Brilliance Is Not Hereditary

This was a great dressing-down of that scab Ron Reagan by Christopher Hitchens in an interview. You can read the whole thing at Radioblogger. Some interesting excerpts:

RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

Great points, Christopher. We are not dealing with rational people, we are dealing with terrorists. Ron Reagan and the Left have ALWAYS thought that we can get along with our enemies by trying to make them like us. Fighting against terrorism is the only way to beat it. And…there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003? How stupid is THAT?

More of the exchange:

RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?

Why are liberals always so quick to deny that Saddam Hussein harbored terrorists? Because it puts the lie to everything they’ve been saying for the last 4 years. I really do think most of America understands this, and understands that people this clueless cannot be trusted with protecting our country. That’s why they’ve lost 4 elections in a row…5 if you count Iraq’s.

CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

GREAT question. Ron Reagan is a know-nothing Leftist who is where he is because of his name, nothing more. He just kept falling back on the 9-11 Commission report, which he obviously knew very little about. He was just following the Dem talking points, and Hitchens revealed him for the hack he is.