His intellect advocated for this foolish war that has lasted twenty years with no meaningful outcome. Man was a fool. Wrong about almost everything for his entire life.
Wrong about the war in Iraq, wrong about the war in Afghanistan, wrong about treating his body like it was someone else's. Man is not great or so said the great Peter Hitchens.
@Monsieur Tarzan I don't think he was wrong. You have to understand that he argued for going into Afghanistan in a specific light. He argued that we should treat it as an opportunity to incite social transformation and spread democracy, not to treat it as a colonial project (i.e. to conquer the nation). I don't think he or anyone else would approve of the way the United States actually handled going in, regardless of his stance on whether the United States should've went in. And more to the point, I don't think anyone who cares about the Afghan people approves of the way in which the United States left, regardless of their stance on whether the United States should've left.
@Monsieur Tarzan "What's the difference between 'spreading democracy' and colonialism in the context of the U.S. invading Afghanistan? There is none." Bullshit. That is precisely what Hitch discussed in this video. Did you even watch it?
Hitchens has these TH-cam acolytes who seem to go all weak in the knees - like Chris did in front of Paul Wolfowitz - the moment the neocon fraudster deigns to opine about anything. Too bad that deep down Hitchens was a pith-helmet-wearing White Man's Burden type who'd like nothing better than to teach the 'savages' a lesson. That was obvious from the Columbus Day essay he wrote in which he "toasted" the extermination of the West Indian natives and idiotically and perversely conflated 300+ indian tribes with the human-sacrificing Aztecs. Good riddance.
He knew more about Afghanistan than all of our politicians. He was such a great man whose heart was twice as large as his immeasurable brain. America has failed him and our allies in Afghanistan.
If only he was here now to explain how a country with an army one hundredth the size of America's is actually a massive threat and needs to be invaded now.
@@robertely686 Leftists have a foundational problem with their ideology. Not in any way unique to them. That problem is that they think that everyone thinks like them. And if they don't...it's because they're brainwashed. But some exposure and education from Left wingers will rectify the "problem."
God damned good man; he was a man of integrity, he called out bullshit where there was bullshit!!! He had a moral compass and fought the good fight with words against tyranny of any kind from anywhere!!!
well, he was in favor of bullshit which is invading other countries and killing innocent people. stop idolizing people, it is really pathetic. People can be wrong, he was wrong about Afghanistan. He is only human.
I knew I had to come back to Hitch after the tragedy of the fall of Kabul. He indeed makes a good point that an important reason for being in Afghanistan was to show to Afghans, to women and minorities how they could live as opposed to what is offered to them by the caliphate. The West has collectively failed in that regard. And then these terrible words : "if Talibans are allowed to declare victory over Afghanistan, it means that the'd had beaten NATO, the US and the UN in open warfare and could boast about it." It's hard to believe that Kabul won't become an irresistible beacon for djihadists and that the propaganda of the Talibans 2.0 about being all nice isn't just that : propaganda. Who wouldn't want to capitalize on such a swift and grandiose victory ? Let's hope that regional imperatives such as their relationship with China and Russia keep them in check.
the biggest reason for success of Taliban is not failure of west in afghanistan but reining in Pakistan. still don't understand how west succumbs to pak while it continues to sponsor and aid terrorism
@GamerGirl_Millie Americans armed the Afghanistan's vs the Russians. We (Americans) aided by funding this altercation. I'll skip a whole bunch of history but... Last Year (2020) The Trump Administration (Americans) made a deal that released over a thousand of known war criminals. Then we evacuated. After making deals for their government without their permission. But they have to choose how to live? Educate yourself.
Utterly appalling, and under the helms of Democrats no less, did not even know Biden is a fan of Nixon and Kissinger. Mr Hitchens once said the Taliban casualty number was too low, and now we know what that means, Islamic forces of reaction were breeding like Christmas.
@@polymathicheretic5068 I mean, yes Biden is a Democrat but he's executing an agreement Donald Trump signed with the Taliban. Both parties have failed here.
He would be dismayed at the rise of fascism, nationalism, and populous tyrants. He would be heartbroken by the abandonment of democratic institutions and ideals in the Americas and Europe. I can almost hear his witty remarks on the neglectful retreat in Afghanistan. Christopher was one of a kind and dearly missed. We are sorely without intelligent and courageous voices like his to drown out the idiots on twitter and in youtube comments.
Anyone else here in 2021 looking for some historical context on Afghanistan War? This war has been going on as long as I have been alive. It is just baffling to see it come to this.
I was in 8th grade when the war started up. Suddenly staring down the prospect of getting drafted when we turned 18 was an interesting experience to say the least. Most of my life this has been going on.
Afghanistan has never been conquered, and never really had a government. Dont forget Russians invaded in 1980, everyone gets their butts kicked, over centuries,. Millennia
Well, you having lived through and watched the mess in Afganistan you will be able to recognise the same mistakes being made next time, just like us old geezers recognised the same mistakes made in Vietnam being repeated in Afganistan.
I'am an Afghan and do not think legalising the growing of poppies is a good idea. What could work is for the government to grow crops itself and sell it to western companies for medical use then give the profits as subsidies to registered farmers, give them tractors, machinery, buy their crops at a higher rate than the market price, help them with marketing, storage, transportation etc.
@@jumpinjohnnyruss Simply have the farmers grow/sell the poppy and cut out the middle man. You’d only be encouraging a State of corruption - scalping the product people’s labor and handing it out as they see fit. It’s dangerously naive to assume that politicians will act out of charity, rather than secure their access to the product of people’s labor.
How is the government going to _’grow the crop itself’_ ? Are the secretaries and accountants going to grow poppies outside the office? Do the people at town hall have the right to start taking/seizing arable land? How much land do they need? All of it? Are you going to have to hand over _half_ of your yearly income to pay for the soldiers & paramilitary forces to go take and secure that land? Or perhaps they’ll tax you for your land and if you don’t produce enough to meet their quota, they’ll simply come along and take it from you? And who are they going to hire to do the work and take the profits? ...the farmers already doing it? For what? To scalp the product of their labor and treat them like slaves? Where do the profits then go? You think the ruling elite is going to give it _back_ to the farmers? No - You’ve already set the precedent for all the power they have. Now they’re going to make schools that you need to pay for: - Schools that teach kids to support the ruling party and fund the ruling party’s political campaigns.
Amazing to see so many people looking up Hitch at this moment. There truly is a global energy that everyone senses. I hate this man for dying. We need him more than ever.
@@happymaskedguy1943 You misunderstand my meaning. When i said i hated him for dying it means that I couldn't have more respect for him. We need him today. Desperately.
Never put any human on such a pedestal - it's the first step to a cult of personality. Something Christopher Hitchens himself would have despised. We're all human and therefore deeply flawed. Christopher Hitchens was no exception.
Hitchens was a beautiful man. The only scandal he ever caused was saying "women aren't very funny" which women reacted to by being very serious and severe and arguing how funny they were. I'm sorry but I'm a woman and I think that situation was hilarious 😂 and very harmless, just cheeky. I love him and miss him very much, he was a very important person in our times xx
Digressed from the new critical development, I instead found your great comment, so very rare you know, those from the feminine side. If we ever meet in life, I'll toast you J.W Black Label.
Dikastes Basileus, Grand Adjudicator Hitchens was a gentleman, an affectionate and good-humoured person who hated "evil" in society and used his eloquence and intellect to fight it. The new situation we find ourselves in has good and bad sides. The good side is many bad things have been uncovered and are being fixed. The bad side is that sometimes it really does feel like everyone has gotten very boring and lacks nuance and wants to fight all the f-cking time. I really wish he was here now to help us moderate this because he was so fair minded and we need more of that. I think we do need to be able to laugh good naturedly at each other. In western culture that's what people who are close do. If men and women can make witty remarks at each other it's like a kind of flirtation. I really hope the masculine and feminine can meet and know each other better in future. This fighting is starting to get scary and sad. I'd love to have that drink with you and pour one out for Hitch xx
@@mistressofstones Everything you said, and more. Though I think the situation is much direr than you said, I agree in spirit, what other direction to go but up from here? Even secularists such as myself are shellshocked by this tragic setback, when Taliban wins, everybody else loses. I'm only surprised that the Taliban is exactly the same as they were decades ago, those savages still use suicide bombers just days ago. Have you ever heard of the Hazara population? Well neither did I, until Hitch, probably the only one represented them in public, that's how good he was. I don't know how, but us hanging out for a Hitchensian get-together sounds heavenly, barely anyone I know in person understand Hitch's polemical writings properly, let alone an understanding female like yourself, and Hitch gets misrepresented a lot :)
RIP indeed. It's times like this I pray that there is NO afterlife, just so the blessed oldtimers wouldn't have to see the horrors of today. Reminiscing on Asimov's audacity on "religious mumbo-jumbo"
This journalist is interviewing Hitchens in his home. All of those books behind them are his personal library and I am certain he read every single one of them.
Hitch: “This war is not going to end until one or the other of us has given up..if the Taliban are allowed to declare victory in Afghanistan it means what? It means they beat NATO and the United States, and the UN in open warfare, and can boast about it. Well, that’s an outcome that’s unthinkable.” Dear sweet boy, how right you were.
@@hansdampf6916 Seriously? You look at reality and that's what your intellect makes of it? It's not that Trump pussied out. It's that he wasn't in a rush to leave for a 9/11 photo op like Biden. Trump was fully aware of how the Obama-Biden administration's thoughtless withdrawal from Iraq created the vacuum that allowed the rise of ISIS. He didn't want the same mistakes repeated in Afghanistan. After all the purpose of going there in the first place was to fight terrorism post 9-11, not to place the Taliban in power and turn the country into a breeding ground for jihadis, which is exactly what Biden's ineptitude achieved...
If we can withdraw from Afghanistan and never be tempted to interfere again then that is the best option. We cannot have a never ending responsibility for the place just because we once interfered. The people of Afghanistan will have to learn to get on without us. Those that want a more liberal society need to fight for it and not run away.
Well, i guess he would have predicted the events from the moment on Trump practically deligitimized the Afghan government in Qatar, and also when congress decided not to act on internal papers regarding shadow soldiers and Taliban in the Afghan army. In effect we saw political events, not military ones.
Another thing Hitch was wrong about when he says he is sure the Taliban are incapable of taking the main cities. Over the years I have studied the words written and spoken by Hitch and find that he was wrong about 80% of the time. Though he says it well and writes well so seems compelling
At that time they were incapable of taking over the main cities. Hitchens didn't have a crystal ball. No one could have forseen that we were there just so big companies and banks could make money.
@wandering the world I'm just going to throw out some facts here. We had over 41,000 troops in Afghanistan in February 2011(You can find those numbers from The Brookings institute under the name Afghanistan index). I believe the troop numbers that we had left was around $2,500 before we pulled out completely. It's absurd to me to say someone's wrong about foreign policy because they couldn't magically know every decision that other people were going to make. It's obvious that that was his assessment at the time of the interview. I would love for you to write out the 80% of stuff that you're saying that he was wrong about, because I think this is an incredibly arrogant thing to say, and I don't think you can back it up. I am a Christian, so I have plenty a bone to pick with Christopher Hitchens on where morality comes from and the limits that a secular worldview has in values, but this post seems a bit hyperbolic.
Post 9/11 he started becoming idealistic and unrealistic on foreign policy, but everything before that was pretty excellent. We could know that the Afghan war would create more Bin Laden’s, it happened when the Soviet’s invaded. Or when the US carpet bombed Cambodia which recruited many for the Khmer Rouge, there are many examples in history.
Wow, talk about a timely resurgence of a ten year old video. Interesting that the comments are either 10 years old or in the last month or so. It would be interesting to hear what Hitch would be saying today.
All respect to Mr Hitchens I don't know how endless war in Afghanistan which is not going to change there religion or make woman first class citizens at the cost of the lives that will be lost, is really lifting the rest of the world's woman out of poverty or improving the vast majority of impoverished people's lives through out the rest of the world to a more prosperous life.
Oh if only those in power in the US had had the wisdom to follow Hitch’s advice. I am in awe of his knowledge, impeccable analysis, prescience and most importantly his empathy towards people with which he had very little in common (Afghanis). He is sorely missed.
What a huge loss for humanity. This man was a genius, he had such a profound grasp on so many diverse subjects and that, together with his powerful intellect, made him a great visionary.
@raggedclown To be fair, he looks better here then some 'healthy' 60 year old men! I was suprised when I found out his age a few years back. But yes, still the same great mind on the inside. He doesn't even have a hint of urgency, even though he knows his time is short. He's taking his time, being articulate, making his thoughts perfectly clear. Really awe inspiring.
Looking at the events of the last few days and the utter shambles that has unfolded, hitch would have been outraged by the evident incompetence and callousness of the US withdrawal plan.
I think he was more of a realist than that, but sure forever war is great Hitch always said that. Just think had we stayed three more months or twenty years or spent another $100 billion I’m sure our surrendering to the Taliban then would have been so much more dignified. All the media is saying this is horrible, that should be a clear sign it’s a good thing. So you support more of our sons and daughters going to die for a kleptocracy that collapsed in under 48 hours, we’ve been gaslit for 20 years I don’t blame you for losing some of your reason.
Outraged? He passed almost 10 years ago. You don't think he could have changed his mind since then? Upset likely though but why shouldn't we all after all.
Did you read any of his work. Like even a single shred of it? What part of you thinks he would be endorsing the destruction of any hope for an Afghanistan where fundamental human rights could be maintained in favor of a theocratic dictatorship wielding AK 47's who slaughter any dissenting voices?
@@mattdavid716 What a profoundly shortsighted summation of a problem that you either have not the capacity or interest to discern objectively on. How many of our sons and daughters as you put it have died in the last 2 years of this war? (9 in 2020 and less than that in 2021) What percentage of the defence budget was allocated to defending the region? (a fraction of a percentage point annually) So when you do the basic arithmetic and sum it up as a whole your narrative implodes to nothing in terms of the "Cost" of maintaining the status quo Here's what your argument ignores. What are the second order consequences that we can not see that will result in emboldening these theocrats to mount their next offensive. How much regional control has been lost as a deterrent against (TH-cam filtering out this word) activities ? When the next major ideological attack is sprung from this region slaughtering decades worth of troop losses instantly emerges where will you be? When the bmbs start going off blowing people to smithereens what will you say then? Will that only matter if it happens on American soil or will the next wave of blowback from this from farther afield be accounted for as well? What of the humanitarian crisis for the people of Afghanistan now who have woken up to a new reality. A reality where not a single shred of the UN charter of human rights will be maintained. The blood spilled for 20 years was for nothing... NOTHING so that 4 deaths a year and a rounding error in the federal budget could be reallocated somewhere else destabilizing a region and opening up a hotbed for terrorism. So I stand by my original statement - Looking at the events of the last few days and the utter shambles that has unfolded, hitch would have been outraged by the evident incompetence and callousness of the US withdrawal plan.
@@MuhammadAli-dv8gb Such a fantastic stretch there. Go-to argument for believers. No. That would imply that Hitchens is a singular figure that I solely base my personal and world views on. Or basically what you're asserting, an implied monotheistic "belief". He's a contributor to larger ideologies and approaches to government/world policy/religion that I subscribe to. Steeped in thinkers like Locke, Paine, Hume. He was convinced of religion's toxicity and adamantly opposed to it's trespassing into government matters. So to your response- the difference between you and I is if all of these people reversed their opinions and views, decided to become anti-science and superstitious, I would no longer revere them, and I certainly wouldn't follow them anymore. See the difference?
@@MuhammadAli-dv8gb I'm consistently nudging people to read Howard Zinn's People's History of the U.S. because I think it's an insightful and brutally honest look at the U.S. and it's history. I don't "believe" in Howard Zinn, but larger picture, agree with his views and opinions.
@@mrkemrk John Locke in his Letter on Toleration: All religious sects are to be tolerated except those who deny the existence of God, because the promises, trusts, and vows that hold a society together are of no meaning to them
@@mrkemrk lol I'm training to become a Neurosurgeon. I'm definitely not anti science. I just recognize that science is actually not a noun. It is only methodical observation of nature's laws, which would not be consistent, uniform, and so perfect without a LawMaker
A brilliant mind, a breathtaking speaker, a wonderful human being . . . and as far as I'm concerned, a person entitled to make the occasional wrong call. I think his support for the Afhganistan adventure was wrong, for numerous reasons, and attempts to impose our idea of a superior culture on its people, something that started in the Victorian era, was always destined to fail. Had he lived he would have argued with me, and won hands down. Sometimes such skills defeat reason. That's life.
It depends if you are content to have a population ruled over by a bunch of religious fundamentalists, for people to be denied basic human rights by accident of where they were born. Hitch was right, the West could have gone in, protected the cities, ensured that a whole generation of children and particularly girls would have received a decent education and the cost of that in dollars and lives would have been negligible.. But it did require the understanding that we would have had to been based in Afghanistan for 50 years or more. The Bush/Blair conceit wasn't the nation building, it was that nation building could be done quickly and painlessly.
Christopher Hitchens was anti war during the seventies. Then he went "chicken hawk." He never served when he was able. Then 30 yrs. later wants to go kick everyone's butt with military. I love Christopher Hitchens but only disagreed with him on this.
I've read several books by Hitchens, loved his intelligence and have absorbed hundreds of Hitchens TH-cam videos over the years. I was genuinely very saddened by his demise and eventual end. But his conclusions on Afghanistan and Iraq were twisted, illogical and made a lot of people in Washington DC and Virginia very very rich. I kept coming back to him to challenge my own ideas and thinking. Still anti-war. Hitchens was just so wrong on Iraq, Afghanistan and all the forever wars.
"there are large tracts of afghan population who would never submit to the Taliban" I LOVE Hitchens and agree with much of his commentary and analysis here. But he was wrong on this one^^
He's not wrong. There are 80,000 Taliban. They have supporters mainly in one ethnic group. Outside this, they aren't wanted. No woman wants it unless she's been beaten into submission to it. They are a vile, grotesque and fascist terrorist group with no place in a civilised society and Afghanistan would. be better off fighting these terrorists.
@@drmodestoesq Pure defeatism! Your solution is to give up and hand the control of Afghanistan to brutal theocratic fascists? Would you feel that way if it was your country they were taking over and your people they were immiserating (the Islamists and Jihadists plan to expand their Caliphate to every corner of the world so it's worth asking yourself that question).
@@13olibrown Ohhh...I have asked myself that question. The question is that aside from interminable war...what can be done? First...dropping the hammer on Pakistan. Which has been playing both ends. Supporting the Taliban and accepting money from America for the "War on Terrorism." Second...90 percent of the heroin on the planet comes from Afghanistan...drop the hammer. Third....75 percent of the budget of Afghanistan comes from foreign aid. That has already ended. The first low hanging fruit is to cut off the money supply. But that takes political will. Always in short supply. How much support is the Taliban going to get when 37 million people don't have enough food, basic medicine and fuel?
@@drmodestoesq Yep. Hitch was brilliant (and right) in some ways but stubbornly wrong in other ways. He was not a perfect oracle as some believe. Mind you, his unwavering stance on going into Iraq was not specifically based on the WMD narrative but his firm belief in regime change. And like EVERY INSTANCE of Western military interference in the affairs of other countries, it ended up a fkn mess. I now see that this is the US's primary aim -- to wreck and impoverish such nations. Works real well to bomb the shit out of a place ... remove a disagreeable leader... then "help them to rebuild" ... eye roll ...
@@thedolphin5428 I agree with a lot of historians. I maintain that the problem is that a bunch of European imperialists starting drawing lines all over the middle east and called them countries. Despite what Left Wing flakes like to think...the human race is insanely tribal. They should have tried to contain ethnicities in hermetic nations. There still would have been conflict. But more like the Slovaks and the Czechs. Not like the Sinhalese and the Tamils.
@@drmodestoesq Yes, agreed. National boundaries, unless an obvious island, are quite arbitrary, change every century with new territorial wars. My original point here was that Hitchens, despite his massive knowledge, is very often running from an opinion, and also a US-based script and thus can be shown as wrong when the script fails ... as it did in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. Chomsky, on the other hand, has been far more accurate in his prophesies of world events precisely BECAUSE he breaks script! I think Hitchens sold out to his new citizenship and his inflated reputation in the US. Like so many pundits, they and their fans get convinced of their fallibility.
So after the thousands killed and trillions spent, the Taliban undid 20 years of occupation in under 2 weeks. The occupation was no more than a revenge reel for US citizens to watch after 9/11, a PR stunt for US politicians and a jackpot for the US military industrial complex. All of the major US military contractors raked in huge profits off Afghanistan. Those were the real objectives so in that sense, mission accomplished. While I agree with alot of what Christopher Hitchen had to say, his foreign policy views on Afghanistan were staggeringly naive. Nobody really ever cared about the common Afghans. They were mere cannon fodder or as the US often phrases it 'collateral damage'.
Why are you talking just about Trump? Sure, he is at fault here, so is Biden, so is the beloved angelic poster-boy of the democrats, Obama. Blame should also be at the feet of the president who started it all - W. Bush. To talk only about Trump is closed-minded madness.
You are correct. Every administration is guilty. But the right jumping on Biden now is criminal. Yes Biden botched the planning and execution of the withdrawal, but Trump set it up and made promises to the Taliban that somone else would have to keep.
The man has so much wisdom and foresight. He was wrong about Iraq but he was definitely right about Afghanistan. He even thinks about minorities which nobody talks about.
@@charlesvan13 consider the possibility at least that all of that is appearance, the grand design of which, if known, would explain all that now seems only 'political fall-out' and chaos.
Well, with the victory for the Taliban, I think it's safe to say that the War on Terror has reached it's final conclusion. The curtain certainly fell faster than anyone expected that's for sure.
Christopher was a cosmopolitan, a D.C. resident. Just as Orwell pointed out in his case for socialism (The Road to Wigan Pier) that socialism is essentially "an urban creed," the ideal of installing some sort of democratic republic in Afghanistan is a civic, urban ideal. To us it makes sense because only roughly 16-17% of U.S. and U.K. citizens live in rural areas, and we tend to dismiss what they think anyway. The lack of official documentation has made the possibility of an accurate census in Afghanistan frustratingly elusive, but by our best guess 74% (!) of Afghans live in remote areas. This is how the Taliban knew it had an advantage. Even in English speaking countries, the rural folk tend to prefer "small government" and from some reporting on the ground that we got this summer it's sadly apparent that this is how some (primarily men, of course) saw the takeover. Aside from the possibility of personal threats, it seems the Taliban came in the way any Republican or Tory comes in: "we will get big gov't off your back"--so you can get back to farming or whatever it is you do without worrying some drone pilot will mistake your family for a "terrorist' cell.
Whenever I want to get some context about what is really going on in the world today, I am 100% guaranteed to discovery that Christopher Hitchens had a nuanced and well-reasoned opinion on the subject a dozen years ago.
I've come to the conclusion that the reasons that Chris believes the war was necessary and the reasons Bush actually did it are entirely different. For Chris it is humanitarian, he doesn't care about any hidden motives the government may have. To him, what matters is people aren't being tortured anymore. That a mistake made in the past has been corrected. For George Bush it was purely profitable. Note that George had a big stake in the oil company who got the rights to drill.
Sad part is that it was someone Hitchens was quoting. When he spoke for himself in his later years, Hitchens was all about imperialism. Like in this interview!
@@dingdongism oh yeah? All those afghans were celebrating the end of imperialism by scrambling to get out of the country? You should get a brain and not think with your testicles.
Its sad that the war in Afghanistan will be lost because the American political class is tired of fighting it. I don't think the American people are tired of it, they just need leadership from politicians.
As Hitch says towards the end, already ten years ago it was no longer a war, more a low level occupation. Over 2020-21 not a single American life was lost prior to Biden’s bungled withdrawal.
It hurts to know that what we need is Hitchens and that......those days are over. I wish there was some 'modern hitch', but...I don't know who that is.
Some really trenchant points. He’s so right about the moral responsibility. Missed the mark on the cost and outcome, but it’s tough to look 10 years into the future. The US record at intervention is dismal. Perhaps we should examine our actions in hopes of learning the limits of power. But we have similar disasters in progress in other countries at this very moment.
I very enjoy listening to Christopher Hitchens. He was often right, but also often wrong. It's interesting how there's something of a cult of personality around him now. Something he himself, with all his love of Orwell, would have despised and feared.
Taliban winning is unthinkable with the US presence there (or bases). People will not submit is also true as the afghani people will fight guerrilla now. The shortage of imagination comes from weak leaders who use propaganda to get votes from an uneducated population, it’s not good news for the US.
@@jolinejoline2471 The shortage comes feom the US who won't get out once they're done And idiots like Christophe and delusional ones like yourself supporting forever wars
@@goyonman9655 You're delusional if you think the alternative is preferable and that we won't be back again when things get worse, as they surely will. His suggestion that they fund Afghan's export potential by buying their opium, thereby prohibiting Taliban's billion-dollar trade, does show imagination. Joline Joline is right, in the case of there remaining a US presence on the soil, Taliban winning was unthinkable. Vigilance will always be necessary so long as there exist those who wish to destroy the freedoms of others.
The last thing he said hit home the hardest for me. It was a test of wills that we couldn’t afford to lose. We kept going on about how it was our longest war. Well, we’re a pretty young country. 20 years is not like a benchmark in the history of wars. And certainly not for Afghanistan. Or the west. Or Islam. It’s just a lot for America. Time will tell, but it will be interesting (perhaps terrifying) to see what the aftermath of our debacle of a withdrawal will be several years from now. The stage is certainly set for the country to be a safe haven for terrorist groups again. Will it mean eventually that we’ll just have to go back in again? Will we see a rise in terrorist attacks in the coming years? Has extremist Islam been bolstered by all of this? I know and understand the argument against how much money we were coughing up daily to be there. It was a tremendous cost. But where does all this leave us years from now? What will be the cost of our withdrawal?
Sounds like a Fox news take. Fight them over there, so they don't come here. So stay there forever and pay trillions of dollars and hundreds of lives to keep the mission going till doomsday.
What I don't understand is if he acknowledges all the terrible things America has done, asisting the Taliban and propping up Saddam Hussein, why he things America is the solution!? Surely, they just want the US to leave them alone.
That's a good question. The US is undoubtedly responsible for a number of bad situations in the middle east. Much of this stemmed from cold war jostling for control and influence in strategically important regions. What Hitchens argues is that they and western countries now have a responsibility to right the wrongs of the past, to leave the nations they meddled in with some form of stable democratic system of government and a chance at a peaceful prosperous future. For example to remove psychopathic genocidal dictators which they installed in Iraq, and dismantle fascistic murderous regimes they supported like the Mujaheddin which became the Taliban in Afghanistan. You argue that after all this damaging meddling in their internal affairs that the people in these regions would prefer if the US left them alone. Granted some may feel that way but I guarantee you that no one would have been happier than Saddam Hussein or the Taliban to be left to left alone to murder and oppress the people of their respective regions without interference. Perhaps the US are not the ideal country to be spearheading an intervention given their responsibility for much of the problems but I wonder who else has the power or resources to carry out an intervention successfully.
Pat121V It's like asking a whore to be the enforcers of chastity. They've overthrown democratically elected leaders all over the world and yet they pose as the arbiters of democracy when they have been the enemies of democracy all over the world. Most of the polls in Iraq show that they want the Americans out of their country, one famously said that we once had one dictator, we now have tens of thousands. The Iraqi people would have been able to overthrow him had it not been for the sanctions which starved the people and not the ruling class. I don't think any country should have a monopoly on justice. It should be the bordering countries' responsibility. Just like when the Vietnamese overthrew Pol Pot. With Bush and Blair talking about "God" and "crusade" to justify the war, people feel like this colonization.
TheGhostof HumanKindness Ya like I said, The US are not ideal because of their terrible history of meddling and propping up evil regimes so long as they were anti communist. However I would still maintain that the removal from power and prosecution of Saddam Hussein was both necessary and just. Let me explain why I'm not sure anyone else had the capability of toppling Saddam. You mentioned their neighbors. Iran despised the regime but they had already fought a war to a bloody standstill. Turkey has a common interest in repressing their Kurdish population. Syria and Saudi Arabia would have more animosity with the Iran than Iraq, and no other country or local coalition would have had the willingness or capability to topple the powerful Iraqi armed forces like the US led coalition. You also mentioned an overthrow by the Iraqi people. This was impossible. One was attempted after the Gulf war but it was mercilessly crushed after Bush senior allowed Saddam to stay in power. This created a vacuum of popular opposition to the regime which was quickly occupied by Islamist fundamentalists creating much of the headaches faced by the coalition. The majority of violence committed now in the country is carried out by rival Shia and Sunni groups backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively. The toppling of the regime created a vacuum in which various groups are vying for control and the US are trying to install and maintain a democratic government to give Iraq stability and a chance to build a prosperous socially equal society. There is no unified opposition to the US presence but all parties know they would have an easier time taking over if they can force US influence out. Should this happen, Iraq is likely to descend back into genocidal dictatorial rule. The reception the Coalition received from some of local populace was understandable. Despite the massive success of the invasion the occupation was massively flawed. They dismantled many institutions which plunged Iraq into economic and social instability and allowed local Sunni/Shia rival groups to much influence. As to the the idea of colonization, Coalition forces withdrew in 2011, but continue to support the Iraqi National parliament and security forces against internal and external threats to the fledgling democracy. (eg. foreign nation backed sectarian violence). It is early days but the roots of a stable society are growing but it will continue to need support. Hope it wasn't TL:DR
Pat121V But this is what I don't understand, you can call me stupid if you like? Why would the US care about the well-being of the Iraqi people when THEY were the ones who helped him get to power, THEY were the ones who sold him chemical weapons that he used to gas the kurds. George Bush didn't even know anything about the country ffs, he didn't know the difference between suni and shia. Hitchens doesn't seem to be able to open his eyes and see - that or he was just being a careerist. Watch the documentary "Iraq War behind the media coverage" and look at the pictures of dead children with their brains blown out. The US targeted schools, hospitals, mosques. And if it was such a noble mission. Why the lying? Why did they try to make out there were weapons of mass destruction? Why the connection to Al Qaeda? I know Hitchens claims the US has a monopoly on secularism but it was only until the US invaded the country that Al Qaeda forces came in. Under Saddam, anyone even suspected of holding such tendencies would be executed.
TheGhostof HumanKindness I've been asking myself that question for a long time. I mean the post-9/11 mood in the U.S wasn't, "Lets do the Arabs a favour." The sanctions that were imposed on Iraq devastated the population, where even a U.N coordinator stated in 1998 after resigning that "We are in the process of destroying an entire nation." Surely this war should've been the fastest war in history, given how horribly left the country was after the sanctions. The overthrow of Saddam was desirable but I wasn't a fan of what took place in Iraq-war crimes committed in Fallujah and torture scandals, not to mention 500,000 dead. Maybe Pat can explain this.
CH mentions training Afghan people a couple of times. Also, the base of Afghans that would never submit to Taliban rule. Both of those lofty ideas collapsed overnight. Looked good on paper 10 years ago. Difficult to imagine America without a plan for the past 20 years unless 1) we knew the above ideas would never work, and/or 2) we just viewed this as a going concern to keep war economy in place. All at a terrible cost.
And the US and NATO has been defeated in open warfare. You think we have any good reason to have any military alliance with US anymore? I think not. You're weak.
Follow the money. Was the Afghan army getting paid? I've read that soldiers weren't paid for months. Why would an Afghan soldier continue to fight without American support, militarily and financially. I think most of them signed up for the paycheck! Afghanistan has no economy to speak of.....if you're not getting paid now, why would you think it would get better?
Having been there, I can only disagree with him on the point that the Afghan government (and American allies) has failed them to the point where whatever we wanted to fix was made untenable. It's really too bad how it all turned out
I usually agree with Hitchens, but he's full of rubbish on this. Napoleon thought he had to take the ideals of the French Revolution and The French Enlightenment to all of Europe; and obviously he had to do it by force because all of Europe was trying its best to reinstate the Bourbon monarchy. So how did all that work out for France in the end? Very poorly. With America it's similar. We take the ideals of the American Revolution to the entire world -- by force if necessary. We assume, if we plant the seed of democracy and freedom, the people will automatically arise from the soil of liberation singing La Marseillaise and march on the capital overthrowing all tyrants. What a dream indeed. Yet it did work somewhat that way in Germany and Japan after the War. Today they both love freedom and democracy though completely unique and unprecedented to Japanese culture as it was and generally despised in Germany during the Weimar Repulblic -- so much so that the whole system collapsed and the Nazis took over. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't work in Afghanistan because that country is tribal to the core ... and the jury is still out on Iraq. And it didn't work at all in Vietnam. At any rate, it cannot be the function of America to bring democracy and freedom to the world. I should think it would be obvious to everyone by now -- after Vietnam and Afghanistan -- the folly of that enterprise.
Uh, once again a comment of one of those who neither know what they're talking about nor watch the video and let me guess from this state of ignorance he voted and praise the sitting idiot in chief and his lies.
He wasn't 'spot on', the 'spot on' position was to oppose the central stupidity of 'conquest in the name of self-determination'. Also - your the naive one if you think that any US president is going to commit political suicide by sending troops back into AFG after the disaster than was this withdrawal.
@@aceflashheart I accept your argument, however if you’re going to insult me I won’t accept that when you can’t even phrase your argument with the correct grammar.
@@aceflashheart Just wait for the next wave of terror. Gifting the global jihad movement a triumph liked that comes at a price and which will be thousands of deaths in our cities.
I love how everybody pretends to know who represents Afghans. The mujahedeen also consisted of a lot of Arabs and foreign muslim fighters just like the Taliban today. AND they did NOT represent the majority of Afghans, thank you!! The Taliban and other foreign fighters (who don't represent Afghans either), get financial aid from wahabi sheikhs from the middle east and from drug trade. They don't need stinger missiles, they're doing enough damage with road side bombs.
@@jacobjorgenson9285 Just shove it! We've had enough of your artefacts of Stalin's fifth column drivel. The man is dead. He died in 1953! Time to end regurgitating his nonsense.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 fuck iff to your own broken nation. more young americans died of drug over dose last year alone than have died in afghanistan. you have nothing to teach the world. the american century is over sweetie
@@jacobjorgenson9285 Someone too stupid to recognize my name is not american, ist not in the position to recognize who represents Afghan majority. Hint: it is not an islamist movement from Pakistan that represents Afghanistan.
Mr Hitchens perceptions are sorely missed, his knowledge, discourse and humanity - towering. We are left with a party of charlatans, here in the UK; with the collective brain power and emotional intelligence of a bunch of fruit flies!
Funny how you warmongers tie yourselves in knots trying to wring out some sort of intellectual content after being tricked into thinking that a tin pot country is a genuine threat to the world.
I'm touched to see others here in this moment.
Touched to see ur mom here in this moment
@@timyo6288 What a juvenile and utterly stupid comment.
@@timyo6288 Did your dad touch you too much?
@@timyo6288 show us where the bad guy touched you!
Today for me, I sought out this interview I recalled. Gladdened and saddened to watch.
Let’s get this clip back in the algorithm
How can we do that, yera?
It's happening - otherwise I wouldn't have seen it
@@mikeoglen6848 yerra she's working now
It worked
algorithmic
This man’s intellect and oratory are sorely missed in these
chaotic times.
Morning Steve - a great loss Sir - in my tuppenny opinion the Orwell of his generation
His intellect advocated for this foolish war that has lasted twenty years with no meaningful outcome. Man was a fool. Wrong about almost everything for his entire life.
@@aceflashheart - Morning my friend - we will then agree to differ.................
Wrong about the war in Iraq, wrong about the war in Afghanistan, wrong about treating his body like it was someone else's. Man is not great or so said the great Peter Hitchens.
@@XYisnotXX Indeed, of all those all that is forgivable is the drinking. At least that only killed *him*.
Goddamn. Still relevant, over a decade later. What a tragedy for a mind like Hitch to leave when he did.
@Monsieur Tarzan I don't think he was wrong. You have to understand that he argued for going into Afghanistan in a specific light. He argued that we should treat it as an opportunity to incite social transformation and spread democracy, not to treat it as a colonial project (i.e. to conquer the nation).
I don't think he or anyone else would approve of the way the United States actually handled going in, regardless of his stance on whether the United States should've went in. And more to the point, I don't think anyone who cares about the Afghan people approves of the way in which the United States left, regardless of their stance on whether the United States should've left.
@Monsieur Tarzan "What's the difference between 'spreading democracy' and colonialism in the context of the U.S. invading Afghanistan? There is none."
Bullshit. That is precisely what Hitch discussed in this video. Did you even watch it?
Hitchens has these TH-cam acolytes who seem to go all weak in the knees - like Chris did in front of Paul Wolfowitz - the moment the neocon fraudster deigns to opine about anything. Too bad that deep down Hitchens was a pith-helmet-wearing White Man's Burden type who'd like nothing better than to teach the 'savages' a lesson. That was obvious from the Columbus Day essay he wrote in which he "toasted" the extermination of the West Indian natives and idiotically and perversely conflated 300+ indian tribes with the human-sacrificing Aztecs. Good riddance.
Tradegy? The opposite actually. His suffering due to humanities idiocy is over. The rest of us continue to suffer.
Wrong about the war in Iraq, wrong about the war in Afghanistan, wrong about treating his body like it was someone else's.
He knew more about Afghanistan than all of our politicians. He was such a great man whose heart was twice as large as his immeasurable brain. America has failed him and our allies in Afghanistan.
Bazooka Joe knows more about Afghanistan than our politicians
@@JimboJazz Is Bazooka Joe a euphemism for Joe Biden?
@@drmodestoesq No
Re-watching this is so painful considering the state of affairs. #RIPHITCH
Indeed, I had doubts about international debts we have to pay for it later before, but now that it's physically here I am absolutely shook.
Looking to the Hitch for wisdom in these bleak times
He was in favour of forever wars in the Middle East.
If only he was here now to explain how a country with an army one hundredth the size of America's is actually a massive threat and needs to be invaded now.
@@robertely686 Leftists have a foundational problem with their ideology. Not in any way unique to them.
That problem is that they think that everyone thinks like them. And if they don't...it's because they're brainwashed.
But some exposure and education from Left wingers will rectify the "problem."
Look to Hitch for excitement, oratory, sophistry,
But not wisdom
God damned good man; he was a man of integrity, he called out bullshit where there was bullshit!!! He had a moral compass and fought the good fight with words against tyranny of any kind from anywhere!!!
He was in favour of invading the middle east, in part because Iraq had WMDs.
well, he was in favor of bullshit which is invading other countries and killing innocent people. stop idolizing people, it is really pathetic. People can be wrong, he was wrong about Afghanistan. He is only human.
He was a neocon fool, who believed the bullshit about ”benevolent bombs” and ”humanitarian wars”
I knew I had to come back to Hitch after the tragedy of the fall of Kabul. He indeed makes a good point that an important reason for being in Afghanistan was to show to Afghans, to women and minorities how they could live as opposed to what is offered to them by the caliphate. The West has collectively failed in that regard. And then these terrible words : "if Talibans are allowed to declare victory over Afghanistan, it means that the'd had beaten NATO, the US and the UN in open warfare and could boast about it." It's hard to believe that Kabul won't become an irresistible beacon for djihadists and that the propaganda of the Talibans 2.0 about being all nice isn't just that : propaganda. Who wouldn't want to capitalize on such a swift and grandiose victory ? Let's hope that regional imperatives such as their relationship with China and Russia keep them in check.
U hit the mark on that one
The Taliban have won. People must accept it and let them run their own country?
the biggest reason for success of Taliban is not failure of west in afghanistan but reining in Pakistan. still don't understand how west succumbs to pak while it continues to sponsor and aid terrorism
@@mondoterramortua but that is the question. Why! US has gotten nothing, just back stabbing
@GamerGirl_Millie Americans armed the Afghanistan's vs the Russians.
We (Americans) aided by funding this altercation.
I'll skip a whole bunch of history but...
Last Year (2020) The Trump Administration (Americans) made a deal that released over a thousand of known war criminals.
Then we evacuated. After making deals for their government without their permission.
But they have to choose how to live?
Educate yourself.
If Hitch saw the fall of Kabul today he would be enraged
Utterly appalling, and under the helms of Democrats no less, did not even know Biden is a fan of Nixon and Kissinger.
Mr Hitchens once said the Taliban casualty number was too low, and now we know what that means, Islamic forces of reaction were breeding like Christmas.
I can imagine him in the capital.
I wish he was here to hear a thorough criticism of Biden
He'd die, if he weren't already dead.
@@polymathicheretic5068 I mean, yes Biden is a Democrat but he's executing an agreement Donald Trump signed with the Taliban. Both parties have failed here.
I would give anything to know Hitch's thoughts on current events. He's sorely missed.
I'm sure most people here feel the same
Try an ouija board?
"... yeah, send me back to sleep please."
There you go.
He would be dismayed at the rise of fascism, nationalism, and populous tyrants. He would be heartbroken by the abandonment of democratic institutions and ideals in the Americas and Europe. I can almost hear his witty remarks on the neglectful retreat in Afghanistan. Christopher was one of a kind and dearly missed. We are sorely without intelligent and courageous voices like his to drown out the idiots on twitter and in youtube comments.
@@DanNic88 🤣🤣
Anyone else here in 2021 looking for some historical context on Afghanistan War? This war has been going on as long as I have been alive. It is just baffling to see it come to this.
Forsooth, I had doubts about international debts we have to pay for it later before, but now that it's physically here I am shook, speechless really.
I was in 8th grade when the war started up. Suddenly staring down the prospect of getting drafted when we turned 18 was an interesting experience to say the least. Most of my life this has been going on.
Watch the Rory Stewart documentary
Afghanistan has never been conquered, and never really had a government. Dont forget Russians invaded in 1980, everyone gets their butts kicked, over centuries,. Millennia
Well, you having lived through and watched the mess in Afganistan you will be able to recognise the same mistakes being made next time, just like us old geezers recognised the same mistakes made in Vietnam being repeated in Afganistan.
I'am an Afghan and do not think legalising the growing of poppies is a good idea. What could work is for the government to grow crops itself and sell it to western companies for medical use then give the profits as subsidies to registered farmers, give them tractors, machinery, buy their crops at a higher rate than the market price, help them with marketing, storage, transportation etc.
+livelifetothefull other countries have a monopoly, and lobbyists are good at corruption.
Fairytale plan.
That'd be a great idea, but the U.S. would never allow it. Their media would call it "communism".
@@jumpinjohnnyruss Simply have the farmers grow/sell the poppy and cut out the middle man.
You’d only be encouraging a State of corruption - scalping the product people’s labor and handing it out as they see fit.
It’s dangerously naive to assume that politicians will act out of charity, rather than secure their access to the product of people’s labor.
How is the government going to _’grow the crop itself’_ ?
Are the secretaries and accountants going to grow poppies outside the office?
Do the people at town hall have the right to start taking/seizing arable land?
How much land do they need? All of it?
Are you going to have to hand over _half_ of your yearly income to pay for the soldiers & paramilitary forces to go take and secure that land?
Or perhaps they’ll tax you for your land and if you don’t produce enough to meet their quota, they’ll simply come along and take it from you?
And who are they going to hire to do the work and take the profits? ...the farmers already doing it? For what? To scalp the product of their labor and treat them like slaves?
Where do the profits then go? You think the ruling elite is going to give it _back_ to the farmers?
No - You’ve already set the precedent for all the power they have. Now they’re going to make schools that you need to pay for:
- Schools that teach kids to support the ruling party and fund the ruling party’s political campaigns.
Amazing to see so many people looking up Hitch at this moment. There truly is a global energy that everyone senses. I hate this man for dying. We need him more than ever.
He didn't exactly choose to die. Maybe choose your words more respectfully.
@@happymaskedguy1943 You misunderstand my meaning. When i said i hated him for dying it means that I couldn't have more respect for him. We need him today. Desperately.
Never put any human on such a pedestal - it's the first step to a cult of personality. Something Christopher Hitchens himself would have despised. We're all human and therefore deeply flawed. Christopher Hitchens was no exception.
@@zeddeka Fair enough and a good point. But it doesn't change the fact that he was a frighteningly sharp guy.
Hitchens was a beautiful man. The only scandal he ever caused was saying "women aren't very funny" which women reacted to by being very serious and severe and arguing how funny they were. I'm sorry but I'm a woman and I think that situation was hilarious 😂 and very harmless, just cheeky. I love him and miss him very much, he was a very important person in our times xx
Digressed from the new critical development, I instead found your great comment, so very rare you know, those from the feminine side.
If we ever meet in life, I'll toast you J.W Black Label.
Dikastes Basileus, Grand Adjudicator Hitchens was a gentleman, an affectionate and good-humoured person who hated "evil" in society and used his eloquence and intellect to fight it. The new situation we find ourselves in has good and bad sides. The good side is many bad things have been uncovered and are being fixed. The bad side is that sometimes it really does feel like everyone has gotten very boring and lacks nuance and wants to fight all the f-cking time. I really wish he was here now to help us moderate this because he was so fair minded and we need more of that. I think we do need to be able to laugh good naturedly at each other. In western culture that's what people who are close do. If men and women can make witty remarks at each other it's like a kind of flirtation. I really hope the masculine and feminine can meet and know each other better in future. This fighting is starting to get scary and sad. I'd love to have that drink with you and pour one out for Hitch xx
@@mistressofstones Everything you said, and more. Though I think the situation is much direr than you said, I agree in spirit, what other direction to go but up from here? Even secularists such as myself are shellshocked by this tragic setback, when Taliban wins, everybody else loses. I'm only surprised that the Taliban is exactly the same as they were decades ago, those savages still use suicide bombers just days ago. Have you ever heard of the Hazara population? Well neither did I, until Hitch, probably the only one represented them in public, that's how good he was.
I don't know how, but us hanging out for a Hitchensian get-together sounds heavenly, barely anyone I know in person understand Hitch's polemical writings properly, let alone an understanding female like yourself, and Hitch gets misrepresented a lot :)
Women are not funny
His all time great whit: "Why do men laugh at a woman's stupid jokes? They want to get into her pants!!!" Enough said!!!
Even sick and dying he makes more sense than the CiC and his pathetic Generals.
This man continues to give sound advice and make more sense than most politicians and he’s been gone for a few years. Crazy really. RIP
He was in favour of forever wars. How does that make sense?
RIP indeed. It's times like this I pray that there is NO afterlife, just so the blessed oldtimers wouldn't have to see the horrors of today. Reminiscing on Asimov's audacity on "religious mumbo-jumbo"
I’d love to hear what he has to say about the current situation. Rip sir. Gone too soon.
He was a leftist. He would has appealed to high ideals instead of the reality on the ground in the small villages in Afghanistan.
He would be disgusted
@@HappyinJapan358 yeah I reckon so. Can’t say I’d blame him either.
This journalist is interviewing Hitchens in his home. All of those books behind them are his personal library and I am certain he read every single one of them.
more than once! ;)
I would pay a lot of money for the books the great hitch read
And probably remembered just about every word
Indeed.
Am I wrong or is the interviewer Hitchens’ son?
If there was ever a time the world needed a Hitch slap it’s now.
@@louisllouisss2316 A great way to undermine your argument is to call the other person a dummy.
@@louisllouisss2316 You can attract more bees with honey than vinegar.
@@louisllouisss2316 The smart thing to do would be to explain how he was wrong about the war instead of insulting someone you know nothing of
@@louisllouisss2316
The commenter needs his dopamine hit
I agree with Hitchens on almost everything he has to say about Religion but I hated his foreign policy views. RIP Big Man
Please, God. Can we have Christopher Hitchens back?
The irony of asking God to give us back Christopher Hitchens.
Hitch: “This war is not going to end until one or the other of us has given up..if the Taliban are allowed to declare victory in Afghanistan it means what? It means they beat NATO and the United States, and the UN in open warfare, and can boast about it. Well, that’s an outcome that’s unthinkable.” Dear sweet boy, how right you were.
The same thing happened in Vietnam. We could have stayed another ten years and it wouldn't have changed the outcome.
I would have offered Christopher Hitchens the position of Secretary-General of the UN. The man was a genius when it came to world affairs. RIP Sir!
No he wasnt.
I'd have given him a job of chief water tester in Fallujah.
“There is such a shortage of imagination”
Bingo
Yes, among the Afghan people. To not coalesce around a national idea called Afghanistan. Which, it turns out...doesn't exist.
I mightn't agree with all of his foreign policy assessments however he had imaginative ideas e.g. opium crops
"...taliban wins...an outcome that's unthinkable." in the year 2021, apparently not.
An orthodox opinion shared by American intelligence that made the withdrawal so chaotic.
With a demented geriatric puppet steering the most powerful country in the world any unthinkable outcome is entirely within the realm of possibility.
because it means the taliban won against the U.S.A. in open warfare and can brag about it
@@ministryoftruth8499
Trump wanted to get out as well. The generals opposed him and he pussied out.
@@hansdampf6916 Seriously? You look at reality and that's what your intellect makes of it?
It's not that Trump pussied out. It's that he wasn't in a rush to leave for a 9/11 photo op like Biden. Trump was fully aware of how the Obama-Biden administration's thoughtless withdrawal from Iraq created the vacuum that allowed the rise of ISIS. He didn't want the same mistakes repeated in Afghanistan. After all the purpose of going there in the first place was to fight terrorism post 9-11, not to place the Taliban in power and turn the country into a breeding ground for jihadis, which is exactly what Biden's ineptitude achieved...
If we can withdraw from Afghanistan and never be tempted to interfere again then that is the best option. We cannot have a never ending responsibility for the place just because we once interfered. The people of Afghanistan will have to learn to get on without us. Those that want a more liberal society need to fight for it and not run away.
I used to literally watch everything Hitchens made before bed as a child and in my teens. I miss his brilliance in these times
@@assasination1100 Almost as if things can radically change in 11 years? Who would've thought.
Sad times. Hitch could never have imagined they would take the cities so quickly.
Didn’t he live through Vietnam?
Kinda think he would have said" well of course they met know resistance, because of how we conducted our business there."
Well, i guess he would have predicted the events from the moment on Trump practically deligitimized the Afghan government in Qatar, and also when congress decided not to act on internal papers regarding shadow soldiers and Taliban in the Afghan army. In effect we saw political events, not military ones.
Another thing Hitch was wrong about when he says he is sure the Taliban are incapable of taking the main cities. Over the years I have studied the words written and spoken by Hitch and find that he was wrong about 80% of the time. Though he says it well and writes well so seems compelling
At that time they were incapable of taking over the main cities. Hitchens didn't have a crystal ball. No one could have forseen that we were there just so big companies and banks could make money.
@@tombryant52jumpscoach Yeah sure, no one could have forseen that 😂
That was his job - to push for war, whilst using long words, to make simple people think they were being intellectual in supporting crazed warmongers.
@wandering the world I'm just going to throw out some facts here. We had over 41,000 troops in Afghanistan in February 2011(You can find those numbers from The Brookings institute under the name Afghanistan index). I believe the troop numbers that we had left was around $2,500 before we pulled out completely. It's absurd to me to say someone's wrong about foreign policy because they couldn't magically know every decision that other people were going to make. It's obvious that that was his assessment at the time of the interview.
I would love for you to write out the 80% of stuff that you're saying that he was wrong about, because I think this is an incredibly arrogant thing to say, and I don't think you can back it up. I am a Christian, so I have plenty a bone to pick with Christopher Hitchens on where morality comes from and the limits that a secular worldview has in values, but this post seems a bit hyperbolic.
Post 9/11 he started becoming idealistic and unrealistic on foreign policy, but everything before that was pretty excellent. We could know that the Afghan war would create more Bin Laden’s, it happened when the Soviet’s invaded. Or when the US carpet bombed Cambodia which recruited many for the Khmer Rouge, there are many examples in history.
Wow, talk about a timely resurgence of a ten year old video. Interesting that the comments are either 10 years old or in the last month or so. It would be interesting to hear what Hitch would be saying today.
He never wavered on Iraq...I don't see him wavering on the need to be in Afghanistan forever.
I'm an Afghan and we thanks USA for supporting our government in Afghanistan.. radical Islamic terrorism should be eliminate
I'm so sorry for you and all your people, due to Biden's insane announcement in the last week! :(
@@karenlaterf8088 Why don’t you go help ?
@@karenlaterf8088 Withdrawal has been planned for years.
You're an Afghan? Did you support the bombing of your own water supplies too?
All respect to Mr Hitchens I don't know how endless war in Afghanistan which is not going to change there religion or make woman first class citizens at the cost of the lives that will be lost, is really lifting the rest of the world's woman out of poverty or improving the vast majority of impoverished people's lives through out the rest of the world to a more prosperous life.
Well he isn talking about global poverty is he? He’s talking about Afghanistan and Taliban.
Oh if only those in power in the US had had the wisdom to follow Hitch’s advice. I am in awe of his knowledge, impeccable analysis, prescience and most importantly his empathy towards people with which he had very little in common (Afghanis). He is sorely missed.
If you came here through TH-cam search, you are my people.
In some matters, it's not a question of the price you pay, but the price you would otherwise pay.
What a huge loss for humanity. This man was a genius, he had such a profound grasp on so many diverse subjects and that, together with his powerful intellect, made him a great visionary.
@raggedclown To be fair, he looks better here then some 'healthy' 60 year old men! I was suprised when I found out his age a few years back. But yes, still the same great mind on the inside. He doesn't even have a hint of urgency, even though he knows his time is short. He's taking his time, being articulate, making his thoughts perfectly clear. Really awe inspiring.
Looking at the events of the last few days and the utter shambles that has unfolded, hitch would have been outraged by the evident incompetence and callousness of the US withdrawal plan.
I think he was more of a realist than that, but sure forever war is great Hitch always said that. Just think had we stayed three more months or twenty years or spent another $100 billion I’m sure our surrendering to the Taliban then would have been so much more dignified. All the media is saying this is horrible, that should be a clear sign it’s a good thing. So you support more of our sons and daughters going to die for a kleptocracy that collapsed in under 48 hours, we’ve been gaslit for 20 years I don’t blame you for losing some of your reason.
Outraged? He passed almost 10 years ago. You don't think he could have changed his mind since then? Upset likely though but why shouldn't we all after all.
Did you read any of his work. Like even a single shred of it?
What part of you thinks he would be endorsing the destruction of any hope for an Afghanistan where fundamental human rights could be maintained in favor of a theocratic dictatorship wielding AK 47's who slaughter any dissenting voices?
@@mattdavid716 What a profoundly shortsighted summation of a problem that you either have not the capacity or interest to discern objectively on.
How many of our sons and daughters as you put it have died in the last 2 years of this war? (9 in 2020 and less than that in 2021)
What percentage of the defence budget was allocated to defending the region? (a fraction of a percentage point annually)
So when you do the basic arithmetic and sum it up as a whole your narrative implodes to nothing in terms of the "Cost" of maintaining the status quo
Here's what your argument ignores. What are the second order consequences that we can not see that will result in emboldening these theocrats to mount their next offensive.
How much regional control has been lost as a deterrent against (TH-cam filtering out this word) activities ?
When the next major ideological attack is sprung from this region slaughtering decades worth of troop losses instantly emerges where will you be?
When the bmbs start going off blowing people to smithereens what will you say then?
Will that only matter if it happens on American soil or will the next wave of blowback from this from farther afield be accounted for as well?
What of the humanitarian crisis for the people of Afghanistan now who have woken up to a new reality.
A reality where not a single shred of the UN charter of human rights will be maintained.
The blood spilled for 20 years was for nothing... NOTHING so that 4 deaths a year and a rounding error in the federal budget could be reallocated somewhere else destabilizing a region and opening up a hotbed for terrorism.
So I stand by my original statement - Looking at the events of the last few days and the utter shambles that has unfolded, hitch would have been outraged by the evident incompetence and callousness of the US withdrawal plan.
The shambles are that the war was started . The west can take its arrogance and fuck off
As tragic the circumstances, if it leads more people to Christopher Hitchens, there's a win there.
Sounds a lot like you've made a cult out if Hitchens. "Lead people to Hitchens" sounds a lot like "Lead people to Christ"
@@MuhammadAli-dv8gb Such a fantastic stretch there. Go-to argument for believers.
No. That would imply that Hitchens is a singular figure that I solely base my personal and world views on. Or basically what you're asserting, an implied monotheistic "belief".
He's a contributor to larger ideologies and approaches to government/world policy/religion that I subscribe to. Steeped in thinkers like Locke, Paine, Hume. He was convinced of religion's toxicity and adamantly opposed to it's trespassing into government matters.
So to your response- the difference between you and I is if all of these people reversed their opinions and views, decided to become anti-science and superstitious, I would no longer revere them, and I certainly wouldn't follow them anymore.
See the difference?
@@MuhammadAli-dv8gb I'm consistently nudging people to read Howard Zinn's People's History of the U.S. because I think it's an insightful and brutally honest look at the U.S. and it's history. I don't "believe" in Howard Zinn, but larger picture, agree with his views and opinions.
@@mrkemrk John Locke in his Letter on Toleration: All religious sects are to be tolerated except those who deny the existence of God, because the promises, trusts, and vows that hold a society together are of no meaning to them
@@mrkemrk lol I'm training to become a Neurosurgeon. I'm definitely not anti science. I just recognize that science is actually not a noun. It is only methodical observation of nature's laws, which would not be consistent, uniform, and so perfect without a LawMaker
"A test of will that we can't lose!" ...Game over!
I'm sure that's what a lot of tribes have said throughout human history.
I would really like to contact this man! He is a cultural icon and my personal idol. He is a true spokesman of enlightement.
You can't, he's dead.
@@ZZ-vl5nd that was written ten years ago when he was still alive.
@@milekrizman I know :) at least, you're alive!
@@milekrizman I'm assuming your username wasn't fortnite and news back then lol
Join the army and carry out his work - you'll meet him soon enough
Frightening relevance of today,what a Titan he was,really miss him.
Thank you Hitch , missed so much !
A brilliant mind, a breathtaking speaker, a wonderful human being . . . and as far as I'm concerned, a person entitled to make the occasional wrong call. I think his support for the Afhganistan adventure was wrong, for numerous reasons, and attempts to impose our idea of a superior culture on its people, something that started in the Victorian era, was always destined to fail. Had he lived he would have argued with me, and won hands down. Sometimes such skills defeat reason. That's life.
It depends if you are content to have a population ruled over by a bunch of religious fundamentalists, for people to be denied basic human rights by accident of where they were born. Hitch was right, the West could have gone in, protected the cities, ensured that a whole generation of children and particularly girls would have received a decent education and the cost of that in dollars and lives would have been negligible.. But it did require the understanding that we would have had to been based in Afghanistan for 50 years or more. The Bush/Blair conceit wasn't the nation building, it was that nation building could be done quickly and painlessly.
More relevant than ever... miss your voice more than ever in these insane times Hitch
He would be turning in his grave today.
Christopher Hitchens was anti war during the seventies. Then he went "chicken hawk." He never served when he was able. Then 30 yrs. later wants to go kick everyone's butt with military. I love Christopher Hitchens but only disagreed with him on this.
I've read several books by Hitchens, loved his intelligence and have absorbed hundreds of Hitchens TH-cam videos over the years. I was genuinely very saddened by his demise and eventual end.
But his conclusions on Afghanistan and Iraq were twisted, illogical and made a lot of people in Washington DC and Virginia very very rich.
I kept coming back to him to challenge my own ideas and thinking. Still anti-war. Hitchens was just so wrong on Iraq, Afghanistan and all the forever wars.
Losing Hitch was the beginning of the end for a free, fair, and moral west.
"there are large tracts of afghan population who would never submit to the Taliban"
I LOVE Hitchens and agree with much of his commentary and analysis here. But he was wrong on this one^^
Give them time. They’ve not fully submitted yet. Many have left now and will wish and work to return to a Taliban free Afghanistan
@@13olibrown And by "wish and work" you mean interminable civil war and factionalism.
All the more reason to leave and never go back.
He's not wrong. There are 80,000 Taliban. They have supporters mainly in one ethnic group. Outside this, they aren't wanted.
No woman wants it unless she's been beaten into submission to it.
They are a vile, grotesque and fascist terrorist group with no place in a civilised society and Afghanistan would. be better off fighting these terrorists.
@@drmodestoesq Pure defeatism! Your solution is to give up and hand the control of Afghanistan to brutal theocratic fascists? Would you feel that way if it was your country they were taking over and your people they were immiserating (the Islamists and Jihadists plan to expand their Caliphate to every corner of the world so it's worth asking yourself that question).
@@13olibrown Ohhh...I have asked myself that question. The question is that aside from interminable war...what can be done?
First...dropping the hammer on Pakistan. Which has been playing both ends. Supporting the Taliban and accepting money from America for the "War on Terrorism."
Second...90 percent of the heroin on the planet comes from Afghanistan...drop the hammer.
Third....75 percent of the budget of Afghanistan comes from foreign aid. That has already ended.
The first low hanging fruit is to cut off the money supply.
But that takes political will. Always in short supply.
How much support is the Taliban going to get when 37 million people don't have enough food, basic medicine and fuel?
HItch: "Such a shortage of imagination...." 7:00
Yep.
What's happening in Kabul would of broken his heart, such a sad chapter of our collective history
It might have woken him up to just HOW WRONGLY he has perceived the situation.
@@thedolphin5428 I didn't wake him up on Iraq. He maintained till his dying day that Iraq had WMDs.
@@drmodestoesq
Yep. Hitch was brilliant (and right) in some ways but stubbornly wrong in other ways. He was not a perfect oracle as some believe. Mind you, his unwavering stance on going into Iraq was not specifically based on the WMD narrative but his firm belief in regime change. And like EVERY INSTANCE of Western military interference in the affairs of other countries, it ended up a fkn mess. I now see that this is the US's primary aim -- to wreck and impoverish such nations. Works real well to bomb the shit out of a place ... remove a disagreeable leader... then "help them to rebuild" ... eye roll ...
@@thedolphin5428 I agree with a lot of historians. I maintain that the problem is that a bunch of European imperialists starting drawing lines all over the middle east and called them countries.
Despite what Left Wing flakes like to think...the human race is insanely tribal. They should have tried to contain ethnicities in hermetic nations. There still would have been conflict. But more like the Slovaks and the Czechs. Not like the Sinhalese and the Tamils.
@@drmodestoesq
Yes, agreed. National boundaries, unless an obvious island, are quite arbitrary, change every century with new territorial wars.
My original point here was that Hitchens, despite his massive knowledge, is very often running from an opinion, and also a US-based script and thus can be shown as wrong when the script fails ... as it did in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. Chomsky, on the other hand, has been far more accurate in his prophesies of world events precisely BECAUSE he breaks script! I think Hitchens sold out to his new citizenship and his inflated reputation in the US. Like so many pundits, they and their fans get convinced of their fallibility.
@milekrizman It's time for all of us to take the torch and aspire to be the erudite Hitchens was. That's what he truly wanted.
But leave aside his Utopian political fantasies. They were a disaster.
So after the thousands killed and trillions spent, the Taliban undid 20 years of occupation in under 2 weeks. The occupation was no more than a revenge reel for US citizens to watch after 9/11, a PR stunt for US politicians and a jackpot for the US military industrial complex. All of the major US military contractors raked in huge profits off Afghanistan.
Those were the real objectives so in that sense, mission accomplished.
While I agree with alot of what Christopher Hitchen had to say, his foreign policy views on Afghanistan were staggeringly naive. Nobody really ever cared about the common Afghans. They were mere cannon fodder or as the US often phrases it 'collateral damage'.
A test of wills that we did lose. I can't even imagine the amount of contempt that Hitchens would have had for Trump and his cronies.
And Biden
Trust me - Hitchens came to hate the Dems as much as the GOP. He despised weakness in those who claimed strength and wisdom.
Why are you talking just about Trump? Sure, he is at fault here, so is Biden, so is the beloved angelic poster-boy of the democrats, Obama. Blame should also be at the feet of the president who started it all - W. Bush. To talk only about Trump is closed-minded madness.
You are correct. Every administration is guilty. But the right jumping on Biden now is criminal. Yes Biden botched the planning and execution of the withdrawal, but Trump set it up and made promises to the Taliban that somone else would have to keep.
@@blaster-zy7xx so blame Trump AND Biden AND Obama AND Bush
The man has so much wisdom and foresight. He was wrong about Iraq but he was definitely right about Afghanistan. He even thinks about minorities which nobody talks about.
How I wish Hitch were alive and could scold the US and Nato for their actions.
Biden didn't even notify any Nato countries. He just unilaterally withdrew, leaving them on their own to get their people out.
@@charlesvan13 consider the possibility at least that all of that is appearance, the grand design of which, if known, would explain all that now seems only 'political fall-out' and chaos.
Yet here we are
Well, with the victory for the Taliban, I think it's safe to say that the War on Terror has reached it's final conclusion. The curtain certainly fell faster than anyone expected that's for sure.
Christopher was a cosmopolitan, a D.C. resident. Just as Orwell pointed out in his case for socialism (The Road to Wigan Pier) that socialism is essentially "an urban creed," the ideal of installing some sort of democratic republic in Afghanistan is a civic, urban ideal. To us it makes sense because only roughly 16-17% of U.S. and U.K. citizens live in rural areas, and we tend to dismiss what they think anyway. The lack of official documentation has made the possibility of an accurate census in Afghanistan frustratingly elusive, but by our best guess 74% (!) of Afghans live in remote areas. This is how the Taliban knew it had an advantage. Even in English speaking countries, the rural folk tend to prefer "small government" and from some reporting on the ground that we got this summer it's sadly apparent that this is how some (primarily men, of course) saw the takeover. Aside from the possibility of personal threats, it seems the Taliban came in the way any Republican or Tory comes in: "we will get big gov't off your back"--so you can get back to farming or whatever it is you do without worrying some drone pilot will mistake your family for a "terrorist' cell.
Whenever I want to get some context about what is really going on in the world today, I am 100% guaranteed to discovery that Christopher Hitchens had a nuanced and well-reasoned opinion on the subject a dozen years ago.
Damn this man and his mind ... so right about everything and so ahead of his time
except the whole "Afghans will resist the Taliban" part.
But he was not right about everything.
Found those stockpiles of WMD in Iraq yet brain box?
I've come to the conclusion that the reasons that Chris believes the war was necessary and the reasons Bush actually did it are entirely different.
For Chris it is humanitarian, he doesn't care about any hidden motives the government may have. To him, what matters is people aren't being tortured anymore. That a mistake made in the past has been corrected.
For George Bush it was purely profitable. Note that George had a big stake in the oil company who got the rights to drill.
He hated to be called Chris. Don't call him Chris. :-)
@@Interfect727 Chris is dead and I'm a contrarian.
I have no control over the situation.
I have written countless comments on countless TH-cam Clips with this man, i wish I met him in my lifetime or at least heard him speak at an event.
Talk about one question cutting through imperialism. "Do you want a base in Cyprus or Cyprus as a base".
Sad part is that it was someone Hitchens was quoting. When he spoke for himself in his later years, Hitchens was all about imperialism. Like in this interview!
@@dingdongism oh yeah? All those afghans were celebrating the end of imperialism by scrambling to get out of the country? You should get a brain and not think with your testicles.
And here we are...
Anyone else back here in 2021 watching the Taliban take over Kabul? The President and his staff just fled the country.
One of the greatest Classical Liberal minds to ever walk the earth.
I wonder how Hitchens would feel about Biden's decision to suddenly pull out of Afghanistan?
Its sad that the war in Afghanistan will be lost because the American political class is tired of fighting it. I don't think the American people are tired of it, they just need leadership from politicians.
As Hitch says towards the end, already ten years ago it was no longer a war, more a low level occupation. Over 2020-21 not a single American life was lost prior to Biden’s bungled withdrawal.
Thank you for posting this, rferlonline.
It hurts to know that what we need is Hitchens and that......those days are over. I wish there was some 'modern hitch', but...I don't know who that is.
Some really trenchant points. He’s so right about the moral responsibility. Missed the mark on the cost and outcome, but it’s tough to look 10 years into the future. The US record at intervention is dismal. Perhaps we should examine our actions in hopes of learning the limits of power. But we have similar disasters in progress in other countries at this very moment.
Perhaps you/we should examine how easily led you/we are by Potemkin intellectual warmongers
I very enjoy listening to Christopher Hitchens. He was often right, but also often wrong. It's interesting how there's something of a cult of personality around him now. Something he himself, with all his love of Orwell, would have despised and feared.
Well this didn't age well.
Exactly my thought. But I still miss the man...
The book behind Christopher's right ear make him look like a pirate.
Oh, and what he talks about is quite interesting too.
Hitchens: 'there is such shortage of imagination'
Also Hitchens:
-Taliban winning is unthinkable.
-People won't submit to the Taliban.
thats pretty funny lol
He didn't get everything exactly right.
Taliban winning is unthinkable with the US presence there (or bases). People will not submit is also true as the afghani people will fight guerrilla now. The shortage of imagination comes from weak leaders who use propaganda to get votes from an uneducated population, it’s not good news for the US.
@@jolinejoline2471
The shortage comes feom the US who won't get out once they're done
And idiots like Christophe and delusional ones like yourself supporting forever wars
@@goyonman9655 You're delusional if you think the alternative is preferable and that we won't be back again when things get worse, as they surely will. His suggestion that they fund Afghan's export potential by buying their opium, thereby prohibiting Taliban's billion-dollar trade, does show imagination. Joline Joline is right, in the case of there remaining a US presence on the soil, Taliban winning was unthinkable. Vigilance will always be necessary so long as there exist those who wish to destroy the freedoms of others.
@@mattpopemusic
Osama is dead
What was the US still doing till now?
The last thing he said hit home the hardest for me. It was a test of wills that we couldn’t afford to lose. We kept going on about how it was our longest war. Well, we’re a pretty young country. 20 years is not like a benchmark in the history of wars. And certainly not for Afghanistan. Or the west. Or Islam. It’s just a lot for America. Time will tell, but it will be interesting (perhaps terrifying) to see what the aftermath of our debacle of a withdrawal will be several years from now. The stage is certainly set for the country to be a safe haven for terrorist groups again. Will it mean eventually that we’ll just have to go back in again? Will we see a rise in terrorist attacks in the coming years? Has extremist Islam been bolstered by all of this? I know and understand the argument against how much money we were coughing up daily to be there. It was a tremendous cost. But where does all this leave us years from now? What will be the cost of our withdrawal?
Sounds like a Fox news take. Fight them over there, so they don't come here. So stay there forever and pay trillions of dollars and hundreds of lives to keep the mission going till doomsday.
What I don't understand is if he acknowledges all the terrible things America has done, asisting the Taliban and propping up Saddam Hussein, why he things America is the solution!? Surely, they just want the US to leave them alone.
That's a good question. The US is undoubtedly responsible for a number of bad situations in the middle east. Much of this stemmed from cold war jostling for control and influence in strategically important regions.
What Hitchens argues is that they and western countries now have a responsibility to right the wrongs of the past, to leave the nations they meddled in with some form of stable democratic system of government and a chance at a peaceful prosperous future. For example to remove psychopathic genocidal dictators which they installed in Iraq, and dismantle fascistic murderous regimes they supported like the Mujaheddin which became the Taliban in Afghanistan.
You argue that after all this damaging meddling in their internal affairs that the people in these regions would prefer if the US left them alone. Granted some may feel that way but I guarantee you that no one would have been happier than Saddam Hussein or the Taliban to be left to left alone to murder and oppress the people of their respective regions without interference.
Perhaps the US are not the ideal country to be spearheading an intervention given their responsibility for much of the problems but I wonder who else has the power or resources to carry out an intervention successfully.
Pat121V It's like asking a whore to be the enforcers of chastity. They've overthrown democratically elected leaders all over the world and yet they pose as the arbiters of democracy when they have been the enemies of democracy all over the world. Most of the polls in Iraq show that they want the Americans out of their country, one famously said that we once had one dictator, we now have tens of thousands. The Iraqi people would have been able to overthrow him had it not been for the sanctions which starved the people and not the ruling class. I don't think any country should have a monopoly on justice. It should be the bordering countries' responsibility. Just like when the Vietnamese overthrew Pol Pot. With Bush and Blair talking about "God" and "crusade" to justify the war, people feel like this colonization.
TheGhostof HumanKindness
Ya like I said, The US are not ideal because of their terrible history of meddling and propping up evil regimes so long as they were anti communist. However I would still maintain that the removal from power and prosecution of Saddam Hussein was both necessary and just. Let me explain why I'm not sure anyone else had the capability of toppling Saddam.
You mentioned their neighbors. Iran despised the regime but they had already fought a war to a bloody standstill. Turkey has a common interest in repressing their Kurdish population. Syria and Saudi Arabia would have more animosity with the Iran than Iraq, and no other country or local coalition would have had the willingness or capability to topple the powerful Iraqi armed forces like the US led coalition.
You also mentioned an overthrow by the Iraqi people. This was impossible. One was attempted after the Gulf war but it was mercilessly crushed after Bush senior allowed Saddam to stay in power. This created a vacuum of popular opposition to the regime which was quickly occupied by Islamist fundamentalists creating much of the headaches faced by the coalition. The majority of violence committed now in the country is carried out by rival Shia and Sunni groups backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively. The toppling of the regime created a vacuum in which various groups are vying for control and the US are trying to install and maintain a democratic government to give Iraq stability and a chance to build a prosperous socially equal society.
There is no unified opposition to the US presence but all parties know they would have an easier time taking over if they can force US influence out. Should this happen, Iraq is likely to descend back into genocidal dictatorial rule.
The reception the Coalition received from some of local populace was understandable. Despite the massive success of the invasion the occupation was massively flawed. They dismantled many institutions which plunged Iraq into economic and social instability and allowed local Sunni/Shia rival groups to much influence.
As to the the idea of colonization, Coalition forces withdrew in 2011, but continue to support the Iraqi National parliament and security forces against internal and external threats to the fledgling democracy. (eg. foreign nation backed sectarian violence). It is early days but the roots of a stable society are growing but it will continue to need support.
Hope it wasn't TL:DR
Pat121V But this is what I don't understand, you can call me stupid if you like? Why would the US care about the well-being of the Iraqi people when THEY were the ones who helped him get to power, THEY were the ones who sold him chemical weapons that he used to gas the kurds. George Bush didn't even know anything about the country ffs, he didn't know the difference between suni and shia. Hitchens doesn't seem to be able to open his eyes and see - that or he was just being a careerist. Watch the documentary "Iraq War behind the media coverage" and look at the pictures of dead children with their brains blown out. The US targeted schools, hospitals, mosques. And if it was such a noble mission. Why the lying? Why did they try to make out there were weapons of mass destruction? Why the connection to Al Qaeda? I know Hitchens claims the US has a monopoly on secularism but it was only until the US invaded the country that Al Qaeda forces came in. Under Saddam, anyone even suspected of holding such tendencies would be executed.
TheGhostof HumanKindness I've been asking myself that question for a long time. I mean the post-9/11 mood in the U.S wasn't, "Lets do the Arabs a favour." The sanctions that were imposed on Iraq devastated the population, where even a U.N coordinator stated in 1998 after resigning that "We are in the process of destroying an entire nation." Surely this war should've been the fastest war in history, given how horribly left the country was after the sanctions. The overthrow of Saddam was desirable but I wasn't a fan of what took place in Iraq-war crimes committed in Fallujah and torture scandals, not to mention 500,000 dead. Maybe Pat can explain this.
CH mentions training Afghan people a couple of times. Also, the base of Afghans that would never submit to Taliban rule. Both of those lofty ideas collapsed overnight. Looked good on paper 10 years ago. Difficult to imagine America without a plan for the past 20 years unless 1) we knew the above ideas would never work, and/or 2) we just viewed this as a going concern to keep war economy in place. All at a terrible cost.
And the US and NATO has been defeated in open warfare. You think we have any good reason to have any military alliance with US anymore? I think not. You're weak.
Great strategic thinking.
His strategy was as successful as that of Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti or Iraq.
So miss CH!! We need him now more than ever!!
Nah...there are tons of people who want to keep forever wars going in the Middle East.
Follow the money. Was the Afghan army getting paid? I've read that soldiers weren't paid for months. Why would an Afghan soldier continue to fight without American support, militarily and financially. I think most of them signed up for the paycheck! Afghanistan has no economy to speak of.....if you're not getting paid now, why would you think it would get better?
One more reason to leave. An unassailable culture of corruption.
It's great that he's setting policy. We should have been listening to him since World War One....would have saved a whole lot of trouble....
An excellent analysis ... "All it takes is for one side to give up". Well, that turned out to be the West.
So what was the alternative? After 20 years?
Having been there, I can only disagree with him on the point that the Afghan government (and American allies) has failed them to the point where whatever we wanted to fix was made untenable. It's really too bad how it all turned out
I usually agree with Hitchens, but he's full of rubbish on this.
Napoleon thought he had to take the ideals of the French Revolution and The French Enlightenment to all of Europe; and obviously he had to do it by force because all of Europe was trying its best to reinstate the Bourbon monarchy. So how did all that work out for France in the end? Very poorly.
With America it's similar. We take the ideals of the American Revolution to the entire world -- by force if necessary. We assume, if we plant the seed of democracy and freedom, the people will automatically arise from the soil of liberation singing La Marseillaise and march on the capital overthrowing all tyrants. What a dream indeed. Yet it did work somewhat that way in Germany and Japan after the War. Today they both love freedom and democracy though completely unique and unprecedented to Japanese culture as it was and generally despised in Germany during the Weimar Repulblic -- so much so that the whole system collapsed and the Nazis took over.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't work in Afghanistan because that country is tribal to the core ... and the jury is still out on Iraq. And it didn't work at all in Vietnam. At any rate, it cannot be the function of America to bring democracy and freedom to the world. I should think it would be obvious to everyone by now -- after Vietnam and Afghanistan -- the folly of that enterprise.
You wouldn't agree that Afghan minorities deserve protection from Sunni dictatorship?
@@samjoshi1812 Deserve's got nothing to do with it
Hitchens, always relevant🤔👍🇬🇧
3:24 All the US needed is to have the Bagram airbase . No they gave it to chinese on a platter
China can have Afghanistan. Maybe they can bring some law and order to the place and prevent it from being used as a terrorist base.
We miss you, Hitch 💔
The arrogance of the man using “we” like we are the policemen of the world or the colonial power that decides the fate of Afghanistan
Or perhaps he is speaking collectively as it implies ownership and a sense of responsibility for mistakes that were made.
Uh, once again a comment of one of those who neither know what they're talking about nor watch the video and let me guess from this state of ignorance he voted and praise the sitting idiot in chief and his lies.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 ice cream man still your president buddy cope and seethe
@@sliemavonpawz938 Last time i checked that stinking old child molester has never even set his foot in my country.
The unthinkable becomes not only thinkable, but inescapable. Welcome to 2021.
He was, of course, spot on. And it still applies. I am certain that Allied Forces-will be back there. Pulling out was naive and reckless.
He wasn't 'spot on', the 'spot on' position was to oppose the central stupidity of 'conquest in the name of self-determination'.
Also - your the naive one if you think that any US president is going to commit political suicide by sending troops back into AFG after the disaster than was this withdrawal.
@@aceflashheart I accept your argument, however if you’re going to insult me I won’t accept that when you can’t even phrase your argument with the correct grammar.
@@richardsutton1131 You understood me well enough.
@@aceflashheart Just wait for the next wave of terror. Gifting the global jihad movement a triumph liked that comes at a price and which will be thousands of deaths in our cities.
I just wish TH-cam stopped deleting comments. Intelligent comments
I love how everybody pretends to know who represents Afghans. The mujahedeen also consisted of a lot of Arabs and foreign muslim fighters just like the Taliban today. AND they did NOT represent the majority of Afghans, thank you!! The Taliban and other foreign fighters (who don't represent Afghans either), get financial aid from wahabi sheikhs from the middle east and from drug trade. They don't need stinger missiles, they're doing enough damage with road side bombs.
The west does not represent the majority of afghans
@@jacobjorgenson9285 Just shove it! We've had enough of your artefacts of Stalin's fifth column drivel. The man is dead. He died in 1953! Time to end regurgitating his nonsense.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 fuck iff to your own broken nation. more young americans died of drug over dose last year alone than have died in afghanistan. you have nothing to teach the world. the american century is over sweetie
@@jacobjorgenson9285 Someone too stupid to recognize my name is not american, ist not in the position to recognize who represents Afghan majority. Hint: it is not an islamist movement from Pakistan that represents Afghanistan.
Oh ! Hello ! Others here too.
He knew. He knew what it would take to make it work. War against the parties of God aka the Taliban.
Yes, endless war is working so well for the world.
Hitch’s words resonate down the ages.
Mr Hitchens perceptions are sorely missed, his knowledge, discourse and humanity - towering. We are left with a party of charlatans, here in the UK; with the collective brain power and emotional intelligence of a bunch of fruit flies!
Haha..true that!
Funny how you warmongers tie yourselves in knots trying to wring out some sort of intellectual content after being tricked into thinking that a tin pot country is a genuine threat to the world.
I bet that he has read all of those books. He may have been the most informed man of his generation.