Hitchens Ritter debate

The two debated on December 20th in Tarrytown, NY. It was somewhat a task to find either audio or a transcript, but for those interested, the podcast audio is available here. It runs about 1 hour 42 minutes, and they truncated the audience questions (probably for the best). For those only here for that information and nothing more, cheerio, thanks for dropping by.

For those interested in my opinion of the debate, which I'll proceed to directly, feel free to read on. Warning, it's pretty long:

----

This debate should have been termed, 'Battle of the Two Great Enigmas'. Christopher Hitchens is a socialist-leftist, by all accounts an atheist, and strongly backed the labor party in Britian. He was against the first Gulf War. He's the last person right wing Sean Hannity watching 'great Americans' should be 'hitching' their wagons to, right?

Conversely, Hitchens' former supporters now absurdly brand him a "neocon" simply because he wandered off the reservation on this one issue. Hitchens has no more converted to a right winger than Joe Lieberman, on the contrary-- he now has a whole new group of right wingers who hang on his every word about Iraq to which he can preach his social left ideology, should he so desire.

Scott Ritter is perhaps an even greater enigma. He's a former Marine who, rather than oppose, actually fought in Operation Desert Storm. He then served with UNSCOM and saw Iraqi intransigence and Saddam's MO up close and personal. It's always been rather strange he did such an about-face when his counterparts in UNSCOM didn't do the same. His arguments during the debate helped to clarify that position a bit, but it's still murky in my mind.

Cutting to the chase, both made some fine points, but I thought Mr. Hitchens made more of them, and won this debate by a small margin. Allow me to offer reasons.

Ritter's central opposing point hinged on American isolationism and Iraq's threat. In short, Iraq was no threat and U.S. troops fight only for our Constitution. That's odd, since several times he pointed to his own participation in removing Saddam from Kuwait during Desert Storm, while war protesters like Hitchens were saying Saddam was no direct threat to the United States.

His passionate comment that the war was, "not worth one single American soldier's life" garnered the most applause. This was certainly no moral contradiction for those applauding, but perhaps it was for Ritter since he failed to condemn his own participation in Gulf War I when Saddam was seemingly less a direct threat to America than in 2003.

Hitchens continued to hammer the point that we should've changed regimes in 1991, that we (America and Britain) were morally corrupt for allowing Saddam to continue in power after that point, specifically facilitating his genocide of Shia and Kurds after the war, hence we're responsible for cleaning up that mess.

Ritter was no leftist apologist, which surely caused a few of his cheerleaders to squirm in their seats. For example, he blamed Clinton for allowing pure politics to drive his Iraq policy while Iraqi children died due to the sanctions. His opinion of Madiliene Albright was no better than Hitchens', who said she "was a fool, but I suppose there's nothing she can do about it".

Ritter also blasted Congressman Murtha for couching an argument around troop deaths, as he pointed out correctly that if a war is justified then NO AMOUNT of casualties are morally wrong in the support of that cause. Ritter simply does not think the current Iraq war is justified.

The single most contentious thing uttered came from Ritter, who said "Iraqis would be better off under Saddam than under a brutal American occupation". Cat-calls rang out on that one, which Hitchens took full advantage of time and again as the debate progressed.

Since that's a hard comment to defend, friendly moderator Jay Diamond gave Ritter another opportunity to clear things up, but he continued downhill. He said Iraq was 'beginning to get better' before the war, that people were out on the streets, going to restuarants, etc, and you'd "be ok as long as you didn't talk bad about Saddam". More boos. When he tried to make the comparison that American forces were grabbing families in the night and sending them off to torture at Abu Ghraib, it just wasn't very convincing.

On the contrary, Hitchens remarked that new Iraqi PM Jalal Talibani "is not occupying Iraq" and that his election, the first free election in their history, was a good thing even if it required troops at the polling sites.

In summary, Diamond asked the panel about the possible connection between Iraq and 9/11. Hitchens provided some bullet points in support of at least considering that linkage,

* We can't overlook 1993 World Trade Center bomb mixer Abdul Yasin, who sought refuge in Baghdad after the attack and who we still haven't found
* Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal were set up quite nicely in Iraq with Saddam's blessing
* 'Allahu Akbar' was added to the Iraqi flag by Saddam
* Islamist conferences were held in Iraq under state sponsorship
* Saddam supported the Palestinians and applauded the 9/11 attacks (even Arafat denounced it)
* Zarqawi's relationship with Baghdad was forged BEFORE the war began
* the Fedyeen Saddam were imported by the IIS beforehand to allow Ba'athist elements to retain control if Saddam's regime was toppled.

The left refers to these as "GOP Talking Points" and Ritter attacked every one of them, to which Hitchens re-supported. They both agreed Zarqawi was more an instrument of Saddam than Bin Laden, and they didn't say it but I will-- his handler is Izzat al-Douri.

In the final analysis, Hitchens did nothing to lose me. Ritter made some decent points and seems genuine, but failed to convince me of his new isolationist approach in a post 9/11 world, especially after being so gung-ho during the first gulf war and UNSCOM. He was left to defend Saddam-like regimes versus any attempt to spread freedom as a solution to eradicating terror-exporting regimes. In my opinion it's simply impractical to wall up at this point. Not a choice, just a reality.