The Devil and George Galloway

I listened this evening to the Hitchens - Galloway Debate. The hardest part was getting through the half hour of Leftist ranting from the Pacifica radio station before the debate actually began. Unbelievable stuff--amazing that anyone with any kind of brain would voluntarily subject that brain to the toxic blatherings of whatever show that was.

But, getting back to the debate. I was pleasantly surprised that Hitchens was very favorably received. Because of his support for the Iraq War, I had almost forgotten that he is a Leftist himself, albeit it a significantly rational one, who isn't afraid to look at the facts for fear his ideology will collapse. I happen to believe he has not yet looked at all the facts yet, or else it would; and he'd be a former Leftist. But at least in this debate, I don't think there was any question that he beat Galloway over the head; threw him down and stomped on him, giving him a beating richly deserved.

Hitchens came across as calm, mature, adult; with the facts at his command; and with a withering sarcasm he frequently demolished the more infantile remarks made by Galloway. For example, Hitchens commented on his disgust for a person who would on one day stand beside Assad of Syria praising the killers of Casey Sheehan; and on another day exploit Casey Sheehan's mother. Surprisingly, the crowd roared its approval.

Hitchens offered to back up any of his facts--and mentioned that the 100,000 Iraqi Deaths mentioned by Lancet had been shown to be completely false. Galloway's reply was he didn't understand how anyone could criticize Lancet or Johns Hopkins University (Galloway needs to talk to the academic medical community if he believes that ANY institution or journal is above making a mistake).

At any rate, the most impressive aspect of Hitchen's comments were right at the beginning, where he asked the antiwar community to consider how the world would be if they had been listened to -- Bosnia taken over by the Serbs; ethnic cleansing completed; Afghanistan under the thrall of the Taliban; Kuwait annexed by Saddam; etc. etc. etc. It was a sobering list of the short-sighted and reactionary, knee-jerk Leftist response to tyranny.

Most of the words from Galloway's mouth have been heard over and over again from the mouths of every Leftist on earth; and not a few Al Qaeda, too. The high point for Galloway was when he resorted to a quasi-literary sounding curse of Hitchens, "Damn you and all your works!" As if the devil had him in his grasp.

The Devil won. Hands down.

If a transcript appears, I'll post it. My only regret in listening is that I missed the other debate between Victor Davis Hanson and Arianna Huffington which started a little later. I'll post that transcript when/if available.

UPDATE: Wretchard has some comments about the debate. If you want to watch it for yourself, it will be on CSPAN on Saturday. Also, Tigerhawk has a good play by play description of the debate and was actually there in person.