Hewitt and Hitchens on Iraq

HH: Mr. Hitchens, in your column at Slate, you write in large parts of Iraq, still there are people who dread what might happen in the event of our withdrawal. After having talked with them about this, do you think in the aftermath of a sudden or even a phased over three, six month withdrawal, conditions in Iraq would be as bad or worse as when the Brits withdrew from the mandate in Palestine, or as bad or worse as when the United States withdrew from Southeast Asia, and the Cambodian holocaust followed?

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CH: Oh, well, I see what you mean. Well, the problem with the British withdrawal from Palestine was they had at different times promised to hand it over to both sides, to both the Zionist movement and the Arab nationalist movement. So they’d already created the conditions for a war before leaving, where we aren’t, I hope, doing that. I mean, though I think the Maliki government needs to be rebuked for some of its sectarianism, we aren’t conclusively identified with one side in this confessional war. And I’ve been relatively scrupulous about that. I worry about that changing, I have to add. When I hear people talk about Vietnam, I always want to say, and in fact, I always do say, we’re not fighting the Viet Cong there, I wish we were. We’re fighting the Khmer Rouge. And that’s what it would be like, and in the areas where even for a brief time these people have been able to take over a town or a village or a district, it’s been Taliban plus. Now under no circumstances could any responsible Congress or president, or United Nations possibly consent to having a country of the importance and sophistication of Iraq run by these goons. It’s just out of the question. It must be agreed by all that cannot happen.

HH: So you believe the holocaust that would follow in Iraq from a precipitous American withdrawal would rival, or perhaps even exceed that of Pol Pot in Cambodia?

CH: It would be a very rash person who didn’t think that that worst case would be the actual one. And look, again, the awful thing is some of it’s happening as we speak. I mean, almost anyone in Baghdad now, at any rate, who has a qualification, or any money, or any education, or any resources of any sort, is already gone. Perhaps as many as a million and a half, we don’t actually know, have moved to Jordan, some of them to Syrian, some even to Iran, anywhere to get out. Life is becoming intolerable there.

HH: Well given that, and this is a key question, given that you think it’s certain that that kind of scale of horror would follow, do the people urging, whether it’s Murtha or anybody else, urging the precipitous withdrawal, will they bear the moral culpability for the slaughter that follows, if in fact, we are obliged to leave?

CH: I know that there are some Democrats who wonder about this in a responsible way, and there are others who worry about it in a more politicized way, thinking in gee, how would we avoid getting blamed if that happened. What they will do is say well, we never asked for the war in the first place, the President cheated us into it, et cetera, et cetera. But that would be a pretty tinny thing to say, if the whole of Iraqi society is denuded and driven back to year zero.

HH: So you’re saying yes, they will bear the moral culpability?

CH: Yes, they will. Yes, I think anyone who talks about withdrawal has to face this question, and indeed has to be faced with it.