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"During other periods of our history when America
had to defend our allies or ourselves, such as World War II,
Hollywood heroes such as
Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford, Henry Fonda and Elvis
Presley, Lee Marvin among others, donned our nation’s uniform and served their
country with pride. They put their careers on hold to defend our country and
our freedoms."
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Debate with Bill Maher and Ron Silver
Wolf Blitzer's CNN
Show - 03-13-03
BLITZER:
Welcome back. Joining me now two high-charging entertainers with strongly
different views when it comes to the showdown with Iraq. Bill Maher, the creator
of the hit TV show "Politically Incorrect" and now the host of the new show,
"Real Time With Bill Maher" on our sister network HBO.
And Ron Silver. He's a guest star on the hit NBC show "West Wing". In addition,
he's appeared in 45 movies on the big screen. Thanks to you both of you for
joining us.
First to you Ron. What's the rush? Why can't you let diplomacy go on even if it
takes a few more weeks or months. What's the rush with Iraq contained apparently
as it is?
RON SILVER, ACTOR, "WEST WING": Well obviously I don't think it's been a rush.
Bill Clinton spent less time at the U.N. before he went to bomb Kosovo without
U.N. approval than George Bush has spent in the last six months trying to get
the international community behind us.
I don't think 12 years is a rush. I don't think 17 resolutions looking for
compliance is rush. And the last six or seven months has not been a rush. So I
disagree with the term rush.
BLITZER: Let's let Bill respond. Go ahead, Bill.
BILL MAHER, "REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER": Well, it is a rush if you consider why
we're going in there. What did they do to us exactly? You know, this whole thing
strikes a lot of us as kind of like when the cops can't find a criminal, they
have a high-profile case. So they just pull a thug off the street who they know
is a bad guy, but they know he didn't do this crime.
And I think to the world that looks rotten. I think we got to go after the
people who hit us which is bin Laden, which is al Qaeda. They're still trying to
make this dog hunt about how he's in league, Saddam Hussein, with al Qaeda and
bin Laden and it just doesn't. He's just not that guy.
BLITZER: Go ahead, Ron.
SILVER: Bill, let me ask you a question. In 1998 Bill Clinton said the
following, "What if Saddam fails to comply and we fail to act or we take some
third ambiguous route that gives him a more opportunities to build up his
arsenal of mass destruction?"
What will happen the international community will the lack to see this through
to the end. And if he develops that arsenal, he will, I guarantee you, some day
use them. The president, Clinton at that time, signed the Iraq Liberation Act
calling for regime change in Iraq and within a year, 78 days, he bombed Serbia.
The night he was bombing Serbia, many entertainment figures were very supportive
of that bombing, outside the purview of the U.N. And the reason we were not in
the U.N., Bill, is because France and Germany felt that Russia would veto it so
they said let's do it outside.
BLITZER: Let's let Bill respond to that. Go ahead, Bill.
MAHER: OK, but, you know, when you keep comparing Saddam Hussein to people --
let's think about who Saddam Hussein really is and what's really going on in
this country.
I hear him compared to Hitler a lot. Except Hitler was taking over a lot of
different countries in the '30s. Saddam Hussein doesn't even have all of his
country. He doesn't have the North, he doesn't have the South. He's basically
the mayor of Baghdad is what this guy is. We have him boxed in there. I don't
know why we can't follow that line of reasoning to...
SILVER: I'll tell you why. Because that line of reasoning in a post-9/11 world
is irrational. We were attacked on 9/11 not because Mohammed Atta was upset
about greenhouse emissions. There was something else going on.
MAHER: Excuse me. Excuse me, we were attacked by a squad of Saudi Arabian
hijackers working out of Spain, Germany, Pakistan and Kabul and by, that of
course, I mean Iraq, right?
SILVER: Yes. Well let me explain to you something else. We were faulted for not
connecting dots prior to 9/11. Well now it is incumbent upon us to connect the
dots. We have an ideological enemy. It is a swamp that goes all over the world
and it is feeding Islamic fascism. And that is one of the prime places where
that gets fed and...
MAHER: But that's just the point.
SILVER: Saddam Hussein...
MAHER: Ron...
SILVER: ... certainly has the intention to harm us. And what he would like to do
is develop the capability, and I don't think we should let him do that.
MAHER: Well, he may have the back to the Hitler analogy, you said 12 years. If
in 1938, when Hitler took over the Sudetenland, or tried to, i mean he did
because nobody stopped him.
What if we stopped him in 1938 and then he had done nothing else until 1950? And
then somewhere else in the world a bomb went off -- would we have attacked
Hitler in 1950?
SILVER: You know, Bill...
MAHER: I don't know...
SILVER: ... I think you're going down a very dangerous route with a historical
analogies particularly in the '30s because a lot of people, many of our
colleagues and many people around the world...
MAHER: I'm not the one who compares Hussein to Hitler. It's you guys who do it.
(CROSSTALK)
SILVER: Hold on, I don't think I brought up Hitler. But you are putting yourself
in the same position who by 1937 was exactly where Stanley Baldwin was, where
Neville Chamberlain was. And let me tell you, if you had stopped Hitler in 1937,
it's far preferable than having to stop him in 1945.
BLITZER: All right.
MAHER: Except the difference is that we did stop Saddam Hussein in 1991. We did
put him into that little box where he is now.
SILVER: No, no, no, no. No, containment will unravel. You see it already that
they want international sentiment to lift sanctions. They will -- the inspectors
will be fooled again and they will be kicked out again and within several years
he will have the capability.
BLITZER: Gentlemen, hold on. Hold that thought, Bill, for one second. I want to
take a quick break, I want to continue this debate. But we have to take a quick
break. Much more with Bill Maher and Ron Silver. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Let's continue the debate now. Back with us, the "West Wing" star Ron
Silver and Bill Maher, formerly of "Politically Incorrect", now with the new
program "Real Time With Bill Maher".
Bill, why do you think President Bush, who's privy obviously, to the top
national security intelligence information, wants to go to war against Iraq?
MAHER: Well, I think it's an obsession. I think it's a leftover obsession in
that administration. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they
didn't get bin Laden. And if they would just be honest about that and a few
other things like the cost of the war I'd be more ready to go along with it.
If they would call it -- you know, Thomas Friedman keeps calling it a war of
choice and I keep saying what the hell is that? What is a war of choice? Isn't
war always something that you should only do when it's absolutely necessary?
So we are essentially fighting a war of choice. We're saying we didn't get the
guy we really wanted to get. And we said at the beginning that we weren't going
to lump all the Arabs and the Muslims together, but at the end of day that's
what we're doing. We're lumping...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Ron, go ahead.
SILVER: I just find it very interesting that the Bush policy of preemption and
what the president is doing now is merely a continuation of the humanitarian
interventions that were embraced by liberals in the '90s. Nobody complained
about it then, nobody complained when President Clinton bombed Iraq, nobody
complained. And they saw that laying the foundation...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Is this just politics? The Democrats seeking to score points against
the Republicans?
(CROSSTALK)
SILVER: I believe that if President Clinton was still the president today, or Al
Gore were the president with the same policies it would be a very, very
different opposition worldwide...
BLITZER: If Bill Clinton were in the White House, Bill, would you be supporting
this war?
MAHER: I'm wondering what's going happen to Ron at the next Creative Coalition
dinner. I don't understand where all his liberal credentials have gone. I mean
he's going to get kicked out of the organization. What is he going to do Tuesday
nights?
SILVER: You know what Robert Frost once said, defined a liberal as? Somebody who
was too broad minded to take their own side in the quarrel. So, don't worry my
credentials.
MAHER: OK.
BLITZER: Well, your position, obviously, Ron, is not necessarily very popular in
Hollywood. Is that a problem for you?
SILVER: You know what? No, but I find it very interesting because there's been a
lot of talk about being anti-war and people perhaps suffering for their views,
and it's really just the opposite.
Being against going in and using force to get rid of Saddam Hussein, is without
question, the majority view in much of California, certainly in my community and
on the other side...
(CROSSTALK)
MAHER: Wait a second. We're not all left-wing, nut-wings out here, Ron. I'm for
the use of force, absolutely. And I am for fighting terrorism, absolutely.
I just think this is the wrong way to do t. We're just having a debate about
technique, really. We're having a debate about strategy. We're having a debate
about some guys attacked us, like I say, based in Kabul, Afghanistan. And we're
going after a religious-based, jihad-type organization by attacking Iraq. The
one country that was never involved in that sort of true believer jihad...
SILVER: First of all, we don't know that. And so I'm not prepared to argue
that...
(CROSSTALK)
SILVER: The French and Germans have made it clear that under no circumstance
will they comply with the use of force and changing it. They may have good
reasons for it.
I have a feeling after this war is fought and won and Hussein is gone, you're
going to find a lot of French military spare parts. You will find out how they
violated sanctions over the years.
I think they have a lot -- if you want to impugn motives, why don't you impugn
the motives of the French, the Germans, the Russians and Chinese? Because I
could give you...
(CROSSTALK)
MAHER: Because I care more about this country. I don't care so much about France
or Germany. I don't think they're good guys either and I don't think Saddam
Hussein is anything but...
SILVER: But why are so and so many of colleagues of ours unwilling to admit that
the president's policy is simply what he says it is? Because after 9/11, it's
not the economy anymore, stupid, it's security, stupid. Oil id going to take the
hits...
MAHER: Yes, it is.
SILVER: There will be no economic benefit to this.
MAHER: Yes.
SILVER: Perhaps the president really means what he says, and I believe he does,
that this is part of the security matrix.
MAHER: I agree. I don't think the president is insincere about going into Iraq,
I just think he's wrong to do it. I think it's the wrong method. It's the wrong
approach.
I mean, you mentioned President Clinton. What's worse? To lie about sex or to
lie about war?
SILVER: That's what I'm saying, you're impugning the president's motives.
(CROSSTALK)
MAHER: I am not impugning his motives. What I'm saying is that Bush
administration is doing with this war what they do with everything. They operate
on two tracks. Here's what we really want to do and here is what we say to sell
it to them.
I can't believe you of all people are so easily sold on this war that doesn't
add up and doesn't make sense. You have to find three things...
SILVER: You really think I'm easily sold on the war? That I kind of just
instinctively follow the administration's policy on this? You know better than
that, Bill.
MAHER: I thought I knew better than that. But I don't understand when you have
to...
(CROSSTALK)
SILVER: Why is it that people on the other side of this issue find it so hard to
believe that the other person, the opponent's motives might be one of integrity,
something really thought about and reflected upon and a deeply held feeling?
BLITZER: All right. Bill, just answer that question because we're almost out of
time.
MAHER: Well, excuse me, but we're the side that -- being having our integrity
impugned. We're the side where people are saying, well, I'm not going to call
them traitors which, of course, is a way of actually doing it when we want to
preserve the integrity and security of this country, just as much as you do...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Ron and Bill, unfortunately, I have to cut it off because we are all
out of time. I'd like to invite both of you back. Next week we'll continue this.
These days are going to be critical, obviously, as we all know. Hopefully you'll
be able to continue this discussion next week.
Bill Maher, he's got a hit new show all of us are watching Friday nights at
11:30 p.m. on HBO, a great new show.
And by the way, Ron Silver is going to be co-hosting CROSSFIRE right here on CNN
tomorrow night, Friday night. We'll be watching you, Ron, on that as well.
SILVER: Thank you.
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