(2004-10-04) Hari Hitchens Interview

Johann Hari interviews Christopher Hitchens to try and understand his shifts in attitude since (?) the World Trade Center. He explains by talking about the origins of his relationship with the neconservatives in Washington. "I first became interested in the neocons during the war in Bosnia-Herzgovinia. That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of Torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists."... "So that interest in the Neo-Con-s re-emerged after September 11th. They were saying - we can't carry on with the approach to the Middle East we have had for the past fifty years. We cannot go on with this proxy rule racket, where we back tyranny in the region for the sake of stability. So we have to take the risk of uncorking it and hoping the more progressive side wins." He has replaced a belief in Marxist revolution with a belief in spreading the American revolution. Thomas Jefferson has displaced Karl Marx... He gives an account of how the neocon philosophy affected the course of the Iraq war (War On Iraq). "The CIA - which is certainly not neoconservative - wanted to keep the Iraqi army together because you never know when you might need a large local army. That's how the US used to govern. It's a Henry Kissinger way of thinking. But Paul Wolfowitz and others wanted to disband the Iraqi army, because they didn't want anybody to even suspect that they wanted to restore military rule (cf Arab Spring)." He thinks that if this philosophy can become dominant within the Republican Party, it can turn US power into a revolutionary force... I stammer that I can't imagine him ever settling down on the American right. He pauses, and I desperately hope that he will agree with me. "Not the Buchanan-Reagan right, no," he says. There is a pause. I expect him to continue, but he doesn't.