stay connected

FrumForum Facebook FrumForum YouTube Update Twitter FrumForum Flickr

FrumCast with Hitchens

June 6th, 2010 at 3:17 pm David Frum | 15 Comments |

Share
| Print

I sat down with Christopher Hitchens to discuss his new memoir, Hitch-22, the end of the Empire and the state of modern Britain.

Click here to download the podcast.

Click here for the FrumCast archive.

Recent Posts by David Frum



15 Comments so far ↓

  • peacemaker // Jun 6, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    As a registered Independent living on Long Island, NY, I appreciate bright and honest Conservatives who speak out as you have. Ironically, I’m seeing a pattern here in my respect for Davids; Brock, Brooks and now Frum. I highly respect your courage to sling truth to Goliath Republican Giants.

  • blowtorch_bob // Jun 7, 2010 at 11:53 am

    The existence of WMD’s in Iraq has proved to be just as elusive as proof of the existence of God.

  • Carney // Jun 7, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    blowtorch, we found hundreds of chemical warheads in Iraq, ignored by the world on the irrelevant grounds that they were made pre-1991 and were not maintained to first world standards.

    Setting even that aside, Saddam had had at least two prior nuclear programs: the first, on open one, ended by an Israeli raid in the face of world dithering; the second, existing despite the regime’s strenuous and indignant denials, discovered by inspectors and whose scope and extent shocked the world.

    In other words, Saddam had been caught red-handed lying before about WMD. Add to that his refusal to cooperate with inspectors and you had casus belli. The burden of proof was not on George W. Bush to prove Saddam guilty beyond reasonable doubt to a skeptical, cross-armed anti-American OJ jury; it was on Saddam, a multiple WMD program attempting proven liar, open terrorist supporter, and repeated aggressor, to prove his full cooperation.

    The inspections regime was not designed to overcome a non-cooperative regime’s food dragging and shell games. It was designed as a confirmation of an already-committed and fully cooperative state’s disarmament, such as South Africa, Ukraine, and Brazil.

    Saddam had begged for peace in 1991 because he was losing the war of aggression he had started; the peace terms he agreed to as the price of peace included in part a halt and full disclosure and cooperation of all WMD activity. He unarguably deliberately failed in that, and thus resuming the Gulf War was perfectly legal and necessary.

    Bush was foolish in letting himself be nagged into trying to gild the lily by seeking an unnecessary resolution explicitly authorizing war, and in trying to affirmatively prove Saddam’s guilt. No proof would have convinced our enemies, and seeking to do so distracted attention from Saddam’s non-compliance and enabled the crafting of the anti-American narrative on Iraq that the US Left has now swallowed whole.

  • sparty // Jun 7, 2010 at 1:47 pm

    Carney:

    “Bush was foolish”

    Yes. He was.

  • LFC // Jun 7, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    blowtorch, we found hundreds of chemical warheads in Iraq, ignored by the world on the irrelevant grounds that they were made pre-1991 and were not maintained to first world standards.

    Or the fact that they didn’t actually didn’t contain any chemicals.

    In other words, Saddam had been caught red-handed lying before about WMD. Add to that his refusal to cooperate with inspectors and you had casus belli. The burden of proof was not on George W. Bush to prove Saddam guilty beyond reasonable doubt to a skeptical, cross-armed anti-American OJ jury; it was on Saddam, a multiple WMD program attempting proven liar, open terrorist supporter, and repeated aggressor, to prove his full cooperation.

    Hussein absolutely lied and played for time, but time ran out and the UNSCOM disabled quite a bit of his remaining WMD abilities. In fact, they were in country and continuing to do their jobs when Bush decided to invade, but you conveniently forget that Bush actually told the inspectors to get out cause we were comin’ in. Damn those pesky facts!

  • blowtorch_bob // Jun 7, 2010 at 2:28 pm

    Carney
    “blowtorch, we found hundreds of chemical warheads in Iraq…”

    You are referring to the ones we sold him back in the 80’s that had already expired.

    So get this straight. If we sell weapons to Saddam to use against Iran: GOOD.
    If we sell him weapons that he may use against us later: SADDAM IS AN EVIL MONSTER THAT MUST BE STOPPED

  • cmarkward // Jun 7, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    On a lighter note: Regarding the Monty Python quote, I do believe that both are wrong. The line (“…keeping China British”) is not from an obscure John Cleese movie, but from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

  • ottovbvs // Jun 7, 2010 at 5:26 pm

    Carney // Jun 7, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    “blowtorch, we found hundreds of chemical warheads in Iraq,”

    …..trouble was they were way past their sell by date…..about as fatal as one of your farts

  • pampl // Jun 7, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    “So get this straight. If we sell weapons to Saddam to use against Iran: GOOD.
    If we sell him weapons that he may use against us later: SADDAM IS AN EVIL MONSTER THAT MUST BE STOPPED”
    I’m not even a right-winger on foreign policy and this strikes me as breathtakingly dumb. Yes, it’s bad when former allies want to kill you. Not that difficult to understand.

  • ottovbvs // Jun 8, 2010 at 9:12 am

    pampl // Jun 7, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    “this strikes me as breathtakingly dumb. Yes, it’s bad when former allies want to kill you.”

    …….it’s even dumber to give them the means to do it………I think that was his point

  • Carney // Jun 8, 2010 at 10:36 am

    Whining about our cooperation about Saddam in the 80s against Iran (or about our cooperation with Islamists against the USSR) is silly. The world is a dangerous place, and we have to shift strategy to deal with changing circumstances. At any given time, either on a worldwide or regional basis, you have to determine who the biggest threat to your interests and security is, and seek to isolate him by teaming up with other players, however unsavory. We allied with the USSR against Nazi Germany; that did not obligate us to be the USSR’s ally forever once the Nazi threat was gone.

  • Carney // Jun 8, 2010 at 10:47 am

    Back to the podcast, Frum and Hitchens are far too dismissive of partition. While often botched in execution by the departing Brits, the idea in principle is often sound and even necessary.

    The “messes” left behind by the Brits were just as often, if not more often, caused by insufficient partition. Colonial officials often drew arbitrary lines, dividing up continents with little or no regard for the demographic lay of the land. Borders looped together peoples who preferred to live apart, or sliced through people who prefer to live together.

    See here

    http://wmmbb.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/pakistan_ethnic_groups.jpg

    how little relation national borders have to ethnicity. Is it any wonder that central governments are weak and there is constant tension and fighting?

    By contrast, after centuries of bloody warfare, Europe’s borders at last much more closely match ethno-linguistic reality, and the few places it does not are the only places significant intra-European tension still exists.

  • DFL // Jun 8, 2010 at 2:39 pm

    The problem with being fifty is that I can’t figure out how to open up the podcast.

  • thebishop // Jun 13, 2010 at 10:04 am

    Stylistically, Frum comes across as thoughtful and genuinely concerned about the conservative tradition’s continued relevance.

    But if you watch his BloggingHeads discussion with Glenn Greenwald, and especially Jonah Goldberg, it’s clear that he’s not fundamentally different from the discouraging elements of the movement. He rightly calls out the low-hanging fruit (Glenn Beck, Mark Levin), but when forced to face the actual issues with Jonah Goldberg, he essentially agrees.

    Frum’s heart may be in the right place, but he doesn’t realize conservative policy is the problem, not the tone.

    As far as “saving the movement” is concerned, Andrew Sullivan is probably closer to the correct path.

Leave a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.