Paul Thomas: Battle of the Brit wits raises the big question

It was billed as the Grapple in the Big Apple. In the blue corner was gadfly journalist Christopher Hitchens, a former Trotskyite whose political and philosophical odyssey now has him lining up with the neo-conservatives to defend regime change in Iraq.

In the red corner was George Galloway, the British parliamentarian expelled from the Labour Party for his raucous opposition to regime change in Iraq.

It promised to be an extravaganza of invective. Both men play for keeps and have skins that make rhinoceros hide seem like a wet paper bag. Both could be termed colourful.

Hitchens, an Englishman resident in Washington DC, is renowned for his readiness to venture where less combative, less self-assured people wouldn't dream of treading. He was once simultaneously engaged in hatchet jobs on Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger.

In his memoir Experience, Martin Amis recalls taking Hitchens to meet novelist and all-round crusty customer Saul Bellow, a Jew. Despite stern instructions to be on his best behaviour, Hitchens opened fire on Israel and kept blazing away until the evening was ruined beyond repair.

In an earlier confrontation Galloway described Hitchens as "drink-sodden". Hitchens makes no secret of the fact that he enjoys a drink or 10 but it's striking how frequently his opponents zero in on his intake, even though it hasn't reduced his productivity or his ability to construct a sinewy argument in elegant sentences.

Perhaps they can't believe anyone could hold these views with a clear head, or it may reflect the thin-lipped wowserism that often accompanies an affinity for authoritarian ideology. Galloway is a teetotaller.

A former boxer from Dundee, Galloway supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and described the USSR's collapse as "the biggest catastrophe of my life". On meeting Saddam Hussein in 1994 he burbled, "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability".

Given that Galloway himself is only too happy to play the man, it's worth mentioning that he dresses expensively, maintains a holiday home in Portugal and has attracted much comment over his financial dealings with various Middle Eastern organisations and charities.

He recently won a defamation action against the Daily Telegraph, which claimed he was on Saddam's payroll. The decision is under appeal.

The most telling moment in the debate, which predictably generated more heat than light, came at the outset.

Hitchens began by calling for a minute's silence for the 160 Iraqis blown up and mown down that morning as part of al Qaeda's strategy - we have this from the horse's mouth - to plunge Iraq into civil war. This request met with a chorus of boos.

It's hard to know why anyone, no matter how intense their opposition to the occupation of Iraq, should object to a minute's silence to mark this slaughter of the innocents, but then it's hard to understand the widespread indifference to the insurgency's relentless assault on Iraq's civilian population. The invaders are losing two soldiers a day; Iraq is losing citizens by the score. The London bombers claimed they acted in retaliation for Britain killing Muslims in Iraq, yet the organisation that sponsored them is doing exactly that on a dramatically more murderous scale.

These contradictions reflect the murkiness into which the Iraqi debate has subsided and perhaps, too, a degree of weariness with a situation that appears to be going from bad to worse.

But whether we regarded the Iraqi project as immoral and illegitimate from the outset or have come to the conclusion that it's doomed to failure or, like Hitchens, continue to defend it, we must ask ourselves one simple question: what do we want to happen now?

The so-called peace movement, spearheaded by grieving mother Cindy Sheehan and reheated by old left celebrities like Jane Fonda, wants America out, and soon. It seems heroically optimistic to believe that America's departure will confer peace on Iraq but these days peace is in the eye of the beholder.

This is what could be called CNN syndrome: media coverage of the world's trouble spots often seems directly related to the number of Westerners in the firing line.

Once the TV crews have followed the troops out of Iraq, the locals can get on with butchering each other without us having to put up with horrific images whenever we turn on the news.

And if America slinks out of the Middle East with its tail between its legs, what then? The anti-imperialism victory rallies will have barely dispersed before others attempt to fill the vacuum.

Will Shiite Iran stand idly by while the Sunnis shoot and bomb their way back into control of Iraq? And if a nuclear-armed Iran emerges as the predominant power in the region, how long before it's tempted to impose a final solution on the Jewish problem?

There's no easy answer, but we should at least strive to avoid the moral slipperiness of Galloway, who simultaneously supports Cindy Sheehan's campaign and the insurgency that killed her son.