MR. DANNER:  It’s clear that we have major differences here.  [Laughter.] 

MR. HITCHENS:  You have no idea. 

MR. DANNER:  Regarding not simply the level of the threat to the United States, but the possibility of dealing with it through ways other than war.  The points to be made about the events of the late 1980s are to be made because those are the events on which the Administration has made its case for war.  Bob Scheer is perfectly right in saying nothing recently has happened.  The crisis over Iraq.  What is the crisis over Iraq?  Have we been attacked?  Of course the Bush Administration would say yes, September 11th. And, sotto voce, actually Iraq was responsible for that.  And this has been a very politically lucrative strategy for them.   

But the fact is, when they’re pointing at events that Saddam Hussein is responsible for, that should make us want to attack, invade and occupy Iraq, they point to events 15 years ago.  This should cause us to be skeptical.  It should cause us to look at Iraq and try to understand what kind of threat it does pose, and how that threat can be dealt with.  And it should cause us to look at the Bush Administration and try to ask ourselves why is it doing what it’s doing.   

Now, I agree with Michael Ignatieff that containment is difficult.  I agree with him on that.  When a megalomaniacal dictator gets nuclear weapons, this is very threatening.  I mean, think for a moment if Stalin had gotten nuclear weapons.  Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  Stalin did get nuclear weapons.  The United States followed, for a half century, a policy of patient containment, and it won, and there was no war.   

And one could argue that it would have been enormously bracing, for the forces of freedom, to attack the Soviet Union, remove that immediate threat, remove the weapons of mass destruction, and liberate the Soviet people.  Indeed, people did make that argument in the early ‘50s – Curtis LeMay, Douglas MacArthur, others.  They were obsessed with the idea of roll back.  President Eisenhower decided, in 1956, that the United States would not follow this policy, and the Hungarian Revolution was crushed as a result.  These are terrible events.  But the United States must make a decision based on its national interest, on the threats facing it, and on its role in the world.   

We haven’t talked enough, I think, tonight about the effects this policy has had on our alliances, on our standing in the world.  [Applause.]  And we haven’t spoken enough, I think, of the risks that a war will pose to the political future of the Middle East and to terrorism on America’s streets.  [Applause.]  Members of Al Qaeda will never be convinced to love the United States, but the political dynamic that Al Qaeda is struggling to put into place is being actively advanced by the Bush Administration.  [Applause.]  That political dynamic envisions a war of Islamicists against the West.  It envisions an attack on regimes friendly to the United States, such as those in Cairo and Saudi Arabia, overthrowing their regimes, and replacing them with Islamist ones.  It will benefit greatly from this policy.  We will make no one love us, it’s true, but we will make a lot of people who matter hate us. 

This was the process set in train by 9/11.  Now, should we make policy based on what we fear of Al Qaeda?  Should we let them dominate our policy?  Absolutely not.  Should we act intelligently, with an eye toward the politics of this region?  I would argue yes.  And I would put alongside, or on top of the list of risks that Michael Ignatieff set out before you, the risk that you will start a politics of anti-Americanism and a wave of repression throughout the Middle East as a result of this invasion.  We say we are doing it to advance democracy.  Already in Jordan, already in Egypt, security forces are making their arrests.  They are making their arrests in anticipation of uprisings, or at least demonstrations that they believe will accompany this war.   

This will not lead to greater democracy.  It will lead to greater repression.  It will lead to forcing opposition into the basement.  And when it is forced into the basement, it comes out in noxious forms, as we’ve seen with Al Qaeda.  The Islamist movement that Al Qaeda represents was on the downturn, the dramatic downturn before September 11th.  It was on the downturn in Algeria, in Chechnya, in Bosnia.  All of the battles of the ‘90s had ended in defeat.  

Al Qaeda cannot defeat the United States, but the United States, I would argue, can defeat the United States by…  [Applause.]  ...by unleashing a war that, indeed, could be a 72-hour wonder, it’s possible.  Or it could drag on.  It could kill only 10,000 or 50,000, as the Gulf War did, by the way, and that would be a good war.  Fifty thousand dead, no problem.  Or it could kill many more.  We don’t know that.  Nobody on this stage can predict it.  But that uncertainty, to me, belongs on that list of risks, very prominently on that list of risks. 

Now, Michael Ignatieff talked about the difficulty of containment.  I would argue that there is a possibility for a deal here in which inspectors can be bolstered, a longer deadline can be set out, benchmarks can be placed, a declaratory policy put in place in which any sites suspicious, that are not being opened to inspectors, can be struck from the air, and war crimes tribunal started modeled on the Hague to try the Iraqi regime.  All of this is quite possible.  Two-thirds of Iraqi territory is covered by no fly zones.  The rest is crawling with inspectors.  The idea that they represent an immediate threat to the United States is ridiculous, but we, we represent an immediate threat to the United States.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  And now to Michael Ignatieff. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  I wanted to pick up a couple of points, one of them raised by Robert Scheer.  And I invite him to correct me if I heard him wrong or misunderstood what he was saying.  But he was saying the option is between war and waiting for four months.  I mean, that is…and then that would fit in with what Mark Danner was saying, which is the alternative is between war now and an enhanced and strengthened inspection regime along the lines proposed by other governments.   

I think my difficulty with that is simply I don’t believe that a coercive inspections regime is credible for one second, and can be maintained for one second without precisely the threat of the use of force which the other people on the Security Council have threatened to veto under any circumstances.  The hard reality, the painful reality is that I would not be in favor of military action if I believed that the Security Council was prepared to go through with a coercive and intrusive inspections program that would deliver the results that you claim.  I simply think that we have got where we are and got some forms of minimal, notional compliance simply because the United States has stepped up to the line with a quarter of a million troops.  

And it seems to me that the wait for four months argument is only credible if Jacques Chirac had not said what he said, which is I’m going to veto this under any circumstances.  This seems to me an exercise in bad faith in the sense that you can’t have both of these propositions at once and be credible.  We have been here before.  We have had a coercive inspections regime that was slowly taken apart not because there was any lack on the part of the previous inspections regime to be coercive and intrusive, as Mark and Robert are suggesting, but simply because the Security Council simply didn’t want to threaten or deploy force to make it work.  I mean, what one has to think through is whether there really is a credible, sustainable alternative here which will deliver what we want.  I don’t see it. 

I also think that, moving on to the second issue that has been much discussed, particularly by Mark, is the dismissal of the threat, and a point made about Stalin and containment.  I think the Stalin argument has merit, but it has a problem, which is that it relates to a world which has vanished.  I don’t think that we are in that world anymore.  We’re in a world where the illicit transfer of lethal technologies, the illicit transfer of technologies that can cause mass casualty harms right here is the world we’re living in.   

We can deter states, we can interdict shipments, but we’ve now reached a world where, it seems to me, we’re dealing with terrorists who are undeterrable.  And the key issue is to prevent them from acquiring capabilities that can, you know, destroy the city of Los Angeles or kill everybody in this room.  And this seems to me to be a fundamentally different reality than the one that we faced when we were dealing with state to state deterrence in the Cold War.  

The final point I would make is that I hear in both Robert’s and Mark’s comments a kind of “dirty hands” argument.  There was applause when Robert said we can’t really trust the Americans to do the right thing in this case because in previous instances they have been aligned and compromised in moral, illicit ways with this regime, with the Saddam regime and other regimes.  And I think that’s a kind of what’s called a dirty hands argument.  No one can do anything clean if their hands have ever been dirty.  And I find that an example of a kind of enfeebling moral perfectionism.  That is to say…  [Applause.] 

MR. HITCHENS:  You must mean relativism. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  Sorry? 

MR. HITCHENS:  You must mean enfeebling moral relativism.  There was nothing perfectionist in that argument. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  No, it is perfectionist in the sense that it says you can only do good actions if your hands are perfectly clean at all times.  That’s what I mean by perfection. 

MR. HITCHENS:  It’s still relativism. 

MR. DANNER:  It’s not the argument, though. 

MR. HITCHENS:  As stated, it was relativism. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  Well, many good actions, consequential actions, are accomplished in this world by people with dubious records.  As I said when I concluded my opening remarks, you’re not required, if you believe that war is regretfully the only option that’s actually real and credible here, you’re not required to believe that the United States is the last best hope of mankind.  You’re not required to forget the very pertinent points that Mark and Robert have made about the ghastly mistakes of American foreign policy in this region over the last 30 years.  You are asked to decide what we do now, what are our options now, what credible options are available now.   

And with due respect to both Robert and Mark, I just do not hear a credible, deliverable strategy because the will, the intention, the desire which you clearly feel about this – I’m not questioning your intentions, I’m not questioning your desire to restrict, control, dismantle this infernal regime of weapons of mass destruction – I am saying that the strategic partners of the United States will not pull the trigger.  And that’s a challenge that you have to provide an answer to, because otherwise there simply is no other way to take these weapons away.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  Robert Scheer. 

MR. SCHEER:  Well, first of all I implore people not to applaud anything I might say because…  ...it will prove that my argument is invalid, and we don’t want that.  In general, this is actually the tactic that’s been used to dismiss public opinion throughout the world.  The people who demonstrate the largest demonstration in the history of Berlin since the Second World War, they’re dismissed as, what, naïve pacifists.  The French, who demonstrate— 

MR. HITCHENS:  No, a large number of naïve pacifists. 

MR. SCHEER: —against the war who, after all, a number of whom fought, families fought in Algeria and Vietnam, lost quite a few in the First World War, experienced bombings in their country.  Maybe they’re speaking out of the experience of imperialism in opposing such a cause of action.  In Christopher Hitchens’ native country, here we have the example of Tony Blair, who claims to be, again, interested in exporting democracy, and is totally indifferent to the feelings of 80 percent of his public.  The argument is that the true test of leadership is being indifferent to the public in a democratic society; otherwise you’re a wimp.   

Let me straighten out a few things here.  First of all, I am for action.  I supported, in my column, Mavis Leno and the Feminist Majority and ultimately Bill Clinton when they said that we had a responsibility to remove the monsters of our creation, the Taliban, which not 15 years before or 40 years before, or five years before, but in that moment were oppressing the majority of their population.  I defended the attack on the Taliban quite apart from Al Qaeda because I said we put these people in power and we trained them.  Secondly, once they were harboring Al Qaeda, and once these people attacked our embassies, clearly we had a right to go after them.  So it is a false argument.  

And if these inspectors, informed, presumably, by our intelligence agencies, find these weapons of mass destruction that are threatening, find some evidence that any of this is being given to terrorists, I am in favor of action and for shutting them down.  We bomb Iraq all the time.  Don’t tell me that our hundred billion dollar a year observation system cannot find the buildings where stuff is being produced and our planes can’t take it out.  It’s just not true.  [Applause.]  So that is, I think, a false argument. 

And let me say this thing about North Korea slipping…North Korea has actively worked with Pakistan.  That’s how Pakistan got their nuclear option.  It’s very frightening, as you well know.  It is a country which…Christopher always talks about religion as being the, I guess what, the…what was the thing Marx said?  Opium of the people— 

MR. HITCHENS:  No, he didn’t.  No, he didn’t. 

MR. SCHEER: —that he thinks is more dangerous.   

MR. HITCHENS:  Didn’t say that. 

MR. SCHEER:  He thinks it’s the crack of the people. 

MR. HITCHENS:  No, he didn’t say that, either. 

MR. SCHEER:  The fact is that Pakistan, which has these weapons, which got them through cooperation with [those people], just yesterday was taken off, finally off our sanctions list, finally, not to be punished in any way for having this dictatorship, which we were upset at, at one point.  We don’t care about democracy in Pakistan.  And in fact, one of the great ironies is what if the Muslim majority comes to power, or threaten to come to power, as in Algeria, and wants to do all these terrible things?  Then we suddenly won’t believe in democracy anymore.  But in the case of Pakistan, where you have active nuclear force.   

What about Iran?  Just in the last two weeks we found that Iran – the one country that will most immediately benefit from the destruction of Iraq is Iran, clearly, three times the population, historical enemy, has this Shiite population that might be sympathetic across the border – Iran announced very proudly that they’re developing nuclear weapons.  Iran, I would point out to you, was one of the countries we were once very frightened of.   

However, I would also point out to you, and the reason I do think the dirty hands – I don’t go quite all the way with Christopher and think that Henry Kissinger should be hung or something – but I do think dirty hands matter.  And the fact that Elliott Abrams is now in charge of the Mideast at the National Security Council does matter when he’s the guy who did the trade with Iran and the Contras.  [Applause.]  How could it not matter?   

And by the way, just to put this argument to rest about the Jewish conspiracy, which was, I think, effectively exposed by Sy Hersh in The New Yorker, the problem with some of the Jewish people in this administration is not that they’re pro Israel, it’s that they are against arms control.  Richard Perle was the guy at Reykjavik who was opposed to Ronald Reagan making a deal with Gorbachev.  Richard Perle has been opposed to every arms control agreement.  They have never believed in any inspection regime.  That’s what we’re talking about.   

And you throw in Elliott Abrams – but by the way, it’s hardly Jewish people.  Rumsfeld, who we’re going to now trust, is the guy who in 1984, after the U.N. concluded that Iraq had used chemical weapons, went to Saddam Hussein and said there’s no problem here, we’re going to recognize you, we’re going to have relations, we’re going to give you aid and everything.  That was Donald Rumsfeld.  So the question of dirty hands, let me say, is not that people cannot be redeemed.  Obviously they can.  The problem is we have to ask what motives were they acting out of before?   

Now, I know Dennis Kucinich got beat over the head, and no one is going to ever mention the word that he used, oil, okay?  [Applause.]  Oil.  Oil.  You’re not allowed to talk about it.  Well, let me tell you, we didn’t go to war with Iraq over human rights when it invaded Kuwait.  What are the human rights we were defending in Kuwait?  The right of the emir to have 70 virgins each week?  We went to war because we cared about the oil, you know?  That’s why we went to war.  [Applause.]  And if you have this idea historically that for the United States to now move into the second most important source of oil in the world and take over and run it through an American general, if that does not smack of imperialism, I don’t know what does.  And that’s why people are suspicious.  [Applause.] 

It seems to me the question is not a distrust of America.  The American people, I am amazed at how many Americans see through this war.  We don’t have a draft, they’ve been lied to systematically, they were frightened by September 11th, and yet we have a large number of Americans, close to a majority, that are opposed to this war.  I love this country.  I love Americans.  It’s the people who act as maniacs in the name of America that I am afraid of.  [Applause.]  That’s the concern. 

MR. WASSERMAN:  We might follow up his remarks with some questions, in which I’ll try to be an equal opportunity provocateur, but let’s carry on with the argument that Robert Scheer has initiated, and let’s turn to perhaps both Christopher Hitchens and Michael Ignatieff.  Each, in their own way, can perhaps answer for a cynic who might ask, how is it, Mr. Hitchens, you, a scourge of Henry Kissinger, deeply skeptical of his motives and intentions, why now have you placed your faith in the ability of such Kissinger wannabes as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle and Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld?  What gives you such confidence that they will be able to make the world safe for democracy when they have evinced, critics would argue, such contempt for it at home?  [Applause.] 

MR. HITCHENS:  I should first say that I don’t seek the execution of Henry Kissinger.  I’m unalterably opposed to capital punishment, but I do think…  ...I do think he should be charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes.  [Applause.]  And I think if charged, would be convicted.   

What Marx said about religion, by the way, was that it was the heart of the heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed creature, the spirit of the spiritless situation, an opiate for the people, and that criticism had plucked the flowers from the chain not so that men could wear the chain without consolation, but so that they could break the chain and cull the living flower, which I think is much better put. 

Now, on the question of Henry Kissinger realpolitik, as it were, well, perhaps it’s escaped the attention of many people that every member of Kissinger Associates known to me, including its chairman, is against this war and against the regime change policy, and always has been, and that the Saudi Arabian regime, which I think has a pretty oleaginous influence in Washington, is against the regime change policy, too, and is a very odd way for the oil companies to be behaving, and the oil lobby to be carrying on.   

I’m not one of those who thinks that oil cannot be mentioned, as if it was some kind of ghastly bodily secretion that was too indecent to discuss.  And I don’t think, no, I don’t think it’s a prudent policy to allow nine percent of the world’s energy resources to be at the mercy of a man who blew up the Kuwaiti oil fields, if you remember, while he was leaving.  I’m sorry he didn’t democratize Kuwait enough.  I’m sorry we didn’t, either.  But the Kuwaitis are a lot better off for his departure, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s silly to say they are not, or to imply it.  He blew those oil fields up when he’d been warned not to, and he blew them up when the act of vandalism could do him no good, and he flooded the Gulf with burning oil.  And this is the man who’s believed to understand deterrence and containment.  No.   

It’s just as true to say of the earlier policy of successive administrations of backing Saddam Hussein, helping him in the Gulf War, helping him to re-flag tankers and generally arming and covering up for him.  That was blood for oil when the United States was on his side and allowing him to slaughter Iraqis and Kurds and invade other countries.  That was blood for oil just as much.   

So I’m glad to have Robert Scheer’s admission that it can be true, only it seems, in his case, for Afghanistan.  It can be true that earlier crimes and blunders give you an extra responsibility.  They mean you have to do something to repair the crimes and blunders that you committed.  And one of my reasons for supporting this policy is precisely because it’s a responsibility we’ve inherited for having got it so wrong so long and for oil, okay?  Nobody interested in safeguarding oil wants to do it by war.  It’s much easier to do it by client state or proxy regime.   

Here will be my defense, then, of Paul Wolfowitz.  Wolfowitz has been arguing since ‘78 that it is unwise for the United States to rely on client regimes.  He began this argument as a critique of the Shah, he made it as a critique of Saddam Hussein, later of Ferdinand Marcos, and still later, when he was Ambassador in the Philippines of the Suharto regime, that bases at this price are not worth having.  If you have an American presence in a country, and you need a dictatorship to guarantee the presence, then you’ll lose both, and so you should.  And that democratization movement that began with the overthrow of Marcos and went into South Korea and into Taiwan and then into Tiananmen Square, and then later into Eastern Europe, is one of the great creative events in my lifetime.   

As far as I can see, he’s been – I can only speak for him – on the right side of all of that.  And you may notice that Henry Kissinger was on the other side each time.  Pro Saudi, pro Chinese Communist Party, pro dictatorship in South Korea, and even considering the revolutions in Eastern Europe to be destabilizing.  This is actually a policy that can be defended almost as one that is quixotic.  People say it’s risky.  All right, then, I’ll admit it.  That’s part of what I like about it.  It does take the risk that democracy and self-government is both more desirable, more stable and more defensible than dictatorship or proxy rule.  And I think it can be consistently argued. 

Now, just one thing on this thing I’ve been taunted about about allies.  I can’t really tell you why it is that if 90 percent of people disagreed with me I would still hold the position I do.  I’ll just let you guess.  If I’m told, “Well, you may say that, but I know ten other people who don’t,” I’m not impressed.  How does that affect the argument?  It doesn’t affect it at all.  But I know that the same people would have been telling me until recently, were, in fact, telling me till recently, “Ah, look who supports the policy.  Turkey supports it.”  Now it doesn’t.  Saudi Arabia never did.  Many of the regional despotisms don’t want it, for obvious reasons.  I would say the less the better.  The fewer the better.   

There is a policy of unilateralism, pursued by the government of France, which built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor knowing what he wanted it for, which is entirely oil driven, which intervenes colonially in Africa with force at any time of its choosing, and which tests nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, not caring about the wishes of the neighboring countries or their inhabitants.  One day…  [Applause.]  ...and whose president had to run for office to stay out of jail and preserve his immunity on very serious charges of corruption, which include the charges of a long relationship with the Iraqi Ba’ath Party.  I can say no more than that Monsieur Chirac has never refused a bribe, and Mr. Saddam Hussein has never failed to offer one.  I know no more than that for now.  [Applause.]   

But I am waiting, I am holding out for the day that I see the word “unilateral” in the New York Times next to the word “French,” and then I’ll be more impressed by the…it seems to me that there’s no discredit here at all in the enmity the United States has found for itself on this.  It rather redounds to the credit of the President and his policy.  Thank you.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  A two-part question for Michael Ignatieff, both rhetorical.  One, you decry the spectre of the illicit transfer of lethal technology to third parties, other countries, brigands of one kind or another.  But doesn’t it strike you as surpassingly paradoxical that the single most devastating terrorist attack on this country to date was committed by men who bought their weapons of mass destruction from Home Depot?  Box cutters.  Isn’t this spectre that we are now going to war, or seem to be about to go to war to prevent, doesn’t it seem to you misplaced when, at least by one measure, the real weapons are here at home?   

That’s one part of it.  The second part is you paint a very rosy picture of an allied – well, I use the word advisedly – an American-British victory in Iraq, of the prosperity that will be the democracy of a freed Iraq, so that they may use their oil money, as you put it, for the rehabilitation of their roads, schools, and hospitals.  But doesn’t it give you pause when, in the largest democracy of the world, it has used so little of its prosperity to do the very same thing?  [Applause.]   

MR. IGNATIEFF:  As to question one, look, nobody thinks that if you replace the Saddam regime, that that eliminates threats to the United States.  That’s just not a credible proposition.  It’s obvious that low tech did as much damage on September 11^th.  But we need to think seriously about the possibility of a mass casualty bioterrorist attack.  It is the case that the sources of those awful weapons could come from a lot of other places than Saddam’s regime.  I quite concede that point.  But he’s one source, and he’s a source with intention.  He’s a source with purpose, he’s a source with a motive.  And he’s a powerful ruler of an oil producing state.   

I’m simply saying that the public policy issue that citizens in this room have to think about is everybody’s – one side of this house is saying the threat is very low, and I’m saying the threat is maybe five percent.  But I’m not happy about five percent.  I’m not happy about three percent if we’re talking about mass casualty terrorism devastating a city like Los Angeles.  We’ve got to rethink the issue of what threat here is too much threat.  Nobody on this side of the house is saying that if you take out Saddam these threats are eliminated.  These threats continue.  And one of the most difficult— 

MAN IN AUDIENCE:  Who’s next to be taken out? 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  Sorry? 

MAN IN AUDIENCE:  Who do we take out next? 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  I mean, in answer to that question, I think Saddam Hussein belongs in a very exclusive club all of his own, thanks very much.  I have no desire to do this except under the most pressing necessity.  The case I’m making is this is a pressing necessity, not the prelude to a march around the world.  

Second, on the question of an after Iraq scenario, I didn’t paint a rosy picture.  I painted a picture full of risk and hazard.  Any responsible person looking at this post war world in Iraq has to be honest about the difficulties.  Deep divisions in the country, possibilities of conflict, absence of a democratic tradition, a police tyranny and a police terror that has rooted right into the guts and heart and soul of 25 million people so that they’re afraid even to dream a free dream, right?  So nobody in their right minds thinks any transition is going to be easy. 

I’ve walked the ground, however, in Afghanistan.  I’ve walked the ground in Kosovo.  I’ve walked the ground in Bosnia.  The American investment of force and power in those three regions has made lives better for ordinary human beings.  Not perfect, not wonderful, not as nice as Los Angeles, but a hell of a lot better than what was there before America used military force.  [Applause.] 

So nobody is spinning out rosy scenarios.  I just point out that when Robert was saying – and again, we don’t want to polarize this falsely.  Nobody on this side of the argument is saying you’re against strong measures, you don’t care about Saddam, you’re prepared to appease him.  That’s never been my position with either of your views.  And it’s perfectly obvious to me that Robert wants to take strong and resolute measures in respect of Saddam.  But what he said, for example, was we should bomb him from the air, we should take tough measures in the autumn.  But the hard reality of that is that that’s a certain kind of toughness that still leaves 25 million people in jail, right?  It’s a form of toughness that does some of the job, but in my judgment, not all of the job.  [Applause.] 

MR. HITCHENS:  Well said. 

MR. WASSERMAN:  And let me turn to you, Mark, and you may, of course, answer this in any way you wish.  What about the argument which has been put very forcefully by both Messrs. Hitchens and Ignatieff that precisely because the United States in the past did a great deal to support the Ba’athist Party into power, precisely because it did a lot to coddle and turn a blind eye to the depredations that Saddam Hussein unleashed against his own people, that all the more reason that we owe a blood death to the Iraqi people which we cannot, in good conscience, walk away from, and that to define our national interests so selfishly as to exclude the 25 million people who are unable to liberate themselves would be an ignoble thing, and it’s a risk that we ought to take to remain true to ourselves as a people who ought to be able to hold up their heads in the world arena despite what others fear might be unleashed, and that this is, indeed, a good and noble cause? 

MR. DANNER:  Well, that was very eloquently stated.  You know, Colin Powell said, during Bosnia, when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and he didn’t want to intervene, that when he heard the words “surgical strike,” he headed for his bunker.  I must say that when I hear moralism mixed with foreign affairs from high officials, I head for my bunker.  I am not trying to make the dirty hands argument here.  The United States can act for good in the world.  I supported intervention in Bosnia.  I wish that it had happened much, much, much earlier than it did, after everybody was dead.   

I am not making a dirty hands argument, I am making an unclouded minds argument.  That is – I mean, I’m gratified, frankly, that we’ve talked about the past so much on this panel tonight.  I’m a great fan of the past, particularly the recent past, because I think it leads us to look at things as they are.  And that’s what I’m pleading with this audience to do.  I think Michael Ignatieff’s sentiments are very noble.  I’m sympathetic to many of them.  But I think by his own arguments, the calculus of risks he makes is not reasonable.  He said a moment ago that if there’s five percent risk of Saddam giving chemical weapons or biological weapons to terrorists, that’s too much, therefore we should invade, attack, occupy Iraq.   

I would ask him, what percentage risk does he think there is if we attack Iraq and occupy it?  That is, is the risk reduced by fighting a war in which he has absolutely no incentive to contain himself?  I think the notion that Saddam Hussein is not containable is rubbish.  In 1990, he had weapons of mass destruction.  That is, he had chemical weapons, certainly.  He was told in no uncertain terms by James Baker, among others, that use of these weapons would bring most severe consequences.  He didn’t use them.  He used them against the Iranians, who by the way used them back in their turn.  So the notion that he can’t be contained and deterred is completely unsupported.   

Or that he’s erratic.  We knew in advance about the attack on Iran.  We knew about three weeks to a month in advance about the invasion of Kuwait.  He did it very slowly, so our intelligence satellites could see the disposition of forces.  And we essentially, perhaps stupidly, gave him a green light, in effect, or what he took to be a green light.  So this notion of this insane dictator who is just doing whatever he wants and who will ravage the world I think is misplaced.  I don’t think history bears it out. 

We’ve said a word here tonight about North Korea.  North Korea has two nuclear weapons.  By the end of the summer it will have eight.  The single thing this administration has achieved with respect to North Korea is take it from a regime that had two to taking it to a regime that will soon have eight and more.  And the Administration and the general policy of letting the Iraq tail wag the world dog is saying, you know what, we’re not going to pay attention to this until Iraq is “done,” quote, unquote.  Now, you want to talk about irresponsible policies?  That’s an irresponsible policy.  [Applause.] 

MR. HITCHENS:  Unbelievable. 

MR. DANNER:  One should add, by the way, that Christopher’s argument that North Korea demonstrates the necessity of attacking, invading and occupying Iraq has a number of vital flaws.  North Korea deters us from attacking it by its conventional forces.  It can level Seoul in a matter of hours.  It’s a fact of geography and a fact of conventional armaments.  We have to deal with the nuclear question in North Korea, and we will do it, eventually, diplomatically.  The question is how terrible that deal – for eventually there will be a deal – how terrible that deal will be.  And every day the prospective deal gets worse. 

Finally, Michael’s point about the Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement and its necessity for U.S. policy.  I agree with him wholeheartedly on this point.  I would point out that George Bush only yesterday finally announced, after saying he would not, a so-called roadmap for peace, which other nations have been pushing him to do.  He did it at the instance of Tony Blair, to try to protect him domestically, and he did it in essentially pulling the rug out from the entire premise of the so-called roadblock.  That is, he said it was a basis for discussions.  The idea that this government, which has supported Ariel Sharon in everything he’s done, which has given him no incentive to stop settlement activity or to expand them, will at some point force Sharon to do this I think beggars reality and beggars what we see in front of us.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  Robert Scheer, it’s probably a fool’s mission to look for consistency in foreign policy, as it is in much of the rest of life, particularly in moral terms, but why shouldn’t the United States seek to unseat a sawdust Caesar who has certainly in the past, and may yet in the future, deploy terrible weapons, not only against his own people, but others as well?  Not because our ability to do so is constrained elsewhere in the world, but because as a matter of opportunity, we can and we ought to do so because it’s the right thing to do. 

MR. SCHEER:  Well, I guess I don’t believe it is the right thing to do, in general, to make other people’s history for them.  And I think was it Marx who said the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  [Laughter.]  It seems to me the irony of the whole Cold War period is that we ended up being on the side of as many horrible regimes as the Communists did, even though our motives were clearly superior.  We supported as many dictatorships, we oppressed as many people.  So I am very wary of intervention except in extreme situations where you can show genocide.   

The reason I mention this thing about going against Saddam Hussein, if you could actually show evidence – which our CIA says doesn’t exist, that was their first report – if you could show any evidence at all of where the stuff is made, of their lying to the inspectors.  But in fact, what we’re objecting to now, it seems, is an inspection process that is working, that is vigorous, that is getting rid of weapons, that is telling us what’s going on there.  And why in the world would we be against knowledge?  That’s what I don’t understand.  We have satellites, we have all sorts of spy intercepts.  If we know where these weapons are, why don’t we tell Hans Blix?  That’s what I don’t understand.  Why are we…?  It seems to me actually criminal to hold back this information. 

Now, where we really have a disagreement here is…my green light just went on, so I don’t know if that means I start my seven minutes or not.   

MR. HITCHENS:  Geez, it just started? 

MR. SCHEER:  Where we have our real disagreement, it seems to me, is whether history began with September 11^th.  It went off again, Christopher, you don’t have to be too alarmed.  [Laughter.]  But this idea that history and terrorism began with September 11^th is absolute nonsense.  First of all, as was pointed out, the September 11^th attack did not involve weapons of mass destruction.  And that line about Home Depot was taken from one of my columns, Wasserman.  But there’s been terror.  In fact, Bulgaria, which is one of our supporters now, no one’s bothered to ask the Bulgarians are they the ones who tried to kill the Pope?  Remember that one?  The Bulgarian plot against the Pope.   

And we used to think of these – now we think of the Communists as stable, reasonable people that you could deal with containment.  That’s not what I remember.  I remember Tom Dooley and the stories of the bloody rampage of the Vietnamese against Catholics, and that’s why we had to intervene.  I remember the yellow horde, the Chinese ants that were going to come sweeping down, the horrible KGB terrorists that were threatening everyone in the world and were behind terror all over the world.  You know, we’ve reinvented history here now that Saddam Hussein is the first guy to come along who may support terror.   

The fact is Pakistan supported the Taliban.  Pakistan supported Al Qaeda.  You know, they helped them, they aided them after they blew up our embassy.  So this idea that somehow we have this totally new phenomena is, to my mind, false.  And what I would suggest – take the case of Qaddafi and Libya.  Well, who ever even talks about Qaddafi anymore?  Qaddafi wasn’t – to answer your question, Steve – isn’t he someone we should have taken out?  But we didn’t take him out.  And nobody ever talks about Qaddafi anymore.  And we didn’t take Castro out.  And yes, you could say those people live in jail.  But, you know, you could have said that about the Russians, right?  Two hundred million people living and, what, a billion people in China?   

But you know what?  History has a way of being made by people other than Wolfowitz and Kissinger.  And one of the great weapons in that is normalcy and trade and contact, and not turning people into the devil, and not saying that you won’t talk to them.  What happened with North Korea?  All right, we had an imperfect relationship under Clinton, but we were talking to them.  Why can’t we follow South Korea’s lead and deal with North Korea?  They said give us a promise that you’re not going to attack us.  Why is that such a hard promise to give?  I don’t understand that. 

MR. WASSERMAN:  We’ll now have two minutes of rebuttal from each of the panelists and a bit of summing up. 

MR. HITCHENS:  Wow.  On the terror connection – I better be quick then.  Do a thought experiment.  On the 12th of September, 2001, Saddam Hussein calls in his chief of intelligence and says, “Do you know anything about these guys who did this yesterday?”  “No, Mr. President, never heard of them.  Don’t know a thing about it.”  The guy wouldn’t live out the day if that was his answer.  The Abu Nidal organization, which used to be as synonymous with terror as bin Laden is now, was headquartered in Baghdad.  I went to interview Abu Nidal there.  It wasn’t hard to do.  He had a villa.  He had a phone number.  He was a political extension of the Ba’ath Party, of the Iraqi state.   

Iraq openly boasts of its support for the suicide murderers in Palestine, and it has sheltered Al Qaeda members, numbers of them, on its territory since September the 11^th, whereas the Pakistanis and the Saudis have ceased to do so, and are, in any case, more or less under American scrutiny.  So the double standard thing there simply doesn’t work.  Yes, Iraq has always been an arsenal and backer of international gangsterism and remains so.  To doubt this is foolish. 

There is something inherently unstable about dictatorship and inherently aggressive about it.  Now, I really don’t feel that anything that’s been said in reply to that proposition can alter that fact.  The plain fact of the matter is that Iraq and North Korea are different.  They are exorbitant totalitarian regimes.  They’re not just other bad guys.  People who make that comparison don’t know anything about the sort of regime that exists there, the endless slavery and coercion.  And yet they say, “why don’t we go around and destroy all the other bad guys while we’re about it,” and they know perfectly well that if that was the Unites States’ policy, which it isn’t, they would describe it as imperialist, overreaching and quixotic.  So I really think be serious, okay?  Get real. 

MR. WASSERMAN:  Mark Danner. 

MR. DANNER:  I would argue here tonight for a foreign policy that is not based on fear.  As in 1919, as in 1945 to ‘50, we are living in a period in which our approach to the world is being redefined.  At present, the symbol of that redefinition is President Bush floating on his island in the Atlantic accompanied only by Prime Minister Aznar and Prime Minister Blair.  The question is whether the United States can exert power in the world without alienating the rest of it.  This administration has participated, over the last few months, in a fascinating experiment in the limits of power.  Michael said that there is no deal to be made on the Security Council.  I think that’s wrong.   

I think the French, indeed, can be brought around to promise a use of force, given a reasonable deadline, given reasonable benchmarks, and given a reasonable policy between now and then.  I think that’s possible.  And one cannot argue it’s impossible because the United States has not tried it.  [Applause.]   

One should also say, as a comment on deterrence and Saddam Hussein, that in order for a policy of arms inspection and disarmament under international auspices to work, the Iraqi regime must be assured that if it disarms, it will not be attacked, invaded and occupied anyway, and that has never been the case.  That has never been the case. 

I’d say to all of you tonight that if, indeed, we go to war very soon, as looks quite possible, and perhaps looks quite probable, this will not be over.  This will not be over.  One has to remain interested, vigilant, concerned and involved.  And I thank all of you for coming, because this struggle about the soul of this country is nowhere near over.   

I have to close, though my red light is on, with a quote from John Quincy Adams, 1821.  He told America to go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.  But his reasoning was not about the inherent difficulty of that, or at least not only.  He said that if America did go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, it would become “the dictatress of the world, but would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”  I ask all of you in the hall tonight to keep that in mind, because that threat, if war comes, if it doesn’t, however bloody it is or however quickly it goes, that will remain the question for all of us.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  Michael Ignatieff. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  Picking up on what Mark Danner says, I think first of all that a concerted attempt over 12 years has been made to develop an international consensus to disarm Saddam by force.  I think it’s just not true to say that diplomacy has not been tried.  I think what’s happened here is that the French, the Russians and the Chinese will not go where the United States feels it’s in its national interest to go.  I think there have been obvious failings in the diplomacy of the Bush Administration, but it takes two to tango here, and I think Mark is sorely underestimating the basic unwillingness of the other powers in this network to actually back what they say with deliverable and credible threats, because I think deliverable and credible threats are the only things that got any progress in this matter. 

Mark also raised the issue of John Quincy Adams, a call to watch out about the dangers of slaying monsters abroad.  I’m very hesitant.  I share his worries about moralism in foreign affairs.  But I would point out that this country has slain some monsters, and the world is immensely better because it did so. 

MR. HITCHENS:  Hear, hear. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  Milosevic of Serbia is in the Hague, a monster who was slain by the exercise of American power. 

MR. DANNER:  The Serbs removed Milosevic. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  Well, if you, if…  [Applause.] 

MR. HITCHENS:  Oh, casuistry. 

MR. IGNATIEFF:  There are limited cases in which the United States, I think, should go abroad to slay monsters, and it can do so without losing its soul as a Republic at home.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  Robert Scheer. 

MR. SCHEER:  Let me first of all say there’s no question that we have the power, or the Soviets had the power, or the French had the power.  There have been powerful regimes before.  There’s no reason to assume this power will be used in a wise way.  And let me give you a good example.   

I happened to be in Egypt and Israel at the time of the Six Day War, and I remember Moshe Dyan saying, “Come back in ten years and this will be a paradise.”  And he had every reason to say that sincerely.  First of all, he knew Arabic, he knew the country, he knew the miserable conditions under which Palestinians had lived in Gaza and had lived under the Egyptians and had lived in the West Bank under the Jordanians, and he thought indoor plumbing, democracy, secularism, whatever.  He was sincere about it.  And we see the result.   

People want to make their own history.  Their history is complex.  Their religions are complex.  Nationalism is complex.  And what I think the French, the Germans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Chileans and all the others are saying to us is you guys, led by a president who never even bothered to use his American Express card to visit us, who never cared about us, who has transferred your enormous angst and feeling about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and has lied to the American people, will not lie to us and get away with it.  And I think that’s an important restraint.  [Applause.]   

And instead of demeaning the United Nations, I think this is the first time in the history of the United Nations that it is acting as the organization that it was intended to be.  [Applause.]  This is not a case of the Soviet Union saying nyet.  This is a case of democratic societies like France and Germany saying to us, we love America, and for that reason we’re here to tell you you’re wrong and you’re making a very big mistake.  [Applause.] 

MR. WASSERMAN:  As one can readily hear and one can readily see, this is a debate that has no end, and will never have any end so long as citizens debate whether a nation ought to have a moral mission in the world in a realpolitik world in which monsters are loose and evil is there and good needs to be done and people need to decide and debate amongst themselves where their true interests lie.   

The Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, as well as all the other co-sponsors, thank all of you in this theatre, the Wiltern, for coming tonight, and we thank all of you at C-SPAN who are tuning in tonight or listening to this broadcast, and we thank KCRW 89.9 FM for recording it and airing it on Monday between two and four.  Thank you and good night. 

[End of recording.]