Christopher Hitchens by Christopher Hitchens

Author:Christopher Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2017-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

HITCHENS ON THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

INTERVIEW BY JON STEWART

THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART

AUGUST 25, 2005

STEWART: Hey, welcome back! A contributing editor to Vanity Fair and an author, his latest book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. Please welcome back to the program Christopher Hitchens. Christopher!

[Hitchens enters]

Come on.

HITCHENS: Don’t get up. No please don’t get up.

STEWART: You sir, a pleasure.

[They shake hands and both gesture to the chairs]

No you, you! Good to see you.

HITCHENS: Nice to be back.

STEWART: Welcome to the show.

HITCHENS: It’s very nice for you to have me back.

STEWART: The book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

We are going to talk about that in a little bit. But I’m going to tell you about why you’re here. You’re here to help me. Christopher Hitchens you are one of the only men to travel, maybe the only man to travel to all three Axis of Evil countries.

[Audience laughs]

HITCHENS: Yes that’s true.

STEWART: That is correct.

HITCHENS: I think I’m the only one to have written from there. There may have been a diplomat who’s been there, there’s certainly an arms dealer or two. But I have—

[Audience laughs]

STEWART: Good company.

HITCHENS: —been to North Korea and Iran and Iraq, several times, and in Afghanistan, and on the Pakistan border.

STEWART: Okay, so there’s a Eurail pass that many people don’t get punched.

HITCHENS: Well the frequent flyers stuff in Afghan Airlines, you don’t wanna know.

STEWART: No, it’s a little rough. It ain’t a bag of peanuts, I’m sure. Here’s what I wanna ask you, here’s how you’re going to help me. Help me understand why I am wrong about Iraq. I am confused; I don’t know what stay—

HITCHENS: I can see that—

STEWART: I don’t know what stay—

HITCHENS: —I just watched your act.

STEWART: I know. I don’t know what staying the course means.

HITCHENS: I can see that too.

STEWART: I don’t know what, when he says this, “We’re going to fight ’em over there, instead of fighting ’em over here.” I think, “Those other dudes who just had planes were just twenty of them. It’s not a nation that attacked us, it was an ideology.” Explain to me why I’m wrong.

HITCHENS: Well, I’ll give you something.

STEWART: Please.

HITCHENS: Just uh, saying fighting them over there instead of over here is contradicting himself. It’s either global or it isn’t. So we’re either fighting them everywhere or nowhere. You make yourself a hostage to fortune. The next bomb that goes off in London, people say, “I thought we’d taken care of that by fighting them there.” That, that’s stupid.

[Audience laughs]

And that’s his bid for, um, [indecipherable].

STEWART: Here is what I don’t understand. Out of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are the two greatest supporters of terrorism in that region. North Korea, uh, and Iran, and Pakistan are the greatest threats in terms of weapons of mass destruction and proliferation. Uh, why then the urgency to go into Iraq, other than as an experiment drawn up on a bulletin board that would create a flowering of democracy—

HITCHENS: No.

STEWART: —that

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