Christopher Hitchens talks about India

I want some, I wants tried to add up how long we had lived in the post Cold War, first ideological combat utopia that came upon us in 1989. Put an end to the long nuclear and ideological standoff under which I and many of you have grown up.

Pitch inauguration era bodied fourth principle by Frank Fukuyama in which liberalism and democracy and pluralism and aversion of the market economy would be not just the regnant but in effect, the only model for societies there was talk of a peace dividend if you recall. I’m sure someone must have said swords and pleasures. I don’t actually remember of turning our attention to the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in Africa, particularly long neglected or subordinated to what appeared during the period that evolved to be larger.

Concerns anyway, some of you will remember that euphoria. I calculated that if you basis that is beginning from an episode that I witnessed, which was the overthrow of the Nicolae Ceausescu regime in Romania, at between Christmas and New Year 1989. If you date that is the end of one man rule and one party rule in Europe, then the period of euphoria and the new utopia lasted for about 111 days.

Afterwards, which soda Milosevic invaded Bosnia, and attempted to annex it to a greater Serbia and Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait is often said that a next stage of Kuwait an independent stage a member United Nations, of the non aligned movement of the League of the conference of Islamic governments. Next it to be the 19th province.

Are the rock at a time when we now know he had the choice of either developing his bomb before invading Kuwait or invading Kuwait and then getting additional financing for the bomb that he had underwear he we didn’t know it but we were living in the hollow of his and we’re also living at the pleasure of people so with them and also live while this was going on, coming up on the inside track, as it might be said in Afghanistan and barely noticed by us, was a fusion of the idea of the one man rule and the one party rule with the One God rule that makes this this dictatorship, even more iron and inflexible and medicine because likely others it leads to failure, state failure and like the other state failures, he will not blame itself for its failure, but will export this violence and blame conspiracies of others for its own collapse. And for me, the special symbol of that also took place in 1989 when the theocratic head of a foreign state to join

Lost a war with Saddam Hussein. The Ayatollah Khomeini offered money in his own name. For the purpose of the suborning of murder of Russia fiction living in London was not an Iranian citizen, friend of mine by by chance named Salman Rushdie very radical challenge, I thought through every possible value that’s represented by the western enlightenment into a free expression.

There, it seems to me that the kind of muscle and sinew the people are going to need to have acquired to combat the new form of totalitarianism is the sort that service gradually, rather randomly and haphazardly but gradually did acquire in realizing that the recrudescence of ethnic fascist fascism in Europe had to be stopped. Realizing that someone was saying could not be allowed to get away with the destruction of another country and that in the long run the existence of his regime, the coexistence with it, perhaps I should say was in possible and undesirable for the United States and for the rest of the civilized them to realize that that the challenge from Islamism was mounting and becoming more and more bold and promiscuous and being mounted much more in the streets and squares of our own societies. Vidi the Fed were promulgated in London, and Paris in New York against summer.

Russia, this was the kind of, of as I say, fiber, one guy looking back on it, perhaps had to acquire to realize what was meant by the horror of the challenge of September the 11th. And it’s nice to be in a room for once, where people don’t mind using the word war, even if elegantly shaded nuanced as by pill. Because where most of the time I have to spend my life is in places where people have been war weary since the late afternoon of Tuesday, September 11 2001.

Now what I don’t think anyone is quite conveyed, I’m gonna have a shot at

What was the quality of that shock? Look, if you’ve been in Sarajevo, as I’ve been if you’ve been in the scene or something of the Kuwait, war, the war in northern Iraq and Kurdistan and so far they had done some of that. And frankly, the sight of seeing someone jumping in flames in our building isn’t all that terrifying. The fact that it happens in America, I think it’s narcissistic distress. That kind of thing happens in a war has to be expected. If you’re in a war, you’re going to lose a building and a plane, and maybe a small town in a school room, you should reckon about once every week, get ready for it. That wasn’t a shock to me. The shock to me was this. The President went missing for a whole day and crept back to Washington and made a Craven speech written by Karen news that he should have retracted by now that we were left under open skies by NORAD that we were betrayed by our intelligence agencies, the CIA and the FBI, who hadn’t bothered to realize that incubated in our own society was the deadliest of enemies, that these enemies were further incubated by two state systems that have Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. We’ve been educated by our allegiances as friends as moderates, a giant gigantic betrayal on a on a historic and colossal scale accompanied by the most appalling impotence.

I’ve daikon, I can’t forget how helpless the country felt that day. And how abandoned it was, and I never shall and I don’t think anyone ought to be able to will be allowed to. You’ve all of you, I’m sure read Mr. Woodward’s book on more two books on the origins of the world. And the consequences of that you were he relies very heavily on Mr. George Tenet of the Central Intelligence Agency. I’ll make this my encapsulating anecdote if you’d like.

You can always tell who’s helped by will because if you’re described as the aspirant tough minded son of hardscrabble, Greek immigrants, you’re one of his sources.

That’s the case of George Tenet in this case. And there are other reasons why he gets the good treatment and why his quotations are put in quotation marks quite a rare privilege and would watch it on a Well, we know what the first amount made by the Director of Central Intelligence was in the immediate post 911.

He bought the first few seconds of it, actually, because we know what he said. When the men run in men ran into tell him, Mr. Director, you better leave this meeting with Senator Boren. And it wasn’t because he was late for his next one. And he had to watch on the TV what had happened and his first from our first remark made by an intelligence establishment in this era. Now it was the following. g semister. Said, I hope it’s nothing to do with those guys in the flight schools in the Midwest.

Does this man deserve a Medal of Freedom? Do you think of his retirement? Should he not rather have been impeached should not have at least been dismissed surely not, in fact, probably have been prosecuted for criminal negligence No, because they must not be admitted. Therefore is left for us to face the fact that this is not

A fight that’s going to need volunteers. We cannot in fact delegate this to our leaders or complain when they get it wrong. It’s going to call upon us and the moment I want to reach is this is winning the Arab press, you start to read worried articles saying, Do you realize the extremist policies of terrorism, and so are creating huge forces of resistance in the West.

We’ve really driven them now to a point where they’re ready to fight.

Evil all over the United States are signing up saying what can I do? How can I push back against Jihad now look what we’ve done with our intervention in the internal affairs, that’s when I’ll know that we’ve turned this around. And do you feel any of you any sign of any of this mentality, or self respect or dignity in our society, I judge. But that’s what I think we have to learn how to fight for and we know who the enemy is. I’m not gonna waste much time on that. The vile combination of Islam of self righteousness and self hatred and self pity

It’s tragic that we see every day. It’s wrong for the president. It was wrong land of an interpreter attack on America.

To say that we are either with us the Americans or with the terrorists or Asian nations represented in those towers that day.

Several hundred of my fellow countrymen among them I refused to go to a sermon, especially for people of English descent because I didn’t want to go to anyone’s

national or ethnic celebration, it was attack on civilization itself as should be very plain.

And we should be very careful. I’m sorry. So to correct your slave say we have not been attacked since because if we take that standard civilization, we have been attacked almost every single day since then, either and the former servicemen and women in Afghanistan and Iraq whose performance I think it’s beyond praise, or the the attack on the,

the result of Bali and Indonesia chacal holidaymakers there. The regular tax on Jewish

institutions and places of worship, ancient synagogues in Tunisia, in Turkey, in Morocco, all of these countries with governments that opposed the interventions in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, by the way,

the term to blow up the London Underground

facility used by many Americans every day, if you dare to put it like that, and in my opinion, most of all I’m touched on I was glad to see by Bill, the attempt

Attack on Indian Parliament

in the fall of 2001, very underreported, now press to blow up with a huge series of truck bombs the Parliament of India, the loksabha of the New Delhi that represents if you ever go and look at it, in all its splendor, that the true parliamentary constellation of a genuine multi ethnic multicultural, multi religious democracy based like as on the rule of law, the English language regular elections in the free market are in my opinion I submit, future closest ally and a country with which we have a great duty of solidarity every now and then if you’re like me, and you go on the air and you debate with some whining, self righteous, self hating, self pitying Muslim, and you tell him what you think of his Quran and His Prophet. And so if you have offended a billion Muslims, you notice this, you notice that there’s a slight turn of moral blackmail here, I sometimes think, look, if it was a matter of defending the right of somebody to hold their original opinion, I would defend the right of a Muslim if the only three of them the idea of a billion is clearly intended as a threat. And so there’s a minister that you’ve upset a billion of us you should watch out. That’s what Amanda and we’re going to try and move in to your city and your country to and we’re going to raise more and more demands. That’s what’s meant by it. But what about billion Hindus?

What about a billion Hindus

What about a billion Hindus who have been declared anathema, who have been declared fit for slaughter? at any time at every place? They’re not even monotheist. Look what happened, for example, to the Nepalese guest workers.

iraq Did anybody see that unbearable video for mass warford for cutting of this Hindus you have to see it to believe it and the commentary that goes with it too.

And it is not just

Hindu, the more Muslims living in India, in a democracy in a in a serious logical society live in Pakistan. We shouldn’t despair we have allies who proved themselves ready to fight. Now I mustn’t trespass on the time I’ve decided to borrow from the stream terseness of my two comrades here. But I just wanted to say

that’s those of us who thought it would change everything we’re obviously wrong for most of our countrymen it has not done anything of the kind they want reassurance they even take part in opinion polls saying I want a politician who makes me feel safer in anything be more contemptible in this exercise. And we suffer like the sugar in the in the kidneys of a diabetic as as Rebecca West called the moral atmosphere of the Chamberlain government.

from two very widespread relations first that we ourselves are the cause of terrorism.

Senator Harry Reid, I give you noted read not I don’t pick up random some extremist like Michael Morell Ramsey Clark, the leader of the Democratic Party in the senate says that yes, it’s true the outsider is interrupt.

Verily Simon, which now it’s obviously there has gone to all the trouble of calling himself al Qaeda and Mesopotamia is no longer deny that is there, you notice, but it’s only there because we are there, says this and he said it in a reply to a presidential broadcast it was not considered or off the cuff remark or prepared statement. Yes, archives forces are in Iraq, but they are only there because of us.

Defeating the mind surrender capitulation, as well as a completely false statement of the case, as we will name us as a country and many of his associates were in Iraq long before the first coalition, soldier set foot or an alternative argument made recently by Maureen Dowd, and you times that the problem is that we are an occupation of what she called Muslim land denominating territory by religion, fearing the ground on the New York Times op ed page for the caliphate to come. Well, this is a this is a pretty dire state of moral surrender as well and or we until the week when we could drop the Jewish state off the back of the sled. They leave us alone. Sometimes this is phrases that Israel Palestine is the crucial question of the solution, etc, etc. Well, everyone should know probably does this feel but I’ll say briefly,

Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda is an outfit that begins in Asia not in the Middle East. It starts with trying to develop by tearing out the territory of Philippines and independent Muslim states in the Philippine archipelago. It goes on to demand the return of East Timor which was nearly destroyed as a people abandoning vision to Muslim Indonesia. It blew up Sergio via gemelli of the great Brazilian unit UN envoy in Baghdad, murdered him on his first week on duty. For him in revenge as stated by Al Qaeda for his role in overseeing the independence of his team on the election they brought into self government. It wants to wrench Kashmir away from the Indian union with the help of Pakistani subversion. If that was allowed to happen, the resulting bloodbath in the subcontinent would dwarf absolutely dwarf what we remember of the bloodletting of the partition of 1947 48 and would wreck and destroy the other grades multicultural democracy in and alive as in the world.

It’s quite a lot of concessions in other words that we’re going to be asked to make in order to appease these people, and to make sure they don’t have any more evil thoughts against the scene in my opinion, half of Palestine word quite satisfy them. And you might be my other opinion which I’ll share with you. Nobody blows themselves up in a Jewish old people’s home, on Passover in Italia on the Mediterranean coast of Israel proper national settlements, not against the wall, not in an occupied territory. Nobody does that in order to bring about a compromise. It’s just an instinct I have.

I have the feeling that they will be happy. It’s a little no more Jews in what we used to be mandate Palestine. That’s certainly what they say they work. I’m in favor of taking the enemy seriously, to that extent. And on this question of let’s not provoke, and we’re the cause of their reaction. Let us just examine this for one more second.

All it takes in order to get the diplomatic immunity of a small Northern European democracy violated its diplomats a shot at its embassies burned crowds in this capital cities and countries that do not normally allow demonstrations.

Its trade ruined its its economy savage charged its nationals and the Nationals other Scandinavian countries threatened and killed randomly around the world. All that it takes is the refusal of the electorate Prime Minister of Denmark to agree with you the policy was by delegation of 20 Arab ambassadors to break his own country’s law. until an afternoon newspaper in Copenhagen, they couldn’t publish certain cartoons. That’s all it takes to bring about jihadism. Now, that’s the threshold of provocation.

Now, you have to be ethical, real masochist, to say, well, then we must avoid doing this kind of thing. There’s all they’re asking is that we change everything that makes our way of life, different rumors. And then it’s true, I suppose that would be very difficult to fight about. But in the meanwhile, I think that we have to face the fact that it’s a clash of civilization of course, about civilization and we

Within a civilization it does represent also we think it’s nice to be able to a war within Islam to where we don’t know how lucky we are, that fighting on our side are forces of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and or the patriotic union of Kurdistan in Iraq, whose every mind project where multiple people are fighting against the Dharma for us and taking heavy heavy casualties when we thought his regime was a matter of indifference. And these people are just as Muslim just as good a right to claim that they observed that faith is do anyone else we should never forget our duty of solidarity to them. And they are our brothers and sisters in arms, and with the other victims of bin Laden Islam and this horrifying cause of death and murder, and suicide that says that it loves itself. And it’s called more than we love life much depends then Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters comrades, for as much depends on the multiple ways in which we can disprove that assertion.

Sure and a certain part of life and pluralism over and over the morbid, sorted a medieval enemy that we’re now faced with. Thank you.