Another Hitchens related link - this one to a video of a Hitchens appearance on Jon Stewart where the left is claiming an intellectual smackdown victory.

Christopher Hitchens vs Jon Stewart

I of course, beg to differ, as I posted on my brother-in-laws journal.

Thanks for the Hitchens-Stewart link. It's nice to see two people who are part of the left-center and right-center have a semi-serious conversation on Iraq and terorrism. As Hitchens himself says in an article he mentioned in the segment see my previous post), the problem is that Bush has taken to platitiudes when it actually takes more than a few minutes to explain why we're better off today than we were before we went into Iraq and people need to listen.

I went back to look at the tape a second time to see if this really was an intellectual smackdown. I would argue that it wasn't. Some of your readers may confuse applause from the home crowd after a monologue with a debating victory.

Stewart first asked "Why Iraq?" when other countires are also "evil", a valid question to which Hitchens had an detailed answer (there's more in his article). Hitchens even explained in detail why we had the international legal (if not moral) authority to go into Iraq. Stewart did not claim he was incorrect - he just implied that political action (treaties, laws, etc) which threatens the prevention or punishment of crimes against humanity is meant to be symbolic and to actually fight against regimes committing these crimes would be "crazy". Is this really a morally justifiable position?

Stewart then accuses us of wanting to go in and "re-draw the map" in the Middle East in a Churchillian manner. Huh? If anything many detractors of the handling of the war claim that we will fail because we are NOT re-drawing the map and forcing the Iraqis to stick to the old English-imposed borders.

Stewart then says Bush is incompetent which is always the refuge a liberal takes when there is no counter-argument on the policy. Hitchens agrees (seriously) so there is no point of contention there.

The next point Hitchens tries to show is that Iraq harbored terrorists that actually attacked the US and it's citizens and more specifically al-Zarqawi, a man he claims is today possibly more dangerous than bin Laden. Stewart replies with a not very specific or enlightening retort of "so does everyone else", specifically mentioning Qatar as a palce that harbors terrorists. In fact, Qatar has been relatively liberal in both it's stand on women's issues and freedom of the press (Al-Jazeera is based there) among other things. They were shocked when they experienced their first terror attack earlier this year.

Then of course Stewart picks out the least important of Hitchen's examples (the architect of the Achille Lauro hijacking) and says that there's a differnece between "old-school" terrorism and al-Qaeda terrorism. Hitchens wan't arguing that. He was saying that Iraq welcomed all levels of terrorists - none were denied entry or support - which was the point.

Finally, Stewart goes into a little Bush-bashing monologue which I don't necessarily disagree with, but his conduct as President really has no bearing on whether what we're doing in Iraq is right and whether anyone, including the Iraqis, are better off now than they were with Hussein in power. Since Hitchens didn't have a chance to respond, and although the audience gave a nice round of applause, I can't consider this a debating point won - besides Hitchens probably would have agreed.

To me Stewart's best line is when he repsonds to Hitchens at the end by saying that "I need the President to be on my side." Of course, just becuase he disagrees with the President's PR methods doesn't mean that the President is not on his side. My five five year old always thinks I mishandle her bedtime (too early) and dinner menu (not enough chocolate), but I assure you I am on her side.