Carter.
Is this another show, one day later with half the same guest list? Wierd. B Carter was horrible, elite snob who seemed totally incapable of any rational thought, only vitriol Bush-hating. As far as I'm concerned, A Sullivan is no longer worth my time. . . can talk about nothing but his homosexual hot buttons about which I'm not interested.

This was a fabulous discussion and to take one or two sentences out of the discussion and see that as the only thing doesn't do it justice. These two men had an indepth, intelligent discussion of Iraq, they were honest and it was fascinating.

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