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Clever Clever Chrisopher Hitchens Defends Ahmad Chalabi
From Slate, an aticle by Christopher Hitchens.... Chalabi impressed me for three reasons. The first was that he thought the overthrow of one of the worldâs foulest-ever despotisms could be accomplished. .... the second thing that impressed me was that, whenever I mentioned any name, Chalabi was able to make an exhaustive comment on him or her. (The third thing that impressed me was his astonishingly extensive knowledge of literary and political arcana, but thatâs irrelevant to our purposes here.) The anti-Chalabi forces, I found upon inquiry, had several criticisms to make. The first was that he was a shady businessman whose Petra Bank had fleeced the depositors of Jordan. The second was that he was an "exile," remote from Iraqâs reality. The third was that he was too close to the Iranians. The fourth was that he was too ambitious. The fifth was that he was an American puppet. ... As for "exile" â a term used as a sneer by many people who have never set foot in Iraq â it is a word that would cover Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Andreas Papandreou, Benigno Aquino, and Kim Dae Jung, to name a few. Admittedly these brave men (four of whom I have met) were in prominent positions in existing mass-based parties before they fled their homelands, later to return as leaders. .... Moreover, Chalabi during the 1990s had actually spent a good deal of time in liberated northern Iraq, and many Iraqis and Kurds who had had their doubts about him had been impressed by his courage, especially during the mini civil war that broke out between Kurdish factions. As for Iran, it is the most significant of Iraqâs neighbors, and no aspiring politician can avoid the responsibility of conducting relations with it. Chalabi has never made any secret of his closeness to Tehran, and he operated a headquarters there, with the full encouragement of the U.S. government, during the run-up to the intervention. This necessarily involves a managed compromise between competing Shiite forces in both countries, at a time when both populations are anxiously awaiting developments in each otherâs societies. If any Iraqi is "brokering" relations with Iran, I hope itâs Chalabi. ... It has now been replaced with a whole new indictment: that Chalabi tricked the United States into war, possibly on Iranâs behalf, and that he has given national security secrets to Iran. The first half of this is grotesque on its face. Even if you assume the worst to be true â that the INCâs "defectors" were either mistaken or were conscious, coached fabricators â the fact remains that the crucial presentation of the administrationâs case on WMD and terrorism was made at the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell, with CIA Director George Tenet sitting right behind him, after those two men most hostile to Chalabi had been closeted together. .... Woodwardâs book Plan of Attack makes it plain that the president was not very impressed with Tenetâs ostensible evidence. The plain and overlooked truth is that the administration acted upon the worst assumption about Saddam Hussein and that he himself strongly confirmed the presumption of guilt by, among many other things, refusing to comply with the U.N. resolution. .... As to the accusation that Chalabi has endangered American national security by slipping secrets to Tehran, I can only say that three days ago, I broke my usual rule and had a "deep background" meeting with a very "senior administration official." This person, given every opportunity to signal even slightly that I ought to treat the charges seriously, pointedly declined to do so. I thought I should put this on record. Some of my Iraqi and Kurdish comrades have expressed a different misgiving about Chalabi: that he has been playing confessional politics and maneuvering with the Shiites to get himself a power base. I entirely share their distaste for this kind of politics, but I donât see â now that there are politics in Iraq once more â that anybody is not involved to some extent in playing the sectarian or tribal cards. Chalabi says in his own defense that itâs necessary to keep good relations with the Sistani bloc and that the ayatollah has been very helpful: most particularly in his fatwa against private revenge by those Shiites who lost relatives, or limbs, to the hateful former regime. And I would add in Chalabiâs defense that he did call for an earlier transfer of sovereignty and earlier elections: an odd position for a man with "no base" to take and also the position now taken, with differing degrees of regret and remorse, by almost everyone involved. Again, if there has to be a "Mr. Shiite" in Iraq, I can think of worse candidates than Chalabi. ... It is clearer every day that Iraq under Saddam was becoming a failed state as well as a rogue state. ... If this vindicates anybody, it vindicates those who urged a swifter and earlier international rescue expedition. Those who would have left Iraq to rot were only postponing an evil day that would have become steadily more ghastly and costly. Chalabi had been saying this for six years by the time I met him in 1998: Those who now say that the whole mess is his fault are panicking and scapegoating, as well as attributing superhuman powers to one individual. Of course, if he was that good, and that powerful, one might even want to bet on him all over again. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-05-28 |
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