although he sometimes seems to show a wistful longing for the heartfelt idealism of his youth.
I wasn't able to view that Jon Stewart program, but here's Hitchens up against Tariq Ali ... a person superbly qualified to take him on:
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CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes. I think that the ideology espoused by people like Zarqawi deserves the comparisons with fascism. It's fanatical, it's irrational, it's dictatorial, it's racist, and it's a product of a terrible psychological and sexual repression. It gashes me more than I can easily say, or probably even have time to say, to hear it called a resistance or an insurgency, or to have people call, as Tariq, I'm sorry to say did in the pages of New Left Review some time ago, for solidarity with it. That is something that I've never heard properly justified or explained. Michael Moore in his film compares these people in Iraq, who as you know are the murderers and rapists and torturers, to the founding fathers of the American revolution. This to me is inexplicable. Well, I'm sorry to say in the case of Michael Moore, it's not inexplicable. But in the case of Tariq, I thought you would offer a better explanation.
AMY GOODMAN: Tariq Ali?
TARIQ ALI: I think words like fascism shouldn't be thrown about lightly, leave alone accusing people you disagree with of being "fellow travelers" with fascism. I mean, Christopher, from that point of view, is a fellow traveler with imperialism. He's a fellow traveler with people who are carrying out tortures in Iraq. The side he's on has killed several thousand innocent Iraqi civilians. But he supports that war, so you take, you know, what you get. You support a side of the war and you accept all of this as collateral damage, including the tortures, which are part and parcel of every single colonial war. And I would urge Christopher, very seriously, to go back and look at the war that was fought in Algeria. We have a mythology about this war that it was exclusively secular. It wasn't. There was a very strong, whether we like it or not -- and I don't like it, because as Christopher knows full well, I'm an atheist, I'm not a believer in any religion. But if you have countries where a large part of the population are Muslims, obviously Islamic groups play a part in it, as they did in Algeria. As for thinking that Zarqawi --
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Which Algerian war are you talking about?
TARIQ ALI: I'm talking about the war against the French.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Ah. Not the Islamic insurgency against the FLN, which was put down by people who were defending the Algerian state from Islamic insurgency.
TARIQ ALI: I know, Christopher. And the reason that that particular insurgency started in Algeria is because the military interrupted a democratic election halfway because they were told that their opponents were going to win, rather than letting them win and putting firm demands on the table that they wouldn't accept any tampering with the constitution. That triggered off the insurgency. That's a different story. Now, to pretend that the entire resistance in Iraq is Zarqawi and his group is just completely false. This is a tiny group, built up in the western media largely. Attacked by most Iraqis, dissidents of every sort, who are opposed to the occupation. And you've got to just accept this. And I don't even support Zarqawi. I've never said I support him. I've criticized him in public and in interviews with Arab television networks, saying this is not the way. But the resistance in Iraq is much, much broader and much deeper than that. And incidentally, as far as talking about these people having repressive sexual attitudes, this is, of course, absolutely true, which I have denounced many a time, openly and publicly. But what about the Christian majority inside the Republican party which you support, Christopher? Whatever else you say about Bush, you can't say his attitudes on homosexuality are particularly enlightened, not to mention capital punishment.
AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Hitchens?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I actually couldn't say that I knew what the President's attitudes on homosexuality was. I know what his attitude on gay marriage is. I think it's slightly strange Ð
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I'm so sorry. Well then, I should simply say this. The only really organized rebel force in Iraq, worthy of the name insurgent force, force of people's army, guerilla warfare, is and has been the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and its allies whose flag I'm happy to wear on my lapel. They deserve the name of a true rebel people's army. They of course are fighting for regime change, and as long as they do, so will I.
AMY GOODMAN: Tariq Ali, 15 seconds.
TARIQ ALI: I think the Iraqi resistance continues to grow because a colonial occupation has that effect, that even people who might have initially been indifferent or even halfway sympathetic, seeing the effects of a colonial occupation, where large numbers, several thousands of innocent civilians are being killed -- when you see the pictures from Samarra, of women fleeing with their children -- it stokes the resistance. Zarqawi is neither here nor there.
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http://www.democracynow.org/static/alihitchens.shtmlpnorman
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