@@AceofDlamonds People have largely forgotten what the very legitimate reasons for the Iraq war in 2003 were. However unpopular, I don't blame America for invading and deposing Saddam and his gangster state, I still support it. What I can't forgive is America's decision to break apart Iraq's military which weren't bothering to fight back they hated the regime so much, and thus leaving the country in largely religiously motivated chaos. People always tend to forget that Britain and other allies staunchly opposed this decision, and America's inability to discern between Saddam's security forces and the main army which wanted a coup for years. People also always deliberately overlook the fact that religion is and was not a massive factor in the state's collapse.
You need to hear the full debate between Christopher and his brother Peter, debate from which this clip was taken and in which Peter makes a great counter-argumentation. Also, the video is edited: the final sentence the "good by" one, was said at the beginning, it was not said to the man asking the question (it is not really relevant but worth noticing)
*David Duckett- Hitchens defeated the likes of you using pure fact, logic, reason and rationale. You are simply woefully uneducated and ignorant when it comes to the 2003 liberation of Iraq, a country which now a functioning democracy with regular free and fair elections.*
@@EzraB123 Your agreement is irrelevant . Iraq war was the biggest strategic blunder of US foreign policy , even if we don't take the lives lost into consideration . It's the sole reason why Iran rose to be such a regional power . US hegemony in the ME doesn't exist anymore
He talks all the points in support of the war. But he doesn't say why they warrant war against Iraq, while similar humans rights abuses in other places don't warrant war in those places.
Indeed. He spoke to the principle of defeating fascism and genocide in other regimes, but not whether we should invade those places as well. If it's because of our imperial/economic concerns that he spoke to, the history since has shown the US invasion as a vast cost to both human life and US economic interests. It fed the war pigs and industrial elites while rivaling or surpassing Hussein's bloodshed. Hitch was smart, but smart doesn't mean right.
I don't know if he said it in this particular speech or if he said it in other speeches, but the four Points of when a nation state becomes illegitimate and the fact that Saddam Hussein broke all four of them
@@raylambert3425 you're saying that as if the us military did that, it was isis or at that time "Al Qaeda in Iraq" that slaughtered the iraqi people, bush and bremer made many mistakes and ineptitudes but the people who are doing the killing are one who should be blamed. and what would you have us do instead, abandon our iraqi allies and allows isis to take our the entire place, which is literally what obama did. and then cynically say i told you so..
@@raylambert3425 If his death was necessary to win the war, then we need to distinguish between capital punishment and death in war. People who oppose capital punishment, like myself, do so on the grounds that in every circumstance, imprisonment is the best form of punishment, because if it ever transpires that the criminal is innocent, then they can be released. Death is irreversable. If a nation were to declare war on a regime like that of Saddam Hussein, then anyone who militarily supports the regime is guilty. Because imprisonment is rarely an option in intense conflict, then death is the next best option, with the objective of military victory
Saddam said he wished he had the wmd because the us would not have attacked him. Misleading by hitchens. Sadaam was assured by the us that attacking kuwait would be okay.
Not assured. One person, one diplomat, not the Commander in Chief, not any person with the ability to move troops, said that. Barely. You're going to hide behind that line of reasoning? Gross
@@cue_khb wait, what? why? what happened with the kurds? mostly i only have heard about the unbelievable atrocities victimizing kurds after the US abandoned them after promises to protect them
no point posting this now, it was in 2008 before we saw the result of the Iraq war and how poorly the situation was handled outlined in the Iraq inquiry. I think he would have still agreed that going into Iraq was the right thing to do but strongly criticise how the war was handled and the state in which the western forces left Iraq.
Finally, someone who can think clearly. I completely agree. Unfortunately, it seems to be the de facto standard to say intervention in Iraq was wrong without analysis.
@@nomore5668 It is also widely understated that the decision to pull out of an unstable Iraq in 2010 was an absolute catastrophe. This narration that the iraq war was a mistake and only that is now comepletely mainstream on both sides of the political spectrum in the US. Genocide and brutality is now met with indefference. Not only that but indifference earns politicians applause.
We half assed the war. We have amazing personnel and technology, but you still need massive man power and capital to nation build. The Middle East pretty much has one source of wealth which is oil and does not have a diverse economy. Combine thousands of years of wars, no real strategic physical barriers, Islam, tribalism, monarchy, and recently poor education, creating a western democratic republic is damn near impossible. We literally would have to have destroyed way more shit, killed more people and had martial rule with facism make a western nation. Vast infrastructure woulda ended to be created, an aggressive mandatory educational program would have been implemented, building up various industries with foreign paternships while allowing newly educated young Iraqi to own them, manufacturing would have to be created. Pretty much anyone that was an adult during saddams reign would have to kept out of powerful positions due to their tribalism and religious views. We would pretty much have to kill anyone who resided, break up families and villages to ensure that the next generation was educated and was indoctrinated with western views and did not have tribalist views. Iraq’s military was destroyed in the war, some of who were well trained and survived the war would still have tribalism/religious bigotry ideologies along with only really knowing how to function under a powerful violent dictator should not really be apart of the new Iraq’s military and government. For example, after ww2 Russia killed a ton of SS members& high ranking German military personnel, sent nazi’s to gulags and committed genocide of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe because 1 the USSR was terrible & two those individuals probably were not going integrate with the regime & ideology change and probably could wage Georgia warefare and terrorism. In addition, Iraq after all the destruction had a population that was not educated enough to build and maintain a western republic society that had a national sense of identity instead of their cultural groups and a diverse economy. To do all this would take probably 30 years. Europe and Japan took less time to rebuild because they were educated and held the nation state as their identity. Also, their neighboring countries had an interest in them rebuilding and making them allies, unlike the Middle East were Iraq’s neighbors hate them and probably want their oil.
Support for the war is the most enduring position of our time. It preceeds much of the issues going on today. Much like the vote for Brexit or trump etc. It was necessary, just but ultimately handled by incompetent planners and a president that was tok soft on the world stage in the face of nascent fascism and its rise.
I love Hitch, but I can't help but notice he does everything he can do dance around the central issue: That no regime on this Earth, whether it be Saddam or Bush Jr has the right to invade a country based on a lie or just because it can. The US punished Saddam for doing it to Kuwait, then get upset when the world calls them out for doing the same thing when it suits them.
How do you then deal with fascist countries that seek to invade the entire continent? Appeasement prolonged ww2. Had Hitler been stopped in his tracks earlier, millions of lives would've been saved.
What-aboutism. Who cares if there were no nukes. Does that change the genocides and invasions? Nazi Germany had no nuclear weapons either so should we have let them be too? Once you invade a sovereign nation you have voided your right to rule, you are no more than a mafia in control of a state.
@@aapowilen5436 " Had Hitler been stopped in his tracks earlier, millions of lives would've been saved." Therefore the US had the right to invade Iraq in 2003? And the straw man award goes to...
@@saintjimmy456 Thanks for the award, but it's not really a strawman. What I'm trying to say is that both Hitler and Hussein shared same ideas. Saddamism had characteristics of nazism. Appeasement can lead to humanitarian crises. Intervention is sometimes necessary.
can anyone provide a source to saddam hussein's speech? (the one where he wished he had obtained nuclear weapons before invading kuwait) i'd like to see that for myself.
Saddam Hussein gassed over 1000 Kurds in Halabja, so what excactly is the different between him and Hitler and why World War 2 was justified and the Iraq War not?
Really nice to see a man who has been pretty much right his entire career be wrong on a heavy subject. Even more enjoyable to see his followers defending him, trying to spin shit so he is still right in their eyes. Fuck, I love Hitchens and I'm sad he's not among us anymore, but most people who follow his views are complete idiots lacking any kind of self-reflection.
you're the idot, else you'd made a specific argument refusting something Hitchens said, instead of self ritious assertions. "He was so wrong about this" All you people say that, and never back it up with a coherrant argument.
jimmy2k4o Not everyone wants to type out an essay about why they believe someone to be wrong. It's more about people following those they look up to blindly
jimmy2k4o Well just look at the result of the Iraq War. No matter how much Hitchens wanted to believe otherwise, it was a debacle that didn't bring any of the benefits he claims. Also, he literally claimed that America has the right to steal another country's oil. Enough said.
REVERSE WALRUS- feel free to provide some facts, or evidence, to go with that intellectually-inferior ad hominem attack. Hitchens amply and easily demonstrated why the likes of you were staggeringly wrong over the liberation of Iraq.
RedXIV- "Also, he literally claimed that American had the right to steal another country's oil' Goodness, what babbling nonsense. Cite the specific part where he stated that.
I can appreciate Hitchens' arguments. He was still dead wrong. And you didn't need to be a psychic to predict the kind of disaster Iraq would turn out to be.
I'm not sure that you are correct. Do you refute the claims made by Hitch about the terrible acts of Hussein listed in the first seven minutes? And, even if it was a disaster (which is debatable), I do not see how that proves that it was something that should not have been done. Should every moral act be avoided that might fail?
I don't agree that the invasion of Iraq was a moral act. But even if I did, those acts have to be weighed as to how workable and feasible they are, and whether they'll do more harm than good. George Bush Sr. left Saddam in power back in '91 because he understood that taking him out would lead to, in his own words, "a quagmire". He understood the geo-politics of the region and knew that leaving him in power was the lesser of two evils. It's interesting to note that virtually no military action was taken to prevent the genocide in Darfur that started right around the same time as the Iraq invasion. I'm guessing that's because Bush didn't think that was a mission that would "pay for itself".
how is iraq's situation not a disaster?.....give me the pros of that war if you are so confident that we (the UK) did the right thing...look at how many iraqi lives were taken...the figures range depending on what source you use but a half a million lives have been lost....and many more families have been affected.....look at the country now...they dont even have decent water systems/hospitals. Even iraqis who hated sadam say that they had a better quality of life with him as their dictator. We went to war on the assumptions of WMD which there was ZERO evidence for....Tonly blair and his Boyfriend Bush Jr should be locked up.....and Tony blair has gotten stupidly wealthy...he charges for talkss and speeches....what a vile man he i. If the UK wanted to invade iraq and dispose of a leader....why dissolve the army? and y not have a plan.....i mean even MI5 is to blame....they all deserve death....but death is too quick....Mr blair needs to suffer...along with Bush
Russell Hammond Those are all just bad things Saddam did. None of those indicate the wisdom of removing him when he was the only thing keeping a volatile region of the Middle East from chaos, nor does it prove the countries that invaded Iraq were actually acting in Iraq’s interests. Hitchens isn’t defending the real Iraq war, he’s defending the idea of the Iraq war he made up in his mind.
@@russellhammond371 America violated at least 3 of those points themselves, but not only that, America and the west were in support of Saddam during his worst atrocities. The French were helping him make a nuke, America was giving him billions of dollars in aid. They only turned against him when he was working against their interest.
Lol all the Hitchen worshippers trying so hard to defend this, he literally could not have been more wrong. Just because he talks with a posh english accent and is so forthright with the way he speaks does not mean that he is right. Take that into account when listening to his views on God.
What nonsense are you talking about? You do realise Peter Hitchens has a similar posh accent? Are you suggesting that people who follow him are also 'hoodwinked' by his posh accent? Oh no wait, you're not.
Iraqi here, from Christian Assyrian background if that matters. It's hilarious how much lies Hitchens was willing to say just to push his agenda, with such hubris as well.
He was undercover agent and public influncer of the interests, which are moving strategic directon for UK establishment, therefore his public apereances always suported a strategic foreign policy action and on small tactical moves he was building credibility with audience as a contrarian.
The A Q Khan network: Abdul Qadeer Khan is a Pakistani nuclear physicist who was found to be developing and selling nuclear weapons and components to North Korea, amongst others
I think that we were right to attempt to stop the radical Islamists and remove the religious totalitarian dictatorships in the middle east. I don't think we went about it well, or for the right reasons, at all, and we underestimated the negative effects that would have. That to me is the center of the problem.
Yeah when I think of "religious totalitarian dictatorships," I think of.... Ba'athist Iraq? The country led by self-proclaimed socialists that invaded the Islamic Republic of Iran? A country that the US portrayed as a threat to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War?
They did it for the right reasons but bush did it incompetently, Paul bremer and debaathification, rumsfled and abu gharib etc. But that doesn't impeach the idea that it was the right thing to do. And the 2014 isis insurgency for example only occurred because Obama withdrew us ground forces in 2011, so.....
@@IsmailofeRegime you clearly don't know what you're talking about, under saddam iraq was the world largest state sponsor of terrorism, conducted genocide, invaded and annexed countries and used wmd in the past and planned to do so again, "it was essential to move iraq and the region into the post saddam era"... watch this, th-cam.com/video/CR1X3zV6X5Y/w-d-xo.html, then talk...
@@thedoctor.a.s1401 I've read plenty of books and articles on Iraq, I don't need to rely on a nine-minute TH-cam clip. You're trying to use emotionally-charged terms to shut down arguments: * What does "largest state sponsor of terrorism" mean in concrete terms? Iraq certainly wasn't sponsoring Al-Qaeda. It certainly did sponsor Arafat and other Palestinian figures and groups, but I don't see how supporting Palestinian militants is a justification for the Iraq War. * Saddam did invade Iran and Kuwait, yes. The Iran-Iraq War ended fifteen years prior to the Iraq War (Iran, FYI, opposed the Iraq War.) The invasion of Kuwait likewise took place over a decade prior to the Iraq War, and ended with the US pulverizing much of Iraq's infrastructure and military capabilities if not on the battlefield then via strict sanctions. So, again, how does this justify the Iraq War? Are you suggesting Saddam was planning on invading another country circa 2003 with his severely weakened army? * Yes, Saddam's government committed genocidal acts (which the US government indirectly assisted and even helped cover up, see e.g. the article "CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran" by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid in Foreign Policy magazine.) These acts took place some 15 years prior to the Iraq War, so again I don't really see your point. * Iraq's WMD program was dismantled. Saddam did indeed intend, at some point, to revive it under more favorable circumstances. The US government meanwhile falsely claimed Saddam *hadn't* dismantled the program, making this the most publicized pretext used to invade Iraq.
@BR-ye7px What does Iraq look like today for 43 million Iraqis if Saddam is still alive and well? I think it looks like a fascist dictatorship where people live in fear being tortured or having family members tortured. What if Saddam tries to invade more neighboring countries? What if Saddam gets nuclear weapons?
Almost an Alan Partridge moment: *_AHA!_* Also, what a t-t-tr, what a t-t-t-tr, a, a, a-a-a-a-a, what a, a, a, a...what a *_TRAVESTY_* that two years have passed without an upvote or comment ;)
Why not ? Either Saddam had committed said crimes and lost his sovereignty, or he hadn't. The result or success of the intervention does not speak to the underlying legality or logic of the intervention. Furthermore, the taliban make much better leaders than the fascist ba'ath party ever did. Surely the taliban are illiberal and by no means good leaders - but atleast they have religious laws to constrain them, unlike Saddam.
I’m under the assumption there was systemic rape under saddam Husseins regime, this isn’t including the Iranian and Kuwaiti civilians raped by the Iraqi army during their “wars”. I’ve also seen the pictures online of the gas attack against Kurdish civilians in 1988, which wasn’t the only time saddam gassed civilians, they were used on Iranians aswell. He wanted the bomb, he tortured dissenters, he made it illegal to own a satellite dish that wasn’t from the state. I’m just confused why you always hear this was an unjustified war like it’s a slogan, but you never hear these people argue we were simply there for too long or shouldn’t have allowed so many grunts on the ground.
It was considered an illegal war by the UN and even major western nations like France and Germany refused to join the Iraq war. Clearly Iraq war apologists like yourself will try to find an excuse to justify the disastrous invasion on Iraq.
"Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages." - Samuel Johnson, The Idler
***** If you think opposing a war that has killed thousands, created a power vacuum and helped bring about ISIS silly, I think you need a good long look in the mirror...
Dan Green Time will show how dangerous it is to leave facist dictators in power. Time will show this decision to be correct, ISIS is Saddam's legacy, a continuation of the ba'ath party, and this was the first difficult step to stopping this part of the world from being so traumatic to so many people. Saddam murdered over half a million people, and did not give a flying fuck, and made sure the people of Iraq knew it. We at least care about our mistakes and those that die as a consequence. For him it wasn't even a mistake.
Of course the ba'ath party was secular. it doesn't mean they were atheists. alot of them capitulated and joined ISIS. just as they openly supported already. Either way, Saddams regime was falling and his children were going to fight over it and ruin the country anyway. So ISIS still would have taken Iraq; they didn't take Iraq by chance, its part of their theology that they need to won Syria and Iraq(well atleast certain parts of those countries, because they don't recognise them as countries). Hitchens is right; with the intervention(which was undoing previous US policy btw - its US policy that got Saddam in) we found the A.Q. Kahn Network and made Gaddafi give up WMDs. And proved to the world that the US wasn't a "paper tiger" as they called us when they committed 9/11. That is a huge win; despite Obamas idiot decision to pull the troops out and lets ISIS take over. We promised those Iraqies that we would protect them for multiple decades.
elink1 by that logic we should go into North Korea and Russia. Those have insufferable dictators too. The Iraq war made everything worse. Everyone can agree on that now. Everyone. Even the biggest pushers of the Iraq war have admitted it was a mistake. It's completely illogical to say things would have been worse off if we didn't go in. We made what little was stable into absolute chaos. Christopher is very very wrong on this issue. And I think he knows it. He just didn't want to admit defeat.
This is an embarrasement, I know hindsight is 20/20 but it's there no way that in 2008 Hitchens is saying that without knowing the spectacular failure of the invasion of Iraq, this speech is just rationalition
@@norbetjagamara5536 "invasion of Iraq was a spectacular success" lol oh sure, like when the US disbanded the entire Iraqi state basically rendering all Sunni public servants unemployed time bombs
He points to the destruction of the Southern Marshes as a crime of Saddam Hussein, but it was done in response to an uprising that was encouraged by the first Gulf War coalition, and which the coalition did not back up with actual support, so the Shia people of the marsh lands were slowly crushed.
Are trying to justify his burning of the marsh lands after he subjected his people to war and fascism, in other words if your country's national minority rebels against a dictator the dictator is justified to conduct a systemic campaign of genocide
Jazzkeyboardist1 dude the statements from Hitchens don’t effect the Iraq report, how Britain conducted the invasion is what was wrong, and what they did after they invaded. Hitchens is right it was a massive risk to the Middle East and the world to not intervene, they were a threat and showed they were invading Kuwait and killing who they wanted. Bringing up his mother’s death is a low blow and I pity you for thinking of doing that.
Russell Hammond exactly man, chris would most likely have a lot to say about how America acted in Iraq if he was around, but he would still stand by his point that something needed to he done
I'm an Iraqi Kurd, and I agree 100% with what Hichens said about Sadam Hussien, nothing was more dangerous than a psychopathic sinister dictator taking control of a country. and those who romanticized Sadam's reign have a slavery mindset, they don't appreciate living in a free society. yes, we have problems in Iraq, but the solution isn't wishing back to dictatorship, that is the thing that most Iraqi people don't get it.
Don't talk for the Iraqis!, because they know the reason of the war not this ridiculous fabrication but due to geo - political control for Iraq rich resources.and if you are really Iraqi you are a stupid and really feel sorry for your people for you being a Iraqi.
@@okquentin the country that represents you killed nearly a million people and you still acting sorry, actions talk louder than words, do something for Iraqi because is your country responsible for it.
@@judahjayson684 sounds like someone’s misses Saddam, poor thing. He’s long gone no need to polish his boots with your uvula anymore. Actually the Iraqis themselves killed nearly a million people, you are listening to propaganda. All sources confirm Saddam regime during the war and the insurgents killed at least 75% of all civilians that died during the conflict. The US has done much for Iraq it’s now time for the Iraqis to stop butchering each other and form a stable government. The US is currently still in the country and supplying it trying to build stability.
Based on? You have the assumption he was wrong without a counter argument. By all means, tell us why we should have let a facist dictator who invaded neighboring nations, genocided shia muslims in the south and kurds in the north, who mined international waters in the Persian Gulf and who caused a ecological crisis by setting fire to Kuwaiti oilfields and spilling 10's of thousands of barrels of oil into the gulf.
@@norbetjagamara5536 Based on the fact that his removal came at incredible cost and (directly and indirectly) caused immense human suffering? Sadam Hussein was a monster. But if you look at the developments in the region after the Iraq war, I fail to see how anyone could think it was a success. If your goal is to make the world a better place, then there are smarter ways to use $2 trillion . In my opinion.
@@fs3859What does life today look like for 43 million Iraqis if Saddam had never been killed? I think it looks like a fascist dictatorship where people live in fear of torture. I wonder if your argument about "immense suffering" is affected by this.
@@Thisisahandle701 No shit, right? It's amazing how these hindsight hero's can't seem to imagine how equally bad *or worse* things could have gotten if we had left the regime intact.
"This is the biggest non-proliferation victory there has ever been for any US administration ever in history." That comment, at 9:57, hasn't aged well.
@@Dbest002 What I'm referring to is Hitchens's claim that because we invaded Iraq we put other regimes on notice, leading Gaddafi, for instance, to disarm. What we did was destabilise Iraq, which strengthened Iran and added to Syria's problems. That led ultimately to the rise of Islamic State. And the main lesson Iran and others will have learnt is that the only insurance against a US attack is an independent deterrent, ideally a nuclear deterrent. If it works for Israel, Pakistan, India, the US, Britain, France and Russia, why not for Iran?
He said that in reference to the shutting down of the AQ Khan network, the illicit nuclear proliferation and smuggling network in which Pakistan sold wmd to the highest bidder, a Walmart for WMD, nukes-R-US... were you even listening ??
@@oliverc1961 Pakistan should never have got nukes, and the point was that we could and did prevent saddam from getting nukes, everyone else who has nukes keep them as part of a nuclear monopoly, as leverage in negotiations, Iran is a theocratic totalitarian regime that wants nukes for denotation and boasts about it in advance. And zarquai the founder of isis or "al qaeda in iraq" as it was originally called was in iraq before we got there, because iraq under saddam was the world largest state sponsor of terrorism
The main arguments against the war seem to be that the intervention didn't go well which is understandable but the arguments on starting the intervention do hold up. They didn't have WMDs at that time but was the intent there? The world is a safer place without Saddam, the problem wasn't getting rid of Saddam it was the aftermath
That makes no sense. "The arguments on starting the intervention hold up"..."they didn't have WMDs". So you are saying that they were right to invade because Saddam had WMDs even though he didn't? I wonder why people call it an "intervention" too instead of an invasion. Maybe it makes the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths more tolerable, or the 4500 US troop deaths worth it. Saddam was a cruel dictator and deserved to be killed. Sadly, more people died during the War to remove him than died under him.
@@saintjimmy456 but was the intent there to develop them at some point, we know Iran has pushed for it, who's to say he wouldn't have done the same? I suppose the question is, would the world has been safer if he was still around? Isis was a major screw up but I'm not sure in the long term if the world would have been safer.
@CaptainRidley it's not as simple as straight up true or false, the question isn't was any of what he said false, but more about asking the right questions for context, for example, every horrible things mentioned that sadam did, he did with US and UK backing, we sold him the gas he used against the kurds, in fact alan clarke set up a thing called the export credit guarantee scheme so that when the UK sell arms to a dictator or whatever if he doesn't pay for them the British tax payer will foot the bill, I imagine the US has something similar, in fact I think I read about it in a book, (voltaires bastards maybe) so if we actually gave a f**k about the kurdish people there was plenty we could have done, another example one could use is about the oil, how much of the oil now benefits the Iraqi people and how much of the oil now benefits private concentrations of power that will never let their profits diminish just cause some population believe they actually own that oil, who actually benefits? Cause the one thing we know! billions of barrels disappeared! Context son The more you look at old hitch the more you have to be aware of his awareness of his own hypocrisy hence why I stated he was a lunatic also his statements didn't destroy any of the opposition it only shows that there was some positive things for some people, also this was ages ago so alot of info has come out since, and I've watched his lame attempts to justify the same groups arming both sides, again signs of a lunatic, so I put it to you, What was destroyed by his statements exactly? Some speak the sounds but speak in silent voices like the radio is silent though it fills the air with noises.
@CaptainRidley that's a dumb question, but as Mr garrison always said there are no stupid questions only stupid people. Yes sadam was evil 😈, it could have been inferred from my previous statement about the horrible shit he did, but hey. How about addressing the issues raised. Mr besides the point in the video spins a duplicit Web so he does.
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting Yes, civilian deaths and terrorism rose in Iraq after the invasion, and the democracy installed there is non-functional. Iraq went from being a brutal dictatorship to a failed state, only now does it have some small semblance of stability after 500,000 excess deaths and two civil wars, great job
@@ravenmusic6392 This is blatantly false. Saddam killed well over 1 million Iraqis in his time in power and 2 wars for oil. The war to oust him in 2003 killed 20k people. Keeping him in power another 7 months would have resulted in more Iraqis dying
Osiris Hathor oh no I’ve been found out no please don’t slander me whatever shall I do now that the 3000 IQ TH-cam detective has exposed me no please stop I can’t don’t I’m crippled with guilt and disparity no please ah
Hitch and his mentors Wolfowitz and Chalabai saw a fire and thought the best way to put it out was with gasoline. They wanted to use a chainsaw to cut a rough, uncut diamond.
@@thewarwolfwarhawk3252 they sold the american people bullshit lies to annihilate 1mill iraqi’s thats how. Didnt want the American dollar to lose petro dollar status.
@@Free-leftistactionThe destruction of a fascist regime which controlled 43 million people under fear of torture or torture of family members, which wanted to acquire nuclear weapons.
And yet as right as you think you are you can’t specifically say what he was wrong about. Think you’re full Of shit and not as smart as you think you are.
I really didn't think much about the reign of Saddam Hussein until recently, and I happen to have a coworker who is from Iraq, left in 2000 for Lebanon then came to the US in 2005. I asked him if it was terrifying living under Saddam and he simply nodded, and that was all. It's enough to get you thinking about these questions...
@@shernrerrsMYTUBE At least my numbers are based on data and not plucked from your arse. They're based on demographics studies of Iraq compared to Saddam's time. Which makes your assertion even more ridiculous.
@@cockoffgewgle4993 your saying that as if the us military did that, after saddam was removed from power the al qaeda forces that was already in iraq (in alliance with former baathist secret police conducted the iraqi insurgency e.g. blew the golden dome mosque in samara or the UN office in Baghdad with a truck bomb so massive it had to have been borrowed from the former iraqi bath party) declared war against the shia Arabs. The people who are doing the killing, should be blamed for the killing.
@@thedoctor.a.s1401 They did. The US overthrow the government and occupied Iraq since that point. They're responsible. Morally, practically and in terms of international law. The country that wages war is responsible for all that follows from that action.
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting No, stupid. No one denies that he used chemical and biological weapons against the Kurds and Iranians. The stated purpose of the 2003 invasion was to rid him of his WMD, which the US wasn't able to prove - in the lead-up to the invasion nor in the aftermath - he possessed AT THE TIME. I have no doubt that he would have tried to pick up the program again if he could, but the evidence is that the regime, for its own pragmatic reasons, had eliminated its pre-existing stockpile and discontinued an active program. I hope I don't have to call mommy or the waaaaambulance now.
Herein lies my one critique of Hitchens. While he is capable of defending a moral/logical position through his meticulous verbal dismantlement, he never ventures into discussion of solutions, he merely addresses the problem, repudiates it, and that's it. Everything he said on religion was true, but assume you were capable of convincing the masses to denounce their beliefs, what then? You would still have a conglomerate of people who as a whole are largely ignorant and subject to manipulation by one group or another. To assume that those with power have the interests of the masses in mind are only deluding themselves.
"While he is capable of defending a moral/logical position through his meticulous verbal dismantlement, he never ventures into discussion of solutions" I think Hitch was mostly interested in the dismantlement, and he was good at it and enjoyed it. Once he was done dismantling he moved onto the next argument.
He makes some good points, but he couldn't necessarily have predicted the rise of ISIS. Just goes to show even the greatest minds can't predict everything.
Thats a load of bull, many people predicted the rise of islamist extremism after the invasion, everyone saw what happened in south-east asia and in Afghanistan and Lebanon years before Iraq, people saw that instability eventually led to power vaccumes that would be filled by extremist groups
Hitch sort of did anticipate ISIS in a sense…I’ve seen him in other interviews talk about a strong desire for an Arab Caliphate that dissolves the European crafted borders of the Middle East. ISIS attempted to create a caliphate.
@@username102793 you dumb sh*t , if he did anticipated the rise of ISIS he wouldn't participate in its terror, the death of almost a million of Iraqis which is worser than what ISIS did.
A nation sacrifices its sovereignty when; 1. It invades a neighbouring state, as Iraq had done in Kuwait (in fact Hussein tried to annex and absorb Kuwait) 2. It has committed genocide, and therefore violated, the UN Genocide Convention (and the Convention by the way MANDATES immediate action be taken to either "prevent or punish" as soon as information is available) as Iraq did with the Al-Anfal genocide campaign in which at least 130,000 Kurds were gassed, some with US, UK, French, Russian and Germany weaponry, much to our shame(and is the reason we have a moral and ethical duty, obligation and responsibility to the people of Iraq) 3. It harbours internationally-wanted criminals, as Iraq had, giving safe-haven to the likes of Abu Nidal (who killed Leon Klinghoffer ) and Abu Rahman Yasin (who mixed the chemicals for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993). 4. It tries to acquire WMD, or out-right violates the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In his book, 'The Bomb In My Garden', former Iraq chief nuclear scientist Medi Abedi confessed remnants of a centrifuge were buried in his garden, and that dummy sites were manufactured to fool UN weapons inspectors. Iraq met ALL FOUR POINTS, and therefore surrendered it's sovereignty to the international community and made the 2003 intervention and liberation legal AND moral. Only the US and UK took action because France, Russia and Germany were bribed thru the corrupted UN Oil-For-Food Programme.
I would send the link to this video to my friends but it is doubtful that they will change their minds about this war. Changing minds about these sorts of things is just as difficult, if not more so, than changing minds about religion.
Michael Beast I'm not sure that he was. It was the moral thing to do. So far it has still been a success. And, simply claiming it did not work out, even if true, and I do not agree, still does not mena that we should not have done it.
Then why don't we invade Philippines, where a genocide is currently taking place? Why are we allowing Brunei into the TPP, despite the fact they have Sharia law? It was NEVER about morality. We are NOT the world police. We are trillions in debt and we need to focus on our problems back home, not fuck up other countries to protect the business interests of the rich. Goddamn not even the GOP denies the failure of Iraq anymore.
almostskater3210 Whether we have other cases where we should intervene says nothing about Iraq. If you are an American then you would know that we have different Presidents over time and that some try to do the right thing and that others have different opinions. And when you say "protect the business interests of the rich" then you reveal that you have a bias.
drstrangelove09 I'm arguing against the people who think we went into Iraq for moral reasons by bringing up times the US could intervene for similar moral reasons, but doesn't. We don't do things like that for moral reasons. The gov could give a fuck about morality. Damn straight I have a bias; everyone has a fucking bias. Don't think you are better than anyone else. My bias happens to be for the American people.
Everyone forgets about the nuclear warheads that Saddams' government was illegally trying to manufacture against the very security council resolution (687) that they signed and agreed to. Iraqui personell transporting calutrons and other nuclear related equipment fired warning shots at the UNSCOM/IAEA inspectors attempting to intercept this transfer. The equipment was later seized, but when youre dealing with a man who had given the orders to massacre surrounding groups of innocent muslims for being of a particular ethnic group or sect, its easy to understand why its against the free world's interests to enable him to build Nukes. Imagine if Saddam had built the bomb, Im certainly happy that he never got to. Im glad the people in power made that decision, one that we in the free world enjoy the effect of and still complain about it. Yes we won the war and lost the peace, which isnt ideal, but Im damn sure its better than the other option.
Oh ok, so your the one person that has a the evidence for the WMDs the US government failed to find. The only “WMDs” Iraq ever had possession of are the ones western countries sold to them during the Iran-Iraq war. You can’t just shelve a chemical weapon for years and have it still be functional. Even if Iraq didn’t disarm those weapons wouldn’t be functional within a couple years. The top weapons inspector Scott Ritter was openly saying before the invasion that there is absolutely no evidence of any weapons program and Iraq had disarmed by 1996. The only time Iraq had ever flirted with a nuclear program was in the 80s when they traded oil for a civilian nuclear power plant that was destroyed first by the Iranian Air Force, then again by the lsraeIi Air Force. After that their CIVILIAN nuclear program was cancelled. By the way, the US supports the vast majority of dictators in the region. Look at Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Oman. All of which are lead by tyrannical authoritarians yet the US has absolutely no problem arming them to teeth. Keep eating up the propaganda.
Classic Hitchens. Verbose sophistry at its finest, the best speaker of our age, totally wrong about pretty much everything. Very much a man of the 21st century. All style, no substance. And a war criminal to boot.
I sometimes wonder how come a person like Hitchens, advocate of rationality and humanity could defend such illogical and disastrous crimes!!!! How come he abandon all of his reasoning and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with far-right Bush!!! All of his life he was telling us how religion make people evil and humanity suffered because of religious wars - but, then he went on to support Bush's God mission, till his last breath.
@@russellhammond371 not only cleaning up but making up for it, as hitch said bush senior was against it and its very good that his son cancelled bush sr s mistkae
People always arrogantly say "he was so great,, but so wrong about this" so self rightious, and they don't even lay out a coherrant argument for why he was wrong. They just make a smug assertion and click POST.
Allow me to step in. Bush falsely claimed that Hussein's regime was working with Al-Qaeda before the Iraqi bloodbath. In 2005, the U.S. intelligence community submitted a report stating that Hussein “did not have a relationship, harbor or even turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” Seems like Hitchen's naive ass didn't get that memo.
SilverMenace100 I don't see how that rpoves Bush was lying and not mistaken. How about Abu Nadal, Abu Yassen. What about the money he offered to suicide bombers in Israel. To me that's huge terrorist connections. but even if he was innocent of that, he's still guilty for other crimes that merrit invasion. Thank you for arguing like a grown up btw, sad I have to say thank you for that.
jimmy2k4o It certainly shows that Bush mislead the public. Ten days after the 9/11 attacks, the white house was told in a briefing by the U.S. intelligence community that 'there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.'
I don't like your racism "this democracy thing, too difficult for those wild sand people, if only they were White it might work" Fuck heads like you said that about South America, you were wrong. They said it about Eastern Europe, they were wrong again. And todaay, with this, look at Northern Iraq, run by the Kurds since 1991, You're wrong. Doesn't surprise me, you don't know that, since you clearly don't know much of anything, If you did, you'd say it. Fuck head.
Well then if the genocide convention will not be violated then the US and Canada have a lot of answering to do for what they've done to the American Indians during the 20th century Also losing the right to statehood isn't the same as an excuse for invasion. This could have been done diplomatically.
@@darali568 Dude it's 2019, that copy-paste response isn't going to cut it anymore with anyone who knows what they're talking about. First, Al Zarqawi and his Islamic State/Al Qaeda villains were in Iraq by invitation, being supported by Saddam, and we were already fighting them at this point. Saddam was the one allowing IS to grow. Second, although yes the poor handling of the early occupation allowed IS to take advantage of the chaos, we were winning by the time of the surge, and we could have avoided all the 2011 bullshit if we stuck around long enough to hand over these duties to the Iraqis. Which is my third point, that even though we basically abandoned our mission there, and everyone thought the Iraqis would crumble and let ISIS take over the whole country, they didn't. We had trained them well enough it seems, and they've fairly recently removed the caliphate from their country. Despite how horrible this all has been, it pales in comparison to what we would have seen from Saddam and his fucked up sons.
@@EpicMRPancake you are making allegations without backing them up with any credible sources , there was no obvious link between Al Qaeda and Saddam they were not friends as you would like to claim on the contrary the opposite might be true they were natural enemies Saddam's Dictatorship for all its faults still was not a Caliphate ....also u did not provide any reasoning for the invasion in the first place are u seriously going to tell me that a war that lasted almost a decade , killed almost half a million people , destroyed its infrastructure, crippled its economy and created a power vacuum that led to the rise of ISIS was better for Iraqi people than Saddam and his sons ? sure bud sure ... what strain are u smoking OG hitch ? also your 3rd point is completely moronic basically what you are saying is " so we invaded this country breaking international laws, killed and tortured a fuck load of people while claiming to be there to help them and fight Terrorism although we failed miserably but i guess we still did good because people there were able to put up a good fight against ISIS ?" while forgetting US's main objective for the invasion was to stop global terrorism and make the world safer , that was a epic fail as we know now...
@@darali568 "Killed and tortured a fuck-load of people"? I was planning a response to this dense block (use paragraphs, especially for TH-cam comments), but it seems like while I've been smoking Hitch, you've been smoking Chomsky and Galloway, which doesn't instil in me much confidence in your receptiveness to reasoned arguments on this topic. I do have to say that I never said they were friends, Saddam was theoretically at odds with most Islamist groups because they were interested in the overthrow of those who did not enforce Sharia. However, like with Abdul Rahman Yasin or Hamas, Islamic Jihad or PLF, Saddam wasn't averse to supporting and sheltering groups and individuals who long-term were against him if he thought it served his purposes. For all your other broken-record complaints, there's nothing I could say that the video you supposedly just watched doesn't cover. All I can say is try not to get so emotional about this. We're not mass murderers, despite what the far-left would have you believe.
This is an appalling speech by Hitchens. He starts of insulting people and claiming they are ignorant "They don't know what fascism feels like". Then continues insulting and being smug. He makes some good points but just as so often, he simply doesn't accept any judgement. He saw the being of the war in Syria, he probably had no idea how bad things would be.
If you have ever gotten into Hitchens's arguments you would know perfectly well that "I am so offended by that!" is not an argument. He really did not care one bit about if you feel insulted about getting facts and valid reasoning brought against you. He *rightly* points out that most people that objected to the intervention in Iraq with the weak argument "Ok, Saddam was bad but he was not *that* bad" have no concept at all how bad Saddam was. And if someone feels *insulted* by getting their ignorance brought out in the open... sorry, that is not anyone's problem but their own.
He was thinking of decades, at a minimum. His grasp of history and time wasn't to be underestimated. And he made this point when he could easily have despaired as Iraqi sectarianism was at fevour pitch.
Hitchens was wrong on so many issues. This was his biggest mistake. War almost never solves a problem. More often than not, it makes things much, much worse.
Sometimes you have no choice and are forced to act. Would you disagree with WW2 in the same way you do here? Both Germany and Iraq were facist nations, ultra nationalist, who invaded sovereign states and genocided ethnic minorities within its own borders, neither had nuclear weapons, so whats the difference here? Would you say the decision to invade Nazi Germany made things much, much worse?
@@russellhammond371 It's a completely arbitrary and irrelevant criteria Hitchens made up to suit his specific argument against Iraq. Iraq in 2003 posed absolutely no serious military threat to anybody, with half of its tanks mothballed and fewer than 300,000 trained troops and a few dozen old planes. It absolutely didn't have the capacity to produce serious weapons, only Soviet clones of decades old ballistic missiles with ranges of 100 miles. What you're saying might at a push have been true in 91, but the Genocide was over by the time the No-fly zone was introduced and Saddams regime was not capable of being a serious threat. The criteria for invasion was not met
When the United States attacked in 2003, it deployed depleted uranium in the bombs dropped and the bullets fired, ostensibly because depleted uranium is a particularly hard metal. but it is also radioactive junk. As a result of the war, cancer rates and congenital birth defect rates in Iraq are incredibly high [1]. Iraq war veterans also have higher cancer rates than normal [2]. Iraq used to be able to grow its own food, but now must go to the world market, dominate by the United States, to get that basic commodity. With this information, we can see that Iraq, far from being liberated from a tyrant, was violently assimilated into the world market in a subservient position. The radioactive legacy of the depleted uranium will take many millions of dollars to begin cleaning up, and it will likely never happen. This is a legacy which not even the German fascists can claim. But please, keep talking about how eloquent Hitchens is, how he "destroys" arguments against the Iraq War. The only thing he destroyed was the mirage of his decency. Everyone in gov't who supported the Iraq Atrocity ought to be in prison for the rest of their lives. As for chickenhawks like Hitchens, it's a pity there is no hell for people like him to go to. [1] pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23729095/ [2] www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article236413328.html
Wow I wonder why they can't produce their own food anymore. It wouldn't happen to do with the fact they destroyed their marshes and flood plains which produced all their food would it?
DU use is a valid criticism of the us military in general but that impeach the idea that the war was not only nessecary and just but forced upon us by saddam and now isis
What utter garbage. The Shiaa people were NOT helped. Intervention in Kuwait was purely to protect western interests. And the interest of the west in the Kurds is like that of their interest with the Jewish, trying to place them in a geographically convenient location that is also convenient for resource monopoly and greater geopolitical hold on the area and its surrounds. Sadly, the Kurds will go for it if they can. Hitchens Marxist view as well is flawed, why can the west pursue its interests whereas Saddam wasn't allowed? And how is the US any less criminal than Saddam was? They simply are more subtle about it, but the Abu Ghraib torture videos showed otherwise didn't they? And no, that was not an isolated incident. As for Hitchens pretending to give a stuff about the Shiaa or Kurds, I wish he didn't. I have footage of what happened to the Shiaa and Kurds. The US was not helping, look it up for yourself. Not even enough to pretend they were. As for everyone liking him for being sassy, it's nice you get to have options and like attitudes about these types of comments. Little do you know how much profound suffering has been caused, and continues until now and will for generations, because you want to live conveniently. It's atrocious. This is how I left religion, but even then, I see it's purpose for some people. Hitchens was just angry at the world and was a self-centred typical westerner. I don't really see any profound intellect there, just your slightly above average intellect for a dumbed-down, zombied-out society that's replaced the traditional deity for money/resources/power, or whatever you want to call your ideology.
". . . Mesopotamian war" [audience laughter]. I love the many ways in which people show themselves to be stupid due to their attempts to publicly signal their intelligence.
The war on Iraq was a war crime. It is pointless saying the dictator was a war criminal when you yourself are planning to be a war criminal. Christopher Hitchens was a drunk and talked nonsense about empires and because Britain was no longer an empire builder he decided to move to the U.S., and become a U.S. citizen believing that the U.S., was the new empire builder. Hitchens was a drunk who should have stayed with criticising religion. You do not save people from a dictator by killing more of those people you claim you are saving. The consequences of the Iraq War, is not likely to finish in our lifetime.
I support Hitchens on this, I’m a Kuwaiti citizen and I approve his message. Ask the Kurds and the Iranians to understand what he meant. Saddam was a a monster. His son is another story, watch ‘the double’ (movie) to know what I mean.
Yes, the gulags would justify the Cold war? The Saudis are less facist? I think seeing the rise of ISIS from the Iraqi war and the neverending human civilian casualty now, he would be more condemning of the invasion. Nonetheless it is very disingenuous of him to discount the fact it was the US that helped him rise to power. That said the man is still a great intellectual.
Geopolitics is not like human relations. It can make perfect sense to support someone one min and destroy them the next, even in retrospect. ISIS etc is bad, but the ‘badness’ count of leaving Saddam there for another 20 years would have been worse, regarding civilian death and torture.
It makes perfect sense to promote a crazy line like Saddan Husain and then destroy him? No evidence to suggest Saddaim would have been worse than what is going on right now
@@Droselover-hu1gt that's nonsense, saddam and the jihadists were twin souls, they were being provided immunity and impunity by saddam by giving them diplomatic passports 10:05. At least now he is gone isis have to stand on their own 2 feet, meaning we can identify them and their destroy them more easily, because before we would have been saying saddam supports terrorism then you would be saying now where the proof and who are these terrorists. It would have been called a conspiracy theory as it WAS be liberals that there was no saddam terror connection. Saddam invited the founder of isis in iraq to create a grassroots movement, his removal didn't create isis, is just exposed his ally that had to be defeated eventually either way
Not only helped him rise to power but also supported him during his worst atrocities, they didn't mind him invading Iran, they didn't mind giving him billions of dollars in aid, the French didn't mind helping him make a nuke. But when he started working against their interest it was bye bye to Saddam.
Hitchens is right. But I would go further to say that the objection to the invasion of Iraq is fundamentally premised in the exclusion of the Iraqi people from any say in this debate. It this, and only this, that supports the pacifist objections. The whole issue of whether the war in Iraq was "just" has become a question solely asked by Westerners and solely answered by Westerners...typically Orientalist!
I think Hitchen's underlying point, that the first and second Gulf Wars came not too soon, but much too late, hold true. However, his defense of the virtue of war I think is based in the the view that he often takes, which is of the macro good for the human race. In the micro, as he states, the Iraq war can be considered in many ways a failure. But just in terms of basic moral and ethical value, the dispensing of justice to Saddam--for whatever reasons it ended up happening by--is a truly *good* thing for the human race. he's arguing a tough position, but I think his point holds true.
ibrahim azawi: Or, getting a chance to declare your support for the owerthrowing of a mad dictator who tried to exterminate the kurds and who had his deathsquads record, on film, the random torture and murders of his owncitizens that he would later watch for his own personal, macabre amusement. How about that?
@@PureSwedishViking really c...t you country is funding the dictatorships in the region your biggest allie is the most backward country in the middle east saudia arabia that killed and keep killing the Yemenis
Hitchens would be a hero of mine if I had heroes. But Listening to this back in the day made me furious. Now yers later I return with less emotions to see if he hard a point. But I’m sorry old comrade you just got this one wrong I’m afraid.
@@judahjayson684 Yea he was. But he has been horrendous on the Ukrainian war. It is sad that Chomskys final act is to hold water for Russian fascism and imperialism. And I know Hitch would have gotten that one right.
@@isakrynell8771 no he is anti Imperialism and right know the USA is a imperialist nation and Russia is not an Imperialist like USA, so Russia don't want war military NATO on their doorstep, if you know international affairs you would have understood.
No, the US population today has been poisoned by anti-war propaganda from Fascist Russia. They would call Hitchens a neocon and bloodthirsty for wanting to save brown Iraqis from fascism
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
That pause 30 seconds in was the longest I've ever seen Hitchens take to find a word.
The pages of the dictionary in his head were probably stuck together.
He makes as good a case as anyone on the pro-intervention side.
@@AceofDlamonds People have largely forgotten what the very legitimate reasons for the Iraq war in 2003 were. However unpopular, I don't blame America for invading and deposing Saddam and his gangster state, I still support it. What I can't forgive is America's decision to break apart Iraq's military which weren't bothering to fight back they hated the regime so much, and thus leaving the country in largely religiously motivated chaos. People always tend to forget that Britain and other allies staunchly opposed this decision, and America's inability to discern between Saddam's security forces and the main army which wanted a coup for years. People also always deliberately overlook the fact that religion is and was not a massive factor in the state's collapse.
So?
@@AceofDlamonds I like that :)
You need to hear the full debate between Christopher and his brother Peter, debate from which this clip was taken and in which Peter makes a great counter-argumentation. Also, the video is edited: the final sentence the "good by" one, was said at the beginning, it was not said to the man asking the question (it is not really relevant but worth noticing)
Peter’s argument was effectively just “war is bad”.
Oh boy, this did not age well. 'proudest decision we have ever made'
Ask the Kurds and all the brides that Udey slaughtered
@@jakesnacks1149 what would they say?
*David Duckett- Hitchens defeated the likes of you using pure fact, logic, reason and rationale. You are simply woefully uneducated and ignorant when it comes to the 2003 liberation of Iraq, a country which now a functioning democracy with regular free and fair elections.*
Yes it did, I agree with him.
@@EzraB123 Your agreement is irrelevant . Iraq war was the biggest strategic blunder of US foreign policy , even if we don't take the lives lost into consideration . It's the sole reason why Iran rose to be such a regional power . US hegemony in the ME doesn't exist anymore
He talks all the points in support of the war. But he doesn't say why they warrant war against Iraq, while similar humans rights abuses in other places don't warrant war in those places.
Indeed. He spoke to the principle of defeating fascism and genocide in other regimes, but not whether we should invade those places as well. If it's because of our imperial/economic concerns that he spoke to, the history since has shown the US invasion as a vast cost to both human life and US economic interests. It fed the war pigs and industrial elites while rivaling or surpassing Hussein's bloodshed. Hitch was smart, but smart doesn't mean right.
I don't know if he said it in this particular speech or if he said it in other speeches, but the four Points of when a nation state becomes illegitimate and the fact that Saddam Hussein broke all four of them
Like hitchens I too was for the Iraqi war... but look what happened
@@russellhammond371 and a death toll of ½ a million people
@@raylambert3425 you're saying that as if the us military did that, it was isis or at that time "Al Qaeda in Iraq" that slaughtered the iraqi people, bush and bremer made many mistakes and ineptitudes but the people who are doing the killing are one who should be blamed. and what would you have us do instead, abandon our iraqi allies and allows isis to take our the entire place, which is literally what obama did. and then cynically say i told you so..
What world are u living in bro Iraq is a mess
Not the fault of the U.S.
@@raylambert3425 Do we know Saddam wouldn't have invaded anywhere else after he invaded Kuwait?
"This will be the proudest decision we have ever made" (paraphrasing)
Well this didn't age well did it?
It aged well for anyone who is literate and willing to read and decide for him or herself. For those who consume pablum media, no it did not age well.
We need war on other's soil.
It can bring sustainability and revolution
Actually, it did.
It really didn’t age well
Bro it aged badly. Husain was a cunt psycho but the Iraq War is a catastrophe
hitchens doesnt believe in death penalty but believes in Iraq War. Hed make a great Catholic!!!
what has the death penalty to do with the iraq war?
@@samjoshi1812 sadam was executed
@@raylambert3425 He was executed not as a part of, but in addition to, the Iraq War
@@samjoshi1812 he was the leader of the invaded country obviously his death is part of the war,
@@raylambert3425 If his death was necessary to win the war, then we need to distinguish between capital punishment and death in war.
People who oppose capital punishment, like myself, do so on the grounds that in every circumstance, imprisonment is the best form of punishment, because if it ever transpires that the criminal is innocent, then they can be released. Death is irreversable.
If a nation were to declare war on a regime like that of Saddam Hussein, then anyone who militarily supports the regime is guilty. Because imprisonment is rarely an option in intense conflict, then death is the next best option, with the objective of military victory
Saddam said he wished he had the wmd because the us would not have attacked him. Misleading by hitchens. Sadaam was assured by the us that attacking kuwait would be okay.
Not assured. One person, one diplomat, not the Commander in Chief, not any person with the ability to move troops, said that. Barely. You're going to hide behind that line of reasoning? Gross
@@PlayNiceFolks you are literally the only person with knowledge of that meeting that comes to that conclusion.
also watch the US now abandon the Kurds ... morally bankrupt
Andrew Cory That didn't age well and it's only been 8 months
@@cue_khb wait, what? why? what happened with the kurds? mostly i only have heard about the unbelievable atrocities victimizing kurds after the US abandoned them after promises to protect them
The only good thing they did
no point posting this now, it was in 2008 before we saw the result of the Iraq war and how poorly the situation was handled outlined in the Iraq inquiry. I think he would have still agreed that going into Iraq was the right thing to do but strongly criticise how the war was handled and the state in which the western forces left Iraq.
Finally, someone who can think clearly. I completely agree. Unfortunately, it seems to be the de facto standard to say intervention in Iraq was wrong without analysis.
@@nomore5668 It is also widely understated that the decision to pull out of an unstable Iraq in 2010 was an absolute catastrophe. This narration that the iraq war was a mistake and only that is now comepletely mainstream on both sides of the political spectrum in the US. Genocide and brutality is now met with indefference. Not only that but indifference earns politicians applause.
We half assed the war. We have amazing personnel and technology, but you still need massive man power and capital to nation build. The Middle East pretty much has one source of wealth which is oil and does not have a diverse economy. Combine thousands of years of wars, no real strategic physical barriers, Islam, tribalism, monarchy, and recently poor education, creating a western democratic republic is damn near impossible. We literally would have to have destroyed way more shit, killed more people and had martial rule with facism make a western nation. Vast infrastructure woulda ended to be created, an aggressive mandatory educational program would have been implemented, building up various industries with foreign paternships while allowing newly educated young Iraqi to own them, manufacturing would have to be created. Pretty much anyone that was an adult during saddams reign would have to kept out of powerful positions due to their tribalism and religious views. We would pretty much have to kill anyone who resided, break up families and villages to ensure that the next generation was educated and was indoctrinated with western views and did not have tribalist views.
Iraq’s military was destroyed in the war, some of who were well trained and survived the war would still have tribalism/religious bigotry ideologies along with only really knowing how to function under a powerful violent dictator should not really be apart of the new Iraq’s military and government. For example, after ww2 Russia killed a ton of SS members& high ranking German military personnel, sent nazi’s to gulags and committed genocide of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe because 1 the USSR was terrible & two those individuals probably were not going integrate with the regime & ideology change and probably could wage Georgia warefare and terrorism.
In addition, Iraq after all the destruction had a population that was not educated enough to build and maintain a western republic society that had a national sense of identity instead of their cultural groups and a diverse economy.
To do all this would take probably 30 years. Europe and Japan took less time to rebuild because they were educated and held the nation state as their identity. Also, their neighboring countries had an interest in them rebuilding and making them allies, unlike the Middle East were Iraq’s neighbors hate them and probably want their oil.
Support for the war is the most enduring position of our time. It preceeds much of the issues going on today. Much like the vote for Brexit or trump etc. It was necessary, just but ultimately handled by incompetent planners and a president that was tok soft on the world stage in the face of nascent fascism and its rise.
Nuke Israel. Solve all problems
The power of a posh British accent where you can say anything and be taken seriously.
"One of the greatest examples of United States state craft . . . "
What a fascinating archive
Removing saddam, not the WAY the bush administration removed saddam. There is a difference
I love Hitch, but I can't help but notice he does everything he can do dance around the central issue: That no regime on this Earth, whether it be Saddam or Bush Jr has the right to invade a country based on a lie or just because it can. The US punished Saddam for doing it to Kuwait, then get upset when the world calls them out for doing the same thing when it suits them.
How do you then deal with fascist countries that seek to invade the entire continent? Appeasement prolonged ww2. Had Hitler been stopped in his tracks earlier, millions of lives would've been saved.
What-aboutism. Who cares if there were no nukes. Does that change the genocides and invasions? Nazi Germany had no nuclear weapons either so should we have let them be too? Once you invade a sovereign nation you have voided your right to rule, you are no more than a mafia in control of a state.
@@norbetjagamara5536 Why would you think nations are sovereign?
@@aapowilen5436 " Had Hitler been stopped in his tracks earlier, millions of lives would've been saved." Therefore the US had the right to invade Iraq in 2003? And the straw man award goes to...
@@saintjimmy456 Thanks for the award, but it's not really a strawman. What I'm trying to say is that both Hitler and Hussein shared same ideas. Saddamism had characteristics of nazism. Appeasement can lead to humanitarian crises. Intervention is sometimes necessary.
can anyone provide a source to saddam hussein's speech? (the one where he wished he had obtained nuclear weapons before invading kuwait) i'd like to see that for myself.
Saddam Hussein gassed over 1000 Kurds in Halabja, so what excactly is the different between him and Hitler and why World War 2 was justified and the Iraq War not?
Nuke Israel. Solve all problems
Israel did 9/11 and USS Liberty you sound like a nutcase but you’re right about Israel.
Israel did 9/11 and USS Liberty Dickhead.
Mom's Basement You sound like a nutcase too, but you’re both wrong.
Really nice to see a man who has been pretty much right his entire career be wrong on a heavy subject. Even more enjoyable to see his followers defending him, trying to spin shit so he is still right in their eyes.
Fuck, I love Hitchens and I'm sad he's not among us anymore, but most people who follow his views are complete idiots lacking any kind of self-reflection.
you're the idot, else you'd made a specific argument refusting something Hitchens said, instead of self ritious assertions.
"He was so wrong about this"
All you people say that, and never back it up with a coherrant argument.
jimmy2k4o Not everyone wants to type out an essay about why they believe someone to be wrong. It's more about people following those they look up to blindly
jimmy2k4o
Well just look at the result of the Iraq War. No matter how much Hitchens wanted to believe otherwise, it was a debacle that didn't bring any of the benefits he claims.
Also, he literally claimed that America has the right to steal another country's oil. Enough said.
REVERSE WALRUS- feel free to provide some facts, or evidence, to go with that intellectually-inferior ad hominem attack. Hitchens amply and easily demonstrated why the likes of you were staggeringly wrong over the liberation of Iraq.
RedXIV- "Also, he literally claimed that American had the right to steal another country's oil' Goodness, what babbling nonsense. Cite the specific part where he stated that.
I can appreciate Hitchens' arguments. He was still dead wrong. And you didn't need to be a psychic to predict the kind of disaster Iraq would turn out to be.
I'm not sure that you are correct. Do you refute the claims made by Hitch about the terrible acts of Hussein listed in the first seven minutes? And, even if it was a disaster (which is debatable), I do not see how that proves that it was something that should not have been done. Should every moral act be avoided that might fail?
I don't agree that the invasion of Iraq was a moral act. But even if I did, those acts have to be weighed as to how workable and feasible they are, and whether they'll do more harm than good. George Bush Sr. left Saddam in power back in '91 because he understood that taking him out would lead to, in his own words, "a quagmire". He understood the geo-politics of the region and knew that leaving him in power was the lesser of two evils. It's interesting to note that virtually no military action was taken to prevent the genocide in Darfur that started right around the same time as the Iraq invasion. I'm guessing that's because Bush didn't think that was a mission that would "pay for itself".
@_Four_Horsemen Yes, it got worse after we left. It wouldn't have gotten that way if hadn't invaded in the first place.
how is iraq's situation not a disaster?.....give me the pros of that war if you are so confident that we (the UK) did the right thing...look at how many iraqi lives were taken...the figures range depending on what source you use but a half a million lives have been lost....and many more families have been affected.....look at the country now...they dont even have decent water systems/hospitals.
Even iraqis who hated sadam say that they had a better quality of life with him as their dictator.
We went to war on the assumptions of WMD which there was ZERO evidence for....Tonly blair and his Boyfriend Bush Jr should be locked up.....and Tony blair has gotten stupidly wealthy...he charges for talkss and speeches....what a vile man he i.
If the UK wanted to invade iraq and dispose of a leader....why dissolve the army? and y not have a plan.....i mean even MI5 is to blame....they all deserve death....but death is too quick....Mr blair needs to suffer...along with Bush
Doug X So, why do you not agree that it was a moral act? Do you dispute what Hitchens laid out? I suspect that what he said was correct.
2:26 does anyone know a link to that saddam's speech,or know wich speech it was?
Turgon92 search saddam coup 1979
His argument: "because they were killing people, so we had the right to kill them"
I'm still waiting where he "destroyed" anything...
Russell Hammond Those are all just bad things Saddam did. None of those indicate the wisdom of removing him when he was the only thing keeping a volatile region of the Middle East from chaos, nor does it prove the countries that invaded Iraq were actually acting in Iraq’s interests. Hitchens isn’t defending the real Iraq war, he’s defending the idea of the Iraq war he made up in his mind.
Lol at the idea that genocidal dictators are "stable"
His ass got destroyed by the zionists
@@russellhammond371 The UN did not order the invasion. The invasion was not authorised by the Security Council.
@@russellhammond371 America violated at least 3 of those points themselves, but not only that, America and the west were in support of Saddam during his worst atrocities. The French were helping him make a nuke, America was giving him billions of dollars in aid. They only turned against him when he was working against their interest.
Lol all the Hitchen worshippers trying so hard to defend this, he literally could not have been more wrong. Just because he talks with a posh english accent and is so forthright with the way he speaks does not mean that he is right. Take that into account when listening to his views on God.
Lol fucking Jesus freak trying so hard to justify that God died and didn't really die and how can you kill God and did he die i
What nonsense are you talking about? You do realise Peter Hitchens has a similar posh accent? Are you suggesting that people who follow him are also 'hoodwinked' by his posh accent? Oh no wait, you're not.
I don't agree with Iraq war because of Christopher Hitchen's accent, I agree with the Iraq war because of George W. Bush's accent.
What is he wrong about? List them. I'd like to know.
Just because Saddam is gone doesn’t mean you can’t go live in a similar regime. Go live in Iran if you’re opposed to the Iraq War
Iraqi here, from Christian Assyrian background if that matters.
It's hilarious how much lies Hitchens was willing to say just to push his agenda, with such hubris as well.
y͠o͠u͠ k͠n͠o͠w͠ w͠h͠a͠t͠ t͠h͠e͠y͠ s͠a͠y͠: "s͠c͠r͠a͠t͠c͠h͠ a͠ f͠a͠sçi͠s͠t͠ a͠n͠d͠ a͠ l͠i͠b͠e͠r͠a͠l͠ b͠łe͠e͠đs͠."
h͠o͠p͠e͠ h͠ê e͠n͠j͠o͠y͠e͠d͠ b͠a͠t͠h͠i͠n͠g͠ i͠n͠ t͠h͠e͠ b͠ĺo͠o͠d͠ o͠f͠ m͠y͠ p͠e͠o͠p͠l͠e͠. g͠l͠a͠d͠ h͠e͠ w͠i͠t͠n͠e͠s͠s͠e͠d͠ h͠i͠s͠ o͠çc͠uúpi͠e͠r͠s͠ k͠i͠çk͠êd͠ b͠y͠ m͠e͠r͠e͠ ći͠vi͠l͠îa͠n͠s͠ w͠i͠t͠h͠ r͠u͠sşt͠y͠ áķs͠ b͠e͠f͠o͠r͠e͠ m͠èe͠t͠i͠n͠g͠ h͠i͠sś m͠i͠s͠e͠ŕa͠ɓl͠ê e͠ñd͠.
So much for freedom of speech.
He was undercover agent and public influncer of the interests, which are moving strategic directon for UK establishment, therefore his public apereances always suported a strategic foreign policy action and on small tactical moves he was building credibility with audience as a contrarian.
*ATTENTION EVERYONE!!!:* What is the "Aqukar network"?? I probably spelled it wrong... but he mentions it at 9:48.
The A Q Khan network: Abdul Qadeer Khan is a Pakistani nuclear physicist who was found to be developing and selling nuclear weapons and components to North Korea, amongst others
@@9UncleSam7 Thanks very much!!! Appreciate it!!
@@9UncleSam7 He man!! One more question, who is he saying at 10:26 ?? Abbuni Dahl???
Zombie Prodigy he was talking about Abu Nidal. Which was a terrorist organization that Saddam harbored and funded in Baghdad
i would love to have seen Hitch take on the cancel culture twits
Ask him
I think that we were right to attempt to stop the radical Islamists and remove the religious totalitarian dictatorships in the middle east. I don't think we went about it well, or for the right reasons, at all, and we underestimated the negative effects that would have. That to me is the center of the problem.
The US is allied with Saudi Arabia and you say this with a straight face, hilarious
Yeah when I think of "religious totalitarian dictatorships," I think of.... Ba'athist Iraq? The country led by self-proclaimed socialists that invaded the Islamic Republic of Iran? A country that the US portrayed as a threat to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War?
They did it for the right reasons but bush did it incompetently, Paul bremer and debaathification, rumsfled and abu gharib etc. But that doesn't impeach the idea that it was the right thing to do. And the 2014 isis insurgency for example only occurred because Obama withdrew us ground forces in 2011, so.....
@@IsmailofeRegime you clearly don't know what you're talking about, under saddam iraq was the world largest state sponsor of terrorism, conducted genocide, invaded and annexed countries and used wmd in the past and planned to do so again, "it was essential to move iraq and the region into the post saddam era"... watch this, th-cam.com/video/CR1X3zV6X5Y/w-d-xo.html, then talk...
@@thedoctor.a.s1401 I've read plenty of books and articles on Iraq, I don't need to rely on a nine-minute TH-cam clip. You're trying to use emotionally-charged terms to shut down arguments:
* What does "largest state sponsor of terrorism" mean in concrete terms? Iraq certainly wasn't sponsoring Al-Qaeda. It certainly did sponsor Arafat and other Palestinian figures and groups, but I don't see how supporting Palestinian militants is a justification for the Iraq War.
* Saddam did invade Iran and Kuwait, yes. The Iran-Iraq War ended fifteen years prior to the Iraq War (Iran, FYI, opposed the Iraq War.) The invasion of Kuwait likewise took place over a decade prior to the Iraq War, and ended with the US pulverizing much of Iraq's infrastructure and military capabilities if not on the battlefield then via strict sanctions. So, again, how does this justify the Iraq War? Are you suggesting Saddam was planning on invading another country circa 2003 with his severely weakened army?
* Yes, Saddam's government committed genocidal acts (which the US government indirectly assisted and even helped cover up, see e.g. the article "CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran" by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid in Foreign Policy magazine.) These acts took place some 15 years prior to the Iraq War, so again I don't really see your point.
* Iraq's WMD program was dismantled. Saddam did indeed intend, at some point, to revive it under more favorable circumstances. The US government meanwhile falsely claimed Saddam *hadn't* dismantled the program, making this the most publicized pretext used to invade Iraq.
none of this was the basis of the war
@@VectorOfKnowledge Yes and he is also full of shit, on this particular issue, RIP Hitchens, but this lead to the creation of isis.
How did he get this so wrong?
Zionist
He didn’t
@@robertnicolae1882 yes he did
@@robertnicolae1882 he was an establishment cum dumpster
@BR-ye7px What does Iraq look like today for 43 million Iraqis if Saddam is still alive and well? I think it looks like a fascist dictatorship where people live in fear being tortured or having family members tortured. What if Saddam tries to invade more neighboring countries? What if Saddam gets nuclear weapons?
I guess I was ignorant about Iraq. Dammit.
Watch the full debate, please
He knew. He just wanted the greater Israel project to be real.
he turned into a neo-con. religion sucks but his reasoning is imperialistic
Please read republic of fear by kanaan makkiyah.
@@MrRamazanLale2he was a antizionist dumb sandape ooga booga 😂
00:33 - That's what an upper englishman souns like when he's excited.
Almost an Alan Partridge moment: *_AHA!_*
Also, what a t-t-tr, what a t-t-t-tr, a, a, a-a-a-a-a, what a, a, a, a...what a *_TRAVESTY_* that two years have passed without an upvote or comment ;)
hahah its the dan dennett internal noise!
"Bye, now." Gotta love sassy Hitch.
This aged well now, didn't it?
Why not ?
Either Saddam had committed said crimes and lost his sovereignty, or he hadn't. The result or success of the intervention does not speak to the underlying legality or logic of the intervention.
Furthermore, the taliban make much better leaders than the fascist ba'ath party ever did. Surely the taliban are illiberal and by no means good leaders - but atleast they have religious laws to constrain them, unlike Saddam.
@@BakerWase can you get me some of that dellusional shit you’ve been smoking?
No
@@CamiloAM20 sharing is caring tho
@@BakerWase Taliban is Afghanistan, not Iraq, imbecile.
I’m under the assumption there was systemic rape under saddam Husseins regime, this isn’t including the Iranian and Kuwaiti civilians raped by the Iraqi army during their “wars”. I’ve also seen the pictures online of the gas attack against Kurdish civilians in 1988, which wasn’t the only time saddam gassed civilians, they were used on Iranians aswell. He wanted the bomb, he tortured dissenters, he made it illegal to own a satellite dish that wasn’t from the state. I’m just confused why you always hear this was an unjustified war like it’s a slogan, but you never hear these people argue we were simply there for too long or shouldn’t have allowed so many grunts on the ground.
It was considered an illegal war by the UN and even major western nations like France and Germany refused to join the Iraq war. Clearly Iraq war apologists like yourself will try to find an excuse to justify the disastrous invasion on Iraq.
"Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages."
- Samuel Johnson, The Idler
Who's point are you arguing
Proudest decision we've ever made? He's deluded!
***** If you think opposing a war that has killed thousands, created a power vacuum and helped bring about ISIS silly, I think you need a good long look in the mirror...
Dan Green Time will show how dangerous it is to leave facist dictators in power. Time will show this decision to be correct, ISIS is Saddam's legacy, a continuation of the ba'ath party, and this was the first difficult step to stopping this part of the world from being so traumatic to so many people. Saddam murdered over half a million people, and did not give a flying fuck, and made sure the people of Iraq knew it. We at least care about our mistakes and those that die as a consequence. For him it wasn't even a mistake.
+Escorpion Venenoso Saddam Hussein paid $10 million to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, that is not secular.
Of course the ba'ath party was secular. it doesn't mean they were atheists. alot of them capitulated and joined ISIS. just as they openly supported already.
Either way, Saddams regime was falling and his children were going to fight over it and ruin the country anyway. So ISIS still would have taken Iraq; they didn't take Iraq by chance, its part of their theology that they need to won Syria and Iraq(well atleast certain parts of those countries, because they don't recognise them as countries).
Hitchens is right; with the intervention(which was undoing previous US policy btw - its US policy that got Saddam in) we found the A.Q. Kahn Network and made Gaddafi give up WMDs. And proved to the world that the US wasn't a "paper tiger" as they called us when they committed 9/11.
That is a huge win; despite Obamas idiot decision to pull the troops out and lets ISIS take over. We promised those Iraqies that we would protect them for multiple decades.
elink1 by that logic we should go into North Korea and Russia. Those have insufferable dictators too. The Iraq war made everything worse. Everyone can agree on that now. Everyone. Even the biggest pushers of the Iraq war have admitted it was a mistake. It's completely illogical to say things would have been worse off if we didn't go in. We made what little was stable into absolute chaos. Christopher is very very wrong on this issue. And I think he knows it. He just didn't want to admit defeat.
This is an embarrasement, I know hindsight is 20/20 but it's there no way that in 2008 Hitchens is saying that without knowing the spectacular failure of the invasion of Iraq, this speech is just rationalition
lzcdf your brain... it’s broken or something
@@vdub319 Good argument!
The invasion of Iraq was a spectacular success. The occupation on the other hand was completely botched. You should learn the difference.
@@norbetjagamara5536 the whole operation was idiotic.
@@norbetjagamara5536 "invasion of Iraq was a spectacular success" lol oh sure, like when the US disbanded the entire Iraqi state basically rendering all Sunni public servants unemployed time bombs
He points to the destruction of the Southern Marshes as a crime of Saddam Hussein, but it was done in response to an uprising that was encouraged by the first Gulf War coalition, and which the coalition did not back up with actual support, so the Shia people of the marsh lands were slowly crushed.
Are trying to justify his burning of the marsh lands after he subjected his people to war and fascism, in other words if your country's national minority rebels against a dictator the dictator is justified to conduct a systemic campaign of genocide
This is so wrong it’s almost laughable
weird coincidence Hitches and the Iraq war ended on the same day, December 15, 2011.
Read the new Yorker?
Bad call, Hitch.
*Nope, he proved how correct he was using pure fact.*
@@MattSingh1be quite neocon
don't think the comment section really listened to Hitchens
Jazzkeyboardist1 dude the statements from Hitchens don’t effect the Iraq report, how Britain conducted the invasion is what was wrong, and what they did after they invaded. Hitchens is right it was a massive risk to the Middle East and the world to not intervene, they were a threat and showed they were invading Kuwait and killing who they wanted.
Bringing up his mother’s death is a low blow and I pity you for thinking of doing that.
Russell Hammond exactly man, chris would most likely have a lot to say about how America acted in Iraq if he was around, but he would still stand by his point that something needed to he done
I'm an Iraqi Kurd, and I agree 100% with what Hichens said about Sadam Hussien, nothing was more dangerous than a psychopathic sinister dictator taking control of a country. and those who romanticized Sadam's reign have a slavery mindset, they don't appreciate living in a free society. yes, we have problems in Iraq, but the solution isn't wishing back to dictatorship, that is the thing that most Iraqi people don't get it.
Don't talk for the Iraqis!, because they know the reason of the war not this ridiculous fabrication but due to geo - political control for Iraq rich resources.and if you are really Iraqi you are a stupid and really feel sorry for your people for you being a Iraqi.
@@okquentin the country that represents you killed nearly a million people and you still acting sorry, actions talk louder than words, do something for Iraqi because is your country responsible for it.
@@judahjayson684 sounds like someone’s misses Saddam, poor thing. He’s long gone no need to polish his boots with your uvula anymore.
Actually the Iraqis themselves killed nearly a million people, you are listening to propaganda. All sources confirm Saddam regime during the war and the insurgents killed at least 75% of all civilians that died during the conflict.
The US has done much for Iraq it’s now time for the Iraqis to stop butchering each other and form a stable government. The US is currently still in the country and supplying it trying to build stability.
@TmanRock9 😂😂😂 ill have to take your word for it son.
Exactly finally someone who sees
It's reassuring to see that even Hitch is completely wrong sometimes.
Based on? You have the assumption he was wrong without a counter argument. By all means, tell us why we should have let a facist dictator who invaded neighboring nations, genocided shia muslims in the south and kurds in the north, who mined international waters in the Persian Gulf and who caused a ecological crisis by setting fire to Kuwaiti oilfields and spilling 10's of thousands of barrels of oil into the gulf.
@@norbetjagamara5536 Based on the fact that his removal came at incredible cost and (directly and indirectly) caused immense human suffering?
Sadam Hussein was a monster. But if you look at the developments in the region after the Iraq war, I fail to see how anyone could think it was a success.
If your goal is to make the world a better place, then there are smarter ways to use $2 trillion . In my opinion.
Noam Chomsky is the father of all intellectuals
@@fs3859What does life today look like for 43 million Iraqis if Saddam had never been killed? I think it looks like a fascist dictatorship where people live in fear of torture. I wonder if your argument about "immense suffering" is affected by this.
@@Thisisahandle701 No shit, right? It's amazing how these hindsight hero's can't seem to imagine how equally bad *or worse* things could have gotten if we had left the regime intact.
"This is the biggest non-proliferation victory there has ever been for any US administration ever in history."
That comment, at 9:57, hasn't aged well.
I was in elementary school when these things were happening. What made age badly. Don't need sources, just want to know what you're referring to.
@@Dbest002 What I'm referring to is Hitchens's claim that because we invaded Iraq we put other regimes on notice, leading Gaddafi, for instance, to disarm. What we did was destabilise Iraq, which strengthened Iran and added to Syria's problems. That led ultimately to the rise of Islamic State. And the main lesson Iran and others will have learnt is that the only insurance against a US attack is an independent deterrent, ideally a nuclear deterrent. If it works for Israel, Pakistan, India, the US, Britain, France and Russia, why not for Iran?
Well Iraq is doing pretty good now
He said that in reference to the shutting down of the AQ Khan network, the illicit nuclear proliferation and smuggling network in which Pakistan sold wmd to the highest bidder, a Walmart for WMD, nukes-R-US... were you even listening ??
@@oliverc1961 Pakistan should never have got nukes, and the point was that we could and did prevent saddam from getting nukes, everyone else who has nukes keep them as part of a nuclear monopoly, as leverage in negotiations, Iran is a theocratic totalitarian regime that wants nukes for denotation and boasts about it in advance. And zarquai the founder of isis or "al qaeda in iraq" as it was originally called was in iraq before we got there, because iraq under saddam was the world largest state sponsor of terrorism
Hitchens is Jewish. He's sticking by his tribe.
The main arguments against the war seem to be that the intervention didn't go well which is understandable but the arguments on starting the intervention do hold up. They didn't have WMDs at that time but was the intent there? The world is a safer place without Saddam, the problem wasn't getting rid of Saddam it was the aftermath
Nope ISIS was a direct result of the war, look at the destruction it caused
That makes no sense. "The arguments on starting the intervention hold up"..."they didn't have WMDs". So you are saying that they were right to invade because Saddam had WMDs even though he didn't? I wonder why people call it an "intervention" too instead of an invasion. Maybe it makes the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths more tolerable, or the 4500 US troop deaths worth it. Saddam was a cruel dictator and deserved to be killed. Sadly, more people died during the War to remove him than died under him.
@@saintjimmy456 but was the intent there to develop them at some point, we know Iran has pushed for it, who's to say he wouldn't have done the same? I suppose the question is, would the world has been safer if he was still around? Isis was a major screw up but I'm not sure in the long term if the world would have been safer.
Why is it even bad for Iraq to have wmds and not for the US?
He didn’t just possess WMDs, he *used* them on his own people. Note, WMD doesn’t just mean nuke.
Holy shit GVSU! Wow wish I'd been a student there at the time
Nothing destroyed here, the guy is a lunatic
@CaptainRidley it's not as simple as straight up true or false, the question isn't was any of what he said false, but more about asking the right questions for context, for example, every horrible things mentioned that sadam did, he did with US and UK backing, we sold him the gas he used against the kurds, in fact alan clarke set up a thing called the export credit guarantee scheme so that when the UK sell arms to a dictator or whatever if he doesn't pay for them the British tax payer will foot the bill, I imagine the US has something similar, in fact I think I read about it in a book, (voltaires bastards maybe) so if we actually gave a f**k about the kurdish people there was plenty we could have done, another example one could use is about the oil, how much of the oil now benefits the Iraqi people and how much of the oil now benefits private concentrations of power that will never let their profits diminish just cause some population believe they actually own that oil, who actually benefits? Cause the one thing we know! billions of barrels disappeared! Context son
The more you look at old hitch the more you have to be aware of his awareness of his own hypocrisy hence why I stated he was a lunatic also his statements didn't destroy any of the opposition it only shows that there was some positive things for some people, also this was ages ago so alot of info has come out since, and I've watched his lame attempts to justify the same groups arming both sides, again signs of a lunatic, so I put it to you,
What was destroyed by his statements exactly?
Some speak the sounds
but speak in silent voices like the radio is silent though it fills the air with noises.
@CaptainRidley 🙄 waiting......
Peace out bitches ✌️
@CaptainRidley that's a dumb question, but as Mr garrison always said there are no stupid questions only stupid people.
Yes sadam was evil 😈, it could have been inferred from my previous statement about the horrible shit he did, but hey. How about addressing the issues raised. Mr besides the point in the video spins a duplicit Web so he does.
@CaptainRidley 🙄 waiting.......
@CaptainRidley you've went all quiet
Even the best men have weaknesses to balance out their strengths.
What weakness? Are you implying we should have kept Saddam and his sons in power?
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting You are allowed to be as mendacious as you can stand to be, its really no skin off my nose.
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting Yes, civilian deaths and terrorism rose in Iraq after the invasion, and the democracy installed there is non-functional. Iraq went from being a brutal dictatorship to a failed state, only now does it have some small semblance of stability after 500,000 excess deaths and two civil wars, great job
@@laserbrain7774 Mendacious how? Would you prefer we kept Saddam in power???!
@@ravenmusic6392 This is blatantly false. Saddam killed well over 1 million Iraqis in his time in power and 2 wars for oil. The war to oust him in 2003 killed 20k people. Keeping him in power another 7 months would have resulted in more Iraqis dying
Did Hitchens ever admit he was wrong about Iraq before his death? Citations? I can’t find it on the internets.
Mom's Basement you won’t because he wasn’t wrong.
Osiris Hathor oh no I’ve been found out no please don’t slander me whatever shall I do now that the 3000 IQ TH-cam detective has exposed me no please stop I can’t don’t I’m crippled with guilt and disparity no please ah
Hitch and his mentors Wolfowitz and Chalabai saw a fire and thought the best way to put it out was with gasoline. They wanted to use a chainsaw to cut a rough, uncut diamond.
Wow I checked and the two were really mates. OMG
He was wrong about the outcome, but his reasoning was spot on.
In his defense the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and its consequences hadn’t yet occurred
wrong about every single thing
Well... This aged poorly
How?
@@thewarwolfwarhawk3252 with a username like that you're too stupid for me to bother trying to explain
@@thewarwolfwarhawk3252 Give me a single good reason for this conflict
@@thewarwolfwarhawk3252 they sold the american people bullshit lies to annihilate 1mill iraqi’s thats how. Didnt want the American dollar to lose petro dollar status.
@@Free-leftistactionThe destruction of a fascist regime which controlled 43 million people under fear of torture or torture of family members, which wanted to acquire nuclear weapons.
It's so funny to see just how incredibly wrong he was.
@geoff washington lol, you are so butthurt man, he was indeed wrong, in some levels at least, dont have to cry about it
And yet as right as you think you are you can’t specifically say what he was wrong about.
Think you’re full
Of shit and not as smart as you think you are.
I dread to think what would the world be like if Saddam was still in power now
Very glad that Saddam is dead and Iraq has had an unbroken string of free democratic elections since then
When is this future he speaks of?
I really didn't think much about the reign of Saddam Hussein until recently, and I happen to have a coworker who is from Iraq, left in 2000 for Lebanon then came to the US in 2005. I asked him if it was terrifying living under Saddam and he simply nodded, and that was all. It's enough to get you thinking about these questions...
Ask the 400,000 who have been killed since the US invaded how terrifying it's been since. Oh, they're dead, you can't.
@@cockoffgewgle4993 at least Seamus could ask his coworker.
That Iraqi wasn't one of the 400000+ Saddam had "disappeared"
@@shernrerrsMYTUBE At least my numbers are based on data and not plucked from your arse. They're based on demographics studies of Iraq compared to Saddam's time. Which makes your assertion even more ridiculous.
@@cockoffgewgle4993 your saying that as if the us military did that, after saddam was removed from power the al qaeda forces that was already in iraq (in alliance with former baathist secret police conducted the iraqi insurgency e.g. blew the golden dome mosque in samara or the UN office in Baghdad with a truck bomb so massive it had to have been borrowed from the former iraqi bath party) declared war against the shia Arabs. The people who are doing the killing, should be blamed for the killing.
@@thedoctor.a.s1401 They did. The US overthrow the government and occupied Iraq since that point. They're responsible. Morally, practically and in terms of international law.
The country that wages war is responsible for all that follows from that action.
Hitchens supported the Iraq and Afghanistan war i think that makes him 0/2
Hitchens really lost the plot towards the end
No…
Are you crazy? Imagine if you were born under the Saddam regime? Your comment reeks of white privilege
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting"white privilege" bro 💀
@@SuperpowerBroadcastingwhat is blud yapping about
So sad that he became a cheerleader fir a war based on lies.
What lie? WMD isn’t just nukes lol
@@VectorOfKnowledge He literally used them on Kurds but go off king
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting I mean at the time of the 2003 invasion, genius 🤦♂
@@VectorOfKnowledge ah so if he dumps the murder weapon in the river before the cops show up, he's innocent?
@@SuperpowerBroadcasting No, stupid. No one denies that he used chemical and biological weapons against the Kurds and Iranians. The stated purpose of the 2003 invasion was to rid him of his WMD, which the US wasn't able to prove - in the lead-up to the invasion nor in the aftermath - he possessed AT THE TIME. I have no doubt that he would have tried to pick up the program again if he could, but the evidence is that the regime, for its own pragmatic reasons, had eliminated its pre-existing stockpile and discontinued an active program. I hope I don't have to call mommy or the waaaaambulance now.
Herein lies my one critique of Hitchens. While he is capable of defending a moral/logical position through his meticulous verbal dismantlement, he never ventures into discussion of solutions, he merely addresses the problem, repudiates it, and that's it. Everything he said on religion was true, but assume you were capable of convincing the masses to denounce their beliefs, what then? You would still have a conglomerate of people who as a whole are largely ignorant and subject to manipulation by one group or another. To assume that those with power have the interests of the masses in mind are only deluding themselves.
I think you're on the wrong video, this clip is about iraq not necessarily religion
"While he is capable of defending a moral/logical position through his meticulous verbal dismantlement, he never ventures into discussion of solutions"
I think Hitch was mostly interested in the dismantlement, and he was good at it and enjoyed it. Once he was done dismantling he moved onto the next argument.
He changed my mind. I'll admit that I was wrong.
Maybe because you’re a clown
So you're FOR this conflict?
He was wrong but had a strong argument. Can't fault the man for not being able to predict the future.
He makes some good points, but he couldn't necessarily have predicted the rise of ISIS. Just goes to show even the greatest minds can't predict everything.
Noam Chomsky was right on the Iraq war.
Thats a load of bull, many people predicted the rise of islamist extremism after the invasion, everyone saw what happened in south-east asia and in Afghanistan and Lebanon years before Iraq, people saw that instability eventually led to power vaccumes that would be filled by extremist groups
Hitch sort of did anticipate ISIS in a sense…I’ve seen him in other interviews talk about a strong desire for an Arab Caliphate that dissolves the European crafted borders of the Middle East. ISIS attempted to create a caliphate.
@@username102793 you dumb sh*t , if he did anticipated the rise of ISIS he wouldn't participate in its terror, the death of almost a million of Iraqis which is worser than what ISIS did.
@@judahjayson684 that’s what Iraq did, you need to stop blaming the west for the deaths iraqi and it’s people caused. Disgusting.
Hitchens was right on most things... but he was wrong on Iraq
I think he hoped for a better outcome but US had a very different vision that what Christopher had in mind.
Not really. He was 1000% correct on Iraq.
@@thewarwolfwarhawk3252 I can’t tell. Can you tell me why he’s correct?
@@thewarwolfwarhawk3252 Literally how?
He literally just destroyed your assertion with facts.
A nation sacrifices its sovereignty when;
1. It invades a neighbouring state, as Iraq had done in Kuwait (in fact Hussein tried to annex
and absorb Kuwait)
2. It has committed genocide, and therefore violated, the UN Genocide Convention (and the Convention by the way MANDATES immediate action be taken to either "prevent or punish" as soon as information is available) as Iraq did with the Al-Anfal genocide campaign in which at least 130,000 Kurds were gassed, some with US, UK, French, Russian and Germany weaponry, much to our shame(and is the reason we have a moral and ethical duty, obligation and responsibility to the people of Iraq)
3. It harbours internationally-wanted criminals, as Iraq had, giving safe-haven to the likes of Abu Nidal (who killed Leon Klinghoffer ) and Abu Rahman Yasin (who mixed the chemicals for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993).
4. It tries to acquire WMD, or out-right violates the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In his book, 'The Bomb In My Garden', former Iraq chief nuclear scientist Medi Abedi confessed remnants of a centrifuge were buried in his garden, and that dummy sites were manufactured to fool UN weapons inspectors.
Iraq met ALL FOUR POINTS, and therefore surrendered it's sovereignty to the international community and made the 2003 intervention and liberation legal AND moral. Only the US and UK took action because France, Russia and Germany were bribed thru the corrupted UN Oil-For-Food Programme.
I would send the link to this video to my friends but it is doubtful that they will change their minds about this war. Changing minds about these sorts of things is just as difficult, if not more so, than changing minds about religion.
Michael Beast
I'm not sure that he was. It was the moral thing to do. So far it has still been a success. And, simply claiming it did not work out, even if true, and I do not agree, still does not mena that we should not have done it.
Then why don't we invade Philippines, where a genocide is currently taking place? Why are we allowing Brunei into the TPP, despite the fact they have Sharia law? It was NEVER about morality. We are NOT the world police. We are trillions in debt and we need to focus on our problems back home, not fuck up other countries to protect the business interests of the rich. Goddamn not even the GOP denies the failure of Iraq anymore.
almostskater3210
Whether we have other cases where we should intervene says nothing about Iraq. If you are an American then you would know that we have different Presidents over time and that some try to do the right thing and that others have different opinions. And when you say "protect the business interests of the rich" then you reveal that you have a bias.
Michael Beast
When did I say "Iraq was a success"?
I agree with Hitchens that the US did the moral thing.
drstrangelove09 I'm arguing against the people who think we went into Iraq for moral reasons by bringing up times the US could intervene for similar moral reasons, but doesn't. We don't do things like that for moral reasons. The gov could give a fuck about morality.
Damn straight I have a bias; everyone has a fucking bias. Don't think you are better than anyone else. My bias happens to be for the American people.
Everyone forgets about the nuclear warheads that Saddams' government was illegally trying to manufacture against the very security council resolution (687) that they signed and agreed to. Iraqui personell transporting calutrons and other nuclear related equipment fired warning shots at the UNSCOM/IAEA inspectors attempting to intercept this transfer. The equipment was later seized, but when youre dealing with a man who had given the orders to massacre surrounding groups of innocent muslims for being of a particular ethnic group or sect, its easy to understand why its against the free world's interests to enable him to build Nukes. Imagine if Saddam had built the bomb, Im certainly happy that he never got to. Im glad the people in power made that decision, one that we in the free world enjoy the effect of and still complain about it. Yes we won the war and lost the peace, which isnt ideal, but Im damn sure its better than the other option.
Saddam was a threat to Israel’s security too
Oh ok, so your the one person that has a the evidence for the WMDs the US government failed to find. The only “WMDs” Iraq ever had possession of are the ones western countries sold to them during the Iran-Iraq war. You can’t just shelve a chemical weapon for years and have it still be functional. Even if Iraq didn’t disarm those weapons wouldn’t be functional within a couple years. The top weapons inspector Scott Ritter was openly saying before the invasion that there is absolutely no evidence of any weapons program and Iraq had disarmed by 1996. The only time Iraq had ever flirted with a nuclear program was in the 80s when they traded oil for a civilian nuclear power plant that was destroyed first by the Iranian Air Force, then again by the lsraeIi Air Force. After that their CIVILIAN nuclear program was cancelled. By the way, the US supports the vast majority of dictators in the region. Look at Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Oman. All of which are lead by tyrannical authoritarians yet the US has absolutely no problem arming them to teeth. Keep eating up the propaganda.
Classic Hitchens. Verbose sophistry at its finest, the best speaker of our age, totally wrong about pretty much everything.
Very much a man of the 21st century. All style, no substance.
And a war criminal to boot.
Hitchens a war criminal? What?
I sometimes wonder how come a person like Hitchens, advocate of rationality and humanity could defend such illogical and disastrous crimes!!!! How come he abandon all of his reasoning and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with far-right Bush!!! All of his life he was telling us how religion make people evil and humanity suffered because of religious wars - but, then he went on to support Bush's God mission, till his last breath.
@@russellhammond371 not only cleaning up but making up for it, as hitch said bush senior was against it and its very good that his son cancelled bush sr s mistkae
People always arrogantly say "he was so great,, but so wrong about this" so self rightious, and they don't even lay out a coherrant argument for why he was wrong.
They just make a smug assertion and click POST.
Allow me to step in. Bush falsely claimed that Hussein's regime was working with Al-Qaeda before the Iraqi bloodbath. In 2005, the U.S. intelligence community submitted a report stating that Hussein “did not have a relationship, harbor or even turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” Seems like Hitchen's naive ass didn't get that memo.
SilverMenace100 I don't see how that rpoves Bush was lying and not mistaken. How about Abu Nadal, Abu Yassen.
What about the money he offered to suicide bombers in Israel.
To me that's huge terrorist connections. but even if he was innocent of that, he's still guilty for other crimes that merrit invasion.
Thank you for arguing like a grown up btw, sad I have to say thank you for that.
jimmy2k4o
It certainly shows that Bush mislead the public. Ten days after the 9/11 attacks, the white house was told in a briefing by the U.S. intelligence community that 'there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.'
***** agh the soft bigotry of low expectations...
Go away fuck head.
I don't like your racism
"this democracy thing, too difficult for those wild sand people, if only they were White it might work"
Fuck heads like you said that about South America, you were wrong.
They said it about Eastern Europe, they were wrong again.
And todaay, with this, look at Northern Iraq, run by the Kurds since 1991, You're wrong.
Doesn't surprise me, you don't know that, since you clearly don't know much of anything, If you did, you'd say it.
Fuck head.
Not so smug post chilcot eh?
Chilcot is a joke and fundamentally flawed- any inquiry in the 2003 liberation of Iraq that only goes back to 2001 has to be dismissed axiomatically.
Disappointing. A great thinker, he should have stick to religion and leave politics.
😂😂
lol
Well then if the genocide convention will not be violated then the US and Canada have a lot of answering to do for what they've done to the American Indians during the 20th century
Also losing the right to statehood isn't the same as an excuse for invasion. This could have been done diplomatically.
"American Indians in the 20th century" ??? explain urself
@@thedoctor.a.s1401 no
The US didn't conduct genocide on 20th century, thats what I meant by explain urself
He was wrong on most every aspect of the Iraq war. Sophistry at its finest.
what would be a good reason for foreign intervention?
You don't listen do you?
@@leek404 People who support it always switch the word invasion for intervention I have noticed. It makes it easier to support.
He can entertain McCain in hell with his drivel
Do tell us all about that imaginary place you call hell. Don't leave us in suspense.
Unfortunately it doesn't exist
Hitchen's must be cringing in his grave remembering this
Why? The whole ISIS thing was the result of premature withdrawal, not something Hitchens supported.
@@EpicMRPancake there would not have been a power vaccum (which allowed ISIS to grow) in the first place if America had never invaded ....
@@darali568 Dude it's 2019, that copy-paste response isn't going to cut it anymore with anyone who knows what they're talking about. First, Al Zarqawi and his Islamic State/Al Qaeda villains were in Iraq by invitation, being supported by Saddam, and we were already fighting them at this point. Saddam was the one allowing IS to grow.
Second, although yes the poor handling of the early occupation allowed IS to take advantage of the chaos, we were winning by the time of the surge, and we could have avoided all the 2011 bullshit if we stuck around long enough to hand over these duties to the Iraqis.
Which is my third point, that even though we basically abandoned our mission there, and everyone thought the Iraqis would crumble and let ISIS take over the whole country, they didn't. We had trained them well enough it seems, and they've fairly recently removed the caliphate from their country. Despite how horrible this all has been, it pales in comparison to what we would have seen from Saddam and his fucked up sons.
@@EpicMRPancake you are making allegations without backing them up with any credible sources , there was no obvious link between Al Qaeda and Saddam they were not friends as you would like to claim on the contrary the opposite might be true they were natural enemies Saddam's Dictatorship for all its faults still was not a Caliphate ....also u did not provide any reasoning for the invasion in the first place are u seriously going to tell me that a war that lasted almost a decade , killed almost half a million people , destroyed its infrastructure, crippled its economy and created a power vacuum that led to the rise of ISIS was better for Iraqi people than Saddam and his sons ? sure bud sure ... what strain are u smoking OG hitch ? also your 3rd point is completely moronic basically what you are saying is " so we invaded this country breaking international laws, killed and tortured a fuck load of people while claiming to be there to help them and fight Terrorism although we failed miserably but i guess we still did good because people there were able to put up a good fight against ISIS ?" while forgetting US's main objective for the invasion was to stop global terrorism and make the world safer , that was a epic fail as we know now...
@@darali568 "Killed and tortured a fuck-load of people"? I was planning a response to this dense block (use paragraphs, especially for TH-cam comments), but it seems like while I've been smoking Hitch, you've been smoking Chomsky and Galloway, which doesn't instil in me much confidence in your receptiveness to reasoned arguments on this topic.
I do have to say that I never said they were friends, Saddam was theoretically at odds with most Islamist groups because they were interested in the overthrow of those who did not enforce Sharia. However, like with Abdul Rahman Yasin or Hamas, Islamic Jihad or PLF, Saddam wasn't averse to supporting and sheltering groups and individuals who long-term were against him if he thought it served his purposes.
For all your other broken-record complaints, there's nothing I could say that the video you supposedly just watched doesn't cover. All I can say is try not to get so emotional about this. We're not mass murderers, despite what the far-left would have you believe.
This is an appalling speech by Hitchens. He starts of insulting people and claiming they are ignorant "They don't know what fascism feels like". Then continues insulting and being smug. He makes some good points but just as so often, he simply doesn't accept any judgement.
He saw the being of the war in Syria, he probably had no idea how bad things would be.
If you have ever gotten into Hitchens's arguments you would know perfectly well that "I am so offended by that!" is not an argument. He really did not care one bit about if you feel insulted about getting facts and valid reasoning brought against you.
He *rightly* points out that most people that objected to the intervention in Iraq with the weak argument "Ok, Saddam was bad but he was not *that* bad" have no concept at all how bad Saddam was. And if someone feels *insulted* by getting their ignorance brought out in the open... sorry, that is not anyone's problem but their own.
but Dur oil!
Hitch was one wrong big time on this one though right about so many other things. He was completely wrong on this issue.
3:22 lol
This is very funny
He was so so so wrong
He was thinking of decades, at a minimum. His grasp of history and time wasn't to be underestimated. And he made this point when he could easily have despaired as Iraqi sectarianism was at fevour pitch.
It's not wrong yet.
“Move-on-dodawg friends” - never heard this before ... any comment?
"MoveOn.org"
@@pen-zl5mt thank you!!!!
@@ivanbliminse2879 No problem! :)
I love that most of the comments are people making the exact arguments being torn apart in the video.
Predictable, and sad.
Hitchens was wrong on so many issues. This was his biggest mistake. War almost never solves a problem. More often than not, it makes things much, much worse.
Sometimes you have no choice and are forced to act. Would you disagree with WW2 in the same way you do here? Both Germany and Iraq were facist nations, ultra nationalist, who invaded sovereign states and genocided ethnic minorities within its own borders, neither had nuclear weapons, so whats the difference here? Would you say the decision to invade Nazi Germany made things much, much worse?
It was a terrible decision to go to war and Hitchens was dead wrong.
@@russellhammond371 It's a completely arbitrary and irrelevant criteria Hitchens made up to suit his specific argument against Iraq. Iraq in 2003 posed absolutely no serious military threat to anybody, with half of its tanks mothballed and fewer than 300,000 trained troops and a few dozen old planes. It absolutely didn't have the capacity to produce serious weapons, only Soviet clones of decades old ballistic missiles with ranges of 100 miles. What you're saying might at a push have been true in 91, but the Genocide was over by the time the No-fly zone was introduced and Saddams regime was not capable of being a serious threat. The criteria for invasion was not met
@@ravenmusic6392 Noam Chomsky was right on the Iraq war.
Hitchens? He is dear right? Ah so good, that fucking opportunist.
When the United States attacked in 2003, it deployed depleted uranium in the bombs dropped and the bullets fired, ostensibly because depleted uranium is a particularly hard metal. but it is also radioactive junk. As a result of the war, cancer rates and congenital birth defect rates in Iraq are incredibly high [1]. Iraq war veterans also have higher cancer rates than normal [2]. Iraq used to be able to grow its own food, but now must go to the world market, dominate by the United States, to get that basic commodity.
With this information, we can see that Iraq, far from being liberated from a tyrant, was violently assimilated into the world market in a subservient position. The radioactive legacy of the depleted uranium will take many millions of dollars to begin cleaning up, and it will likely never happen. This is a legacy which not even the German fascists can claim.
But please, keep talking about how eloquent Hitchens is, how he "destroys" arguments against the Iraq War. The only thing he destroyed was the mirage of his decency.
Everyone in gov't who supported the Iraq Atrocity ought to be in prison for the rest of their lives. As for chickenhawks like Hitchens, it's a pity there is no hell for people like him to go to.
[1] pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23729095/
[2] www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article236413328.html
Wow I wonder why they can't produce their own food anymore. It wouldn't happen to do with the fact they destroyed their marshes and flood plains which produced all their food would it?
@@norbetjagamara5536 Uh no. It has something to do with the depleted uranium dropped on the country by the U.S. military. Did you read my comment?
DU use is a valid criticism of the us military in general but that impeach the idea that the war was not only nessecary and just but forced upon us by saddam and now isis
What utter garbage. The Shiaa people were NOT helped. Intervention in Kuwait was purely to protect western interests. And the interest of the west in the Kurds is like that of their interest with the Jewish, trying to place them in a geographically convenient location that is also convenient for resource monopoly and greater geopolitical hold on the area and its surrounds. Sadly, the Kurds will go for it if they can. Hitchens Marxist view as well is flawed, why can the west pursue its interests whereas Saddam wasn't allowed? And how is the US any less criminal than Saddam was? They simply are more subtle about it, but the Abu Ghraib torture videos showed otherwise didn't they? And no, that was not an isolated incident. As for Hitchens pretending to give a stuff about the Shiaa or Kurds, I wish he didn't. I have footage of what happened to the Shiaa and Kurds. The US was not helping, look it up for yourself. Not even enough to pretend they were.
As for everyone liking him for being sassy, it's nice you get to have options and like attitudes about these types of comments. Little do you know how much profound suffering has been caused, and continues until now and will for generations, because you want to live conveniently. It's atrocious. This is how I left religion, but even then, I see it's purpose for some people. Hitchens was just angry at the world and was a self-centred typical westerner. I don't really see any profound intellect there, just your slightly above average intellect for a dumbed-down, zombied-out society that's replaced the traditional deity for money/resources/power, or whatever you want to call your ideology.
". . . Mesopotamian war" [audience laughter]. I love the many ways in which people show themselves to be stupid due to their attempts to publicly signal their intelligence.
I'm Iraqi
explain to me why they laughed? I don't get the joke
هل عرفت لماذا يضحكون ؟
@@almost_god2484 I Think the only joke is that he called Iraq 'mesopotamia'. It was unexpected
does anyone know how to spell the territory, Hitchens' is talking about at 15:18 ?
Khuzestan
The war on Iraq was a war crime. It is pointless saying the dictator was a war criminal when you yourself are planning to be a war criminal. Christopher Hitchens was a drunk and talked nonsense about empires and because Britain was no longer an empire builder he decided to move to the U.S., and become a U.S. citizen believing that the U.S., was the new empire builder. Hitchens was a drunk who should have stayed with criticising religion.
You do not save people from a dictator by killing more of those people you claim you are saving. The consequences of the Iraq War, is not likely to finish in our lifetime.
Although I agree that the war in Iraq was a crime your characterization of Hitchens was wrong.
I support Hitchens on this, I’m a Kuwaiti citizen and I approve his message. Ask the Kurds and the Iranians to understand what he meant. Saddam was a a monster. His son is another story, watch ‘the double’ (movie) to know what I mean.
Insert name here love you too, I’m glad that monster was humiliated before dying
Yes, the gulags would justify the Cold war? The Saudis are less facist? I think seeing the rise of ISIS from the Iraqi war and the neverending human civilian casualty now, he would be more condemning of the invasion. Nonetheless it is very disingenuous of him to discount the fact it was the US that helped him rise to power. That said the man is still a great intellectual.
Geopolitics is not like human relations. It can make perfect sense to support someone one min and destroy them the next, even in retrospect.
ISIS etc is bad, but the ‘badness’ count of leaving Saddam there for another 20 years would have been worse, regarding civilian death and torture.
Are you deaf he literally says it at 13:52
It makes perfect sense to promote a crazy line like Saddan Husain and then destroy him? No evidence to suggest Saddaim would have been worse than what is going on right now
@@Droselover-hu1gt that's nonsense, saddam and the jihadists were twin souls, they were being provided immunity and impunity by saddam by giving them diplomatic passports 10:05. At least now he is gone isis have to stand on their own 2 feet, meaning we can identify them and their destroy them more easily, because before we would have been saying saddam supports terrorism then you would be saying now where the proof and who are these terrorists. It would have been called a conspiracy theory as it WAS be liberals that there was no saddam terror connection. Saddam invited the founder of isis in iraq to create a grassroots movement, his removal didn't create isis, is just exposed his ally that had to be defeated eventually either way
Not only helped him rise to power but also supported him during his worst atrocities, they didn't mind him invading Iran, they didn't mind giving him billions of dollars in aid, the French didn't mind helping him make a nuke. But when he started working against their interest it was bye bye to Saddam.
I'm gonna have to apply hitchen's razor to his list of claims about all the things that saddam supposedly did.
Supposedly?
Hitchens is right. But I would go further to say that the objection to the invasion of Iraq is fundamentally premised in the exclusion of the Iraqi people from any say in this debate. It this, and only this, that supports the pacifist objections. The whole issue of whether the war in Iraq was "just" has become a question solely asked by Westerners and solely answered by Westerners...typically Orientalist!
Exactly the iraqi wanted to be free of saddam
They wanted to liberate the Iraqi's but didn't even ask their opinion on the matter? Seems fishy to me xD
@@detnemt9571now they are? Let’s see what they do with that freedom.
you can't force regime change from the outside
if enough people are ready for it they will do it on their own
They tried that in 1991. The Republican Guard crushed the resistance.
I think Hitchen's underlying point, that the first and second Gulf Wars came not too soon, but much too late, hold true. However, his defense of the virtue of war I think is based in the the view that he often takes, which is of the macro good for the human race. In the micro, as he states, the Iraq war can be considered in many ways a failure. But just in terms of basic moral and ethical value, the dispensing of justice to Saddam--for whatever reasons it ended up happening by--is a truly *good* thing for the human race.
he's arguing a tough position, but I think his point holds true.
Sad.
I wonder how much he sold out for.
I, proudly, state my support for the War in Iraq and feel regret that when I joined we had just pulled out.
ibrahim azawi: Or, getting a chance to declare your support for the owerthrowing of a mad dictator who tried to exterminate the kurds and who had his deathsquads record, on film, the random torture and murders of his owncitizens that he would later watch for his own personal, macabre amusement. How about that?
@@PureSwedishViking really c...t you country is funding the dictatorships in the region your biggest allie is the most backward country in the middle east saudia arabia that killed and keep killing the Yemenis
I don't agree with his positions on everything, like religion, but I can't deny he is smart.
yes.
günT Idk.
His position on religion is the only thing he would want you to agree with, if he was alive, he never cared if anyone thought he is smart or not.
Kshitiz Vashistha Well fuck that, I'll agree with what I want to based on its merits.
+CatnamedMittens “Michael Bialas” Religion has no merit. None at all.
Hitchens would be a hero of mine if I had heroes.
But Listening to this back in the day made me furious. Now yers later I return with less emotions to see if he hard a point. But I’m sorry old comrade you just got this one wrong I’m afraid.
Hitchens is literally right about all of this. I don't understand why people can't see it.
@@TheTokkin
It’s up to the Iraqi people to win there freedom. We have no right to take that a way from them.
Noam Chomsky was right on the Iraq war.
@@judahjayson684
Yea he was. But he has been horrendous on the Ukrainian war. It is sad that Chomskys final act is to hold water for Russian fascism and imperialism.
And I know Hitch would have gotten that one right.
@@isakrynell8771 no he is anti Imperialism and right know the USA is a imperialist nation and Russia is not an Imperialist like USA, so Russia don't want war military NATO on their doorstep, if you know international affairs you would have understood.
The US/UK forces should have stayed in the region until all extremism was wiped out.
Iran, Saudi, and the rest of them should have been destroyed..
Saudi was an allied..... and the USA didn't mind his=ding the fact that they probably did 9/11
Nuke Israel. Solve all problems
turned out to be a sell out
Lmao yeah, right...
No just a Jew.
@@russellhammond371 thats the only ''argument'' nazis as this one are able to make
Would a hostile US audience today allow a speaker to make his case without vocal disruption? How far we have fallen.
No, the US population today has been poisoned by anti-war propaganda from Fascist Russia. They would call Hitchens a neocon and bloodthirsty for wanting to save brown Iraqis from fascism