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Kasha -- Hitchens vs Galloway: The big debate -- David Usborne

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Date Posted: 09.17.05

Hitchens vs Galloway: The big debate

16 September 2005

Christopher Hitchens, vocal supporter of the Iraq war, against George
Galloway, indefatigable enemy of the war

By David Usborne in New York

Published: 16 September 2005

The George Galloway Tour had arrived in town and things were running a
little late. The queue to get into the 1,000-seat auditorium at Baruch
College near Gramercy Park had stretched more than two blocks and it was
taking time to get everyone in. Apparently not fully apprised of what she
was in for, an American woman turns around to a British reporter sitting
one row behind and innocently inquires: "Is this personal?"

The Respect party MP for Bethnal Green and Bow is on a swing through the US
to promote his new book, Mr Galloway Goes to Washington, about his
blistering appearance at a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill this spring
investigating scams and scandals in Iraq's oil-for-food programme. But the
New York stop always promised to be more entertaining than any other. He
would have company on stage.

Yes, ma'am, you have a ringside seat for the political prize-fight of the
season. Never mind the mayoral elections going on the city right now or that
Messrs Bush and Blair are merely a mile away at UN headquarters charting all
of our futures. What you are about to witness is foreign policy discourse at
its most raw and bloody and - no question about it - most personal. Get
ready for Galloway versus Hitchens.

It was minutes before Galloway's Senate performance in May when he had his
now famous run-in with Christopher Hitchens on the street. Hitchens, the
Vanity Fair columnist and renegade from the left with a new career defending
the 2003 invasion of Iraq, berated Galloway for his anti-war stance and his
past ties to Saddam Hussein, upon which the MP called him "a drink-soaked
former Trotskyite popinjay".

Such insults should not be left unattended, or so thought Hitchens, who
subsequently challenged Galloway to join him in a public debate at a time
and venue of his choosing. That moment came on Wednesday night at Baruch
College. In the audience was the entire beau monde of the New York left,
including the publisher and editor of The Nation magazine, Victor Navasky
and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, and the motion set forward was this: "The war in
Iraq was necessary and just." More than half an hour behind schedule, at
last the bold contenders are brought before us. We quiver with
anticipation, because this is a land where political debate is normally
dreary in its politeness. There is real bad blood here. "No handshakes, no
courtesies," Hitchens growls before the evening even begins.

Pasty-faced, scruffy and slightly coy, Hitchens ambles to his podium. He
lets his jacket fall to the floor from his left hand and his blue shirt is
soaked in patches of sweat. Stage-right, meanwhile (not appropriately),
Galloway is all prosperity with a perfect late-summer tan and perfect beige
suit and tie.

No one is more intrigued - or perhaps more appalled - by the event than the
woman two seats to my left, Oona King. She, of course, is the former Labour
candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow who knows first hand what it is like to
go up against the barking Galloway. Some of us are imagining that Hitchens,
a man of no small intellectual rigour, will surely get the better of the
man from Dundee tonight. But perhaps Oona knows better. She whispers
something to me about Galloway being "brilliant". Oh dear.

There is the small matter of the crowd. Hitchens fears they will not be in
his corner and has been outside working the queue (hence the damp patches),
doling out leaflets casting doubt on the integrity of his opponent. Amongst
tit-bits included were the words allegedly spoken by Galloway to Saddam
during a visit to Baghdad in 1994. "I salute your courage, your strength,
your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until
victory, until victory, until Jerusalem."

The moderator, Amy Goodman, a left-wing radio personality (a precious
species in the US) gives Hitchens the first 15 minutes. Perhaps unwisely he
opens by asking for a moment's silence for the more than 150 victims of
violence on Wednesday in Iraq. It seems gimmicky and a man yells that he
won't join in silence with someone who has condoned the war in the first
place. Ignoring the interruption, Hitchens begins in earnest, depicting the
kind of world we would live in if the pacifists got their way. From the
reactions around us, it seems he might have a good third of the hall in his
pocket; he should do fine.

It is still not quite clear to me at what point exactly Hitchens jumped the
rails. Much later in the night, when Hitch and I and a few others have
repaired to a friend's loft in SoHo, I attempt something of a post-mortem
with him. Is there anything, I dare to wonder, that he perhaps wishes in
hindsight he hadn't said to Galloway? Has he any regrets from the evening?
Of course, he says flat-out no. "There are things I didn't say that I wish
I had," he replies instead. We then spend a good time lingering on the
moment that Galloway came close to calling Hitchens a racist, taking issue
with his assertion that most of the insurgent fighters are "foreigners"
from outside Iraq. "If someone calls me a racist, I will sue," Hitchens
says darkly, drinking, but not drink-soaked. "I always sue and I never let
go. I never let go."

In fact, both men tonight had waded into areas they would have better
avoided. Galloway caused paroxysms saying the planes that slammed into the
twin towers four years ago did not come out of "a clear blue sky". Rather it
was the fault of the US and its foreign policies, especially on Israel. "I
believe they emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us", he said. "I
believe that it's because of the total, complete unending and bottomless
support for General Sharon's crimes against the Palestinian people."

As Hitchens pointed out, this was not entirely sagacious of the MP, who does
not boast sensitivity as a middle name anyway. (Ask Ms King about that). "Mr
Galloway," he said quietly, "you picked the wrong city to say that". In the
meanwhile, he went on, the suggestion that somehow the misery caused by the
terrorists here and in London is somehow our fault in the first place is, he
said, "piffle, dangerous piffle". "Our fault? No, this is masochism. And it
is masochism being offered to you by sadists."

Then there were the moments in the evening where Hurricane Katrina entered
the hall. Galloway could not resist rehearsing the point, why send billions
of dollars to Iraq when you can't help your own people in New Orleans?
Foolishly, Hitchens then took it upon himself to defend President Bush and
the Pentagon's post-Katrina clean-up. The White House, he said, had 200,000
soldiers to send to the devastated Gulf area after the hurricane, but
wasn't able to until it got the say-so from state governors. That was the
problem - it wasn't lack of compassion. Even more rashly, he castigated the
left for making assumptions about the numbers of victims being
disproportionately black "before the bodies were even identified". Sharp
intake of breath from Ms King there, who briefly considers joining the
Galloway camp.