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Christopher Hitchens, Journalist; I.F. Stone Fellow, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Mark Danner, Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Professor, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Moderated by Orville Schell, Dean, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:
Q: If there is a moral imperative for regime change in Iraq, is there a similar imperative for regime change in North Korea?
Hitchens: In North Korea, levels of horror occur that Saddam Hussein could only dream of. The citizen is entirely the property of the state and the entire state of society is organized permanently for war. This party state, this fantasy leader, will face and suffer the condemnation of history and will collapse, but under circumstances that might not be favorable to us if we can't help shape them. The difference in this case is that we are not able to influence this outcome militarily. I've been to the Demilitarized Zone that divides Korea. It's only something like a 40-minute drive from the capital city of South Korea, Seoul, which is now, after a long and honorable struggle in which I was proud to play some part, the capital of a thriving democracy. It's within range of an extraordinary number of North Korean weapons systems.
Schell: But do you favor regime change in North Korea?
Hitchens: Yes I certainly do. But I'm saying it cannot be brought about by a military intervention, because it's been war-gamed. Another war on the Korean Peninsula will begin with the destruction of Seoul.
Danner: The question was really about whether, given the administration's statement about weapons of mass destruction and the axis of evil, they weren't being inconsistent in calling the North Korea situation now not a crisis and keeping it off the front page and turning determinatively toward Iraq. I agree with Christopher that you cannot attack North Korea militarily; the risks are too great.
We're a year now from the axis-of-evil speech in which the idea of attacking Iraq was introduced by President Bush. The North Korean situation has declined precipitously; but as inspectors have moved into Iraq and troops have surrounded the country, inspectors have been thrown out of North Korea, it has withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and nuclear material that was under seal and observation has been taken out. The Bush administration thought they could deal with an ideologically fueled disaster on the Korean Peninsula by yelling about it and denouncing Kim Jong Il and not dealing with it diplomatically. That strikes me as much more dangerous to U.S. interests and allies, that we're essentially keeping on the back burner. We found out about the uranium program that was started there in October but it was kept from Americans for a period of weeks while the congressional vote on Iraq went on.
Hitchens: Listen to Mr. Danner: North Korea threw out the inspectors, resumed production, put the uranium rods back into the reactors – did this under an inspection regime. Not a very high vote of confidence in the ability of inspectors to stop proliferation.
Danner: That's a ridiculous point. They pulled out of the inspection regime. The nuclear material was contained for a half dozen years.
Hitchens: Every inducement and every kindness was being shown toward the Kim Jong Il regime while this process was going on, which seems exactly to argue against the reliance upon trust, inspection or verification. These things all exist at the whim of one-party madmen who can negate them at any moment, and we no longer wish to live at their will.
Danner: The regime in place kept this nuclear material under observation for eight years and it worked. To say that throwing out inspectors proves that the inspection regime can't work is to say that the Non-Proliferation Treaty itself simply doesn't work. Without the Non-Proliferation Treaty we would have nuclear regimes all over the world.
Hitchens: It doesn't work with megalomaniac one-party states.
Schell: Why is it proving so hard to build a multilateral coalition behind this war?
Danner: A lot of other people think it's a stupid thing to do. It's all very well to make fun of the French, the Germans. To say that their motives have to do with oil contracts – as if the U.S. didn't have similar motives in Iraq. Our major allies think this is a foolish thing to do because this country can be contained indefinitely.
Hitchens: It isn't that hard to assemble an international coalition. First, the relevant United Nations Security Council resolution was passed unanimously and included the vote of Syria, among others. The only question now is whether the Iraqi contempt for this resolution, which has been admitted by the notorious softy Mr. Blix, will be considered a material breach or not. An objective person cannot be of two minds about that.
Second, I would draw a distinction between the behavior of Mr. Chirac, who built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor a few years ago knowing what he wanted it for, and who as I say is a pimp and on the take; and Herr Schroeder, who has to deal with a public opinion that has a very strong tendency to neutralism and a great reluctance to have German soldiers outside the borders of Germany.
I have as good a claim to be a European as some people. My father's family comes from Cornwall and my mother's family comes from what was once Breslau and is now Wroclaw in Poland; and I'm a member of the International Advisory Board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which contains on its letterhead a very large number of former statesmen from Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, where the preponderance of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact – who favor making an issue of the principle of human rights, as well as its inevitable partner, aggression and terrorism – is impressive to see, and a great deal more impressive than the bleatings of gay Paris.
Schell: If we use force to eliminate a regime we despise, who else is on the list?
Danner: I can't speak to who else is on the list. It's clear that the administration hopes that in some way this will be a lesson to others. It's unclear what kind of lesson will be delivered; it may be a lesson that it is better to have nuclear weapons, as Kim Jung Il does, than to have a program that is aimed toward at some point making them. That is, any regime in the sights of the U.S., or that can be thought to be a rogue regime, had better get nuclear weapons that can detera U.S. invasion as quickly as they can. It's interesting the effect in the last year that the administration has had both by promulgating and including North Korea in this "axis of evil," and by speaking very aggressively to them and suggesting in effect that North Korea will be next – North Korea has responded aggressively in their turn.
Hitchens: If we are to be absolutely callous about this, which I don't necessarily recommend, North Korea can't really threaten anyone except South Korea at present, and conceivably Japan. It does raise the threat that Japan would renounce its anti-nuclear constitution if faced by North Korean nuclear weapons, so there would then be a triangle of nuclear powers in the area – China, North Korea and Japan – that would be very destabilizing. And Taiwan conceivably too, that's much worse. Most intriguing to me was the help that North Korea got from Pakistan in developing its program, trading missiles and so on, because obviously the thing that was wrong with the axis-of-evil speech was not the two main states that it did mention, which the president got exactly right – North Korea and Iraq – but the one it mentioned wrongly, Iran, which is in transition to democracy. If you consult the Iranian street, you'll find they're all solidly in favor of regime change in Iraq next door, and looking forward to it as an ally in their own struggle for transformation. The president was unwilling to name the two regimes that really were behind Al Qaeda: the Saudi Arabian oligarchy and the Pakistani secret police.
Schell: We're up to our neck in nation building in Afghanistan, and if we enter Iraq we will be over our head in nation building. Comment?
Hitchens: A million and a half Afghans have returned to their country, an enormous humanitarian crisis was averted, and though it isn't true that all Afghan women have been emancipated from the worst kind of totalitarianism, it's true of quite a large and growing number of them; and furthermore, Afghanistan cannot threaten us anymore. Obviously it would be good if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was building an autobahn system in Afghanistan and helping to train an Afghan national army. Afghanistan has nothing with which to pay for this – it's a mendicant country – whereas Iraq, when emancipated from beggary and exploitation, is potentially able to pay for itself and its reconstitution. It has an enormous pool of talented, educated and qualified people upon which to draw. So to say that you cannot help both Afghans and the Iraqis at the same time is to use them against each other in quite a shameful way, and also to avoid what we're really talking about, which is how likely is it that we can simply disengage from Iraq at this point?
Danner: Afghanistan is indeed in some ways better off. On the other hand there are pockets of Al Qaeda around the country, Mullah Omar is still at large, warlords control most of the country outside Kabul, the U.S. has opposed using its own military forces – or those of its allies – outside the capital and has been very chary about rebuilding. I agree that it isn't perhaps necessarily an argument to use about Iraq. But it does suggest that the U.S. has a relatively limited attention span. This administration came to power very suspicious about nation building, highly critical of the Clinton administration's efforts in Kosovo and Bosnia, which it called "foreign policy as social work," and does not support long-term occupations and rebuilding of countries.
Hitchens: The question I keep trying to face people with is this: Who imagines that the task of rescuing and recuperating a maimed and bleeding Iraq is not going to come to us whatever we do? So the question is: In what way will we be helping Iraq to recover itself? In what way will we be helping its society, its industry and its people? The option of not doing this does not exist.
Danner: That's not true.
Schell: What do you think will happen in the next few weeks?
Danner: The president seems determined to go forward with this war. One of the lines he used in his State of the Union address – "If Saddam Hussein does not disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him" – comes essentially from you; it is a response to public opinion polls and other indications on the part of the American people of skepticism about this war. That kind of apprehension has caused this administration to alter its policy. We should realize that we are doing something important, that what you think matters and is being taken into account.
Hitchens: Everyone should decide how they would vote themselves if they were to be a delegate of the United Nations – not how they would vote if they knew how everyone else was going to vote. You were right earlier when you said that the Bush administration came in skeptical of nation building, that they had been skeptical of previous interventions to rescue or recuperate Bosnia and Kosovo, and you would have been even righter to say that the oil industry types that are well-known to be close to the administration made as their first demand in respect to Iraq that the sanctions be lifted and that normal business be resumed because the U.S. was being cheated of so much trade in the region.
The Bush administration came into power hoping to conciliate the Iraqi regime and hoping for a quiet life in the Middle East. It has taken quite a lot to change its mind and the big change is this: We know that the enemies of our civilization and of Arab-Muslim civilization have emerged from what is actually the root cause of political slum of client states from Saudi Arabia through Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere that has been allowed to dominate the region under U.S. patronage, and uses people and resources as if they were a gas station with a few fly-blown attendants. To the extent that this policy, this mentality, has now changed in the administration, to that the extent that their review of that is sincere and the conclusions that they draw from it are sincere, should be welcomed. It's a big improvement to be intervening in Iraq against Saddam Hussein instead of in his favor. It's a regime change for us too.
What do I think is going to happen? I've been in London and Washington a lot lately and I can tell you that the spokesmen for Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush walk around with a look of extraordinary confidence on their faces as if they know something that when disclosed, will dissolve the doubts, the informational doubts at any rate, of people who wonder if there is enough evidence.
Danner: It's amazing they've been able to keep it to themselves for so long.
Hitchens: I know perfectly well that there are many people who would not be persuaded by this evidence even if was dumped on their own doorstep, because the same people didn't believe that it was worth fighting in Afghanistan even though the connection between the Taliban and Al Qaeda was clear.
But I think we know enough. What will happen will be this: The president will give an order, there will then occur in Iraq a show of military force like nothing probably the world has ever seen. It will be rapid and accurate and overwhelming enough to deal with an army or a country many times the size of Iraq. That will be greeted by the majority of Iraqi and Kurdish people as a moment of emancipation, which will be a pleasure to see, and then the hard work of the reconstitution of Iraqi society and the repayment of our debt - some part of our debt to them - can begin, and I say bring it on.
Marwan Muasher
Arianna Huffington
Ben Stein