I think I just witnessed a train wreck in slow motion. The Galloway versus Hitchens debate in New York was a traversty that I admit I never foresaw, but which with the benefit of hindsight may have been only too obvious from the start. The debate sold out more than a week ago so I watched live on the Internet as Hitchens disintegrated before my eyes.

Hitchens was terrible. He stammered and mumbled his way through the debate, which lasted almost two hours. Occasionally pursuasive, but mostly unsteady, his arguments often lacked direction and veered off on tangents which though powerful on the pages of a magazine or webpage, were no match for Galloway’s soapbox bluster. I didn’t score each of the rounds, but I would say Galloway won each and every one of them. At the end, when it looked like Hitchens was about to make a comeback, he shot himself in both feet and a couple of other orifices to boot, by appearing to defend Bush’s handling of the New Orleans flood crisis by springing to the defense of the troops who were belatedly deployed to the scene.

All Hitchens had to do was condemn Bush—for his mishandling of the war and the post-war reconstruction in Iraq, or for his handling of the hurricane relief effort, and I would have been with him. Instead, he chose to castigate the hecklers in the audience like a school marm who has lost control in an assembly.

That’s not to say that Galloway didn’t score a number of own goals himself. The neutral observer, if forced to choose between the two (and believe me it would have to be a pretty forceful request based on the performances of these two tonight), would no doubt rather vote for a bumbling Hitchens than a bullying Galloway.

Galloway is so full of anger and self righteousness that there was barely any need for a microphone. Moreover, his use of the lecturn as a prop to be leaned against and launched from as he delivered his tirades was eerily reminiscent of one Adolph Hitler. I can’t believe I am even comparing Galloway to the bogeyman of the 20th century, but it is no inch of an exaggeration. He delivers his bluster with such venom that he is a dead ringer for the leader of the Third Reich. It is, no doubt, one of the things that makes him at once so disgusting, so popular and so doomed to failure.

Among Galloway’s ugly bombast tonight were such gems as his blatant support of the murderous Iraqi insurgency, his claims that the US and the UK were the two rogue states in the world, his accusations that Britain and America sent Islamists to Afghanistan and—my personal favorite—his singling out of US support for Israel as the reason for September 11 while standing less than a couple of miles from Ground Zero almost four years to the day since the attacks took place. Even with an audience which sounded decidedly more supportive than antagonistic towards Galloway he was roundly and loudly booed for a significant amount of time.

By the end, the debate had degenerated into a meandering ramble from Hitchens while Galloway largely ignored his questions to vent spleen in whatever way he saw fit. Possibly one of the most telling points was when Galloway informed the moderator that it was time to bring things to an end before he launched into another one of those venomous speeches which he has obviously give 1,000 times before.

This was a debate with no direction; a debate with a moderator who showed far too much respect for both speakers while neither appeared willing to show much respect for anyone else in the room.

It took two British people to debate the Iraq War in America, but what was sadly lacking was a British moderator to keep the two apart long enough to give some form and meaning to the debate—although I doubt under such circumstances Hitchens would have come off any better.

I was left with a foul taste in my mouth and a rock in my stomach as Hitchens edged away from the podium for what was probably a brief and unpopular book signing, while I imagined a long and snaking line towards the table of gorgeous George Galloway, as he basks in the permatan orange glow of his ever-increasing popularity among people who confuse oration and venom with leadership and passion.

Galloway’s signing was for his new book When Mr Galloway Went to Washington. After tonight’s performance, he may be offered a deal to write a sequel, When Mr Galloway Went to New York. Thank god for the folks at Harry’s Place doing a sterling job of revealing Galloway to be the man he really is—a populist, fascist thug.

Hyperbole and inaccuracy notwithstanding, I had some sympathy with the calls to scrap the UK’s Holocaust Memorial Day as reported in the Sunday Times at the weekend:

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

Of course, the advice was bound to be greeted in certain American quarters with the usual Europscepticism/phobia. But I had to ask myself, why does the UK need a Holocaust Memorial Day? This national day (which is not a public holiday) was only instituted in 2001. And it has little to do with Britain itself, apart from the fact that just over 250,00 Jews live there.

More than 5.5 million Jews live in the US, yet to the best of my knowledge America does not have an official Holocaust Memorial Day. Israel, on the other hand, has been marking Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) since the 1950s. It’s a national holiday. A day of remembrance. And quite rightly so. Israel is a Jewish State. The Holocaust is a largely Jewish tragedy.

When I was at school in England we marked Holocaust Memorial Day on the same day as Israel (the 27th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar). Why can’t Jews around the world share this day as their memorial day? Why, in the UK, do we need an official Government stamp of approval? A Holocaust Memorial Day Mk II?

The only other countries that officially mark Holocaust Day are Germany, Italy and Poland—two fascist powers during the Second World War and one, the setting for the death camps and a country which itself suffered a huge death toll at the hands of the Nazis (6 million Poles were murdered, 20% of the population, half of them Jews).

As for the idea of replacing Holocaust Day with Genocide Day—well, surely that would be to belittle the horrors of genocide further still. It would become what it already is, a political tool used by religions and races to beat each other over the head with for decades to come. The Sunday Times nicely illustrates the point with its loaded second par about wanting to “recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths” as part of a Genocide Day.

Surely no one is claiming that Palestine and Chechnya are examples of genocide? That they rival the scale and intent of a Holocaust, a Bosnia, a Darfur, or a Rwanda? And if we are going to start talking about mass murder, what about the innocent Muslims and non-Muslims murdered by terrorists in the name of Islam over the past decade? Where do you draw the line?

It is one thing to use national holidays to mark events like world wars that moved nations. It is another to mark a country’s independence. But to institute a Genocide Day—a politically loaded term over which nations are still struggling to agree—is not only to denigrate the memory of those who died, it is to reduce their deaths to a political sum.

Take these two quotes from the Times piece as an example:

Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the charity Interpal, said: “There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have been wiped out over the years. That’s pretty genocidal to me.”

Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside and a Holocaust Memorial trustee, said: “These Muslim groups should stop trying to evade the enormity of the Holocaust.”

It’s a slanging match that drowns out the cries of the tens of millions of people who have been killed in genocides. And, in my opinion, it goes no way towards preventing such acts in the future. They happen to this day—despite 60 years of saying “never again”.

As for keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive—one of the prime reasons, I assume, for having a Holocaust Day in the UK—I doubt there is an event in the 20th century that has been more documented, dramatized, argued and agonized over, than the Holocaust.

The Home Office has said that it will not replace Holocaust Memorial Day. But, alas, it is considering the proposals for a “Genocide Day for all faiths”.

Get ready to start carving up the British calendar: January 28 Genocide Day; January 29 Victims of Terrorism Day; January 30 Occupied Territories Day; January 31 Israeli Security Day; February 1, Every Man Has His Day; February 2, Every Woman Has Her Day; February 3, Every Child Has Its Day. Do I need to continue?

Why blog?

It’s not because I think I necessarily need to blog myself in order to write (more or less) intelligently about the impact of this new kind of media on politics, business and culture. (Hopefully my new book demonstrates that.)

Rather, it’s that I simply want to participate in this extraordinary new universe of conversation and debate that’s now taking place online.

David Kline, BlogRevolt.com.

An excerpt from one of a handful of interesting posts from David Kline (co-author of the blogging book I contributed to) writing on his first day of blogging at BlogRevolt.com yesterday. David’s weblog is bound to become an invaluable destination for information and debate among bloggers of all persuasions: business, political, social.

Better still the site has links to an essay and a few key interviews from the book (full title Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture). I especially recommend interviews with novelist Ayelet Waldman and Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble–not least because the Q&As were brilliantly executed by a certain EiNY!

You can check it all out here.

It started on Tuesday or Wednesday. I was taking the subway into the City and as the train emerged onto the Manhattan Bridge and I looked across at the Financial District skyline set against a vivid blue sky, I immediately thought of September 11. I was in Leeds, England, in 2001. And one of my clearest memories of watching events unfold on television that day is of the two towers set against a clear, blue sky, spewing forth ash and smoke like factory chimneys.

This September 11 seems to have been overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina. And of course, four years on, it is already starting to seem more like a memory than a recent event. At the gym yesterday morning the television screens broadcast silent coverage of the memorial services but most people seemed more interested in sport on ESPN or on staring out of the window.

That’s not to say that New York wasn’t full of reminders of September 11 yesterday. We went for a walk along the boardwalk at Brighton Beach and someone had erected a makeshift memorial outside a restaurant with candles and a message of solidarity. Meanwhile, the New York Times carried recollections and consequences of the event from different perspectives. I have added a few interesting links. One piece of note is the Times Magazine’s Taking Stock of the Forever War, a well argued and depressing analysis of the War on Terror. You may want to print it out and read it later:

Sold a war made urgent by the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a dangerous dictator, Americans now see their sons and daughters fighting and dying in a war whose rationale has been lost even as its ending has receded into the indefinite future. A war promised to bring forth the Iraqi people bearing flowers and sweets in exchange for the beneficent gift of democracy has brought instead a kind of relentless terror that seems inexplicable and unending. A war that had a clear purpose and a certain end has now lost its reason and its finish. Americans find themselves fighting and dying in a kind of existential desert of the present. For Americans, the war has lost its narrative.

Links (these pieces will disappear behind a paywall in one week):
The Forever War (New York Times Magazine)
A Village of their Own Daniel Pearl’s widow on moving to the West Village to live among widows of 9/11. (New York Times, City section)
The Bridge and the Beyond A short piece about crossing the Manhattan Bridge on a subway train and looking at the space where the towers once stood. (New York Times, City section)
The Enduring Salute About the missing persons bulletin board at St Vincent’s Hospital (New York Times, City section)