Fareed Zakaria

3 posts

Iran: A Moment Of Truth, CNN Style

5 months ago

Fareed Zakaria in 2007 (source: WikiPedia)

Last Sunday Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS on CNN, opened his program with an analysis of the Iranian nuclear crisis. He started by saying:

"A moment of truth is arriving on the Iran Issue. Western countries will have to face up to the fact that there are only really two choices with Iran: one, a military strike, effectively preventing the country from continuing to expand its nuclear capacity; or, secondly, learning to live with such a capacity."

Up to this point Zakaria was 100% correct in his assessment. The current talks with the Iranian regime have produced no concrete results and based on comments by the Iranian government they never will. I can understand why President Obama wants to give diplomacy every reasonable chance at success. If nothing else it provides the U.S., and perhaps by extension Israel, some diplomatic cover with the rest of the West when the inevitable war with Iran comes.

Zakaria went on to describe some of the consequences of a strike by either the U.S. or Israel on Iran. Once again he was spot on:

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What Is The Reason For All These?

World Affairs Politics & OpinionsBy Amanda.A

13 months ago

Newsweek's regular Fareed Zakaria quoted as saying 'We're better off at creating enemies in Afghanistan than friends.' What scares me is not that our country is losing friends, but more so for the people in war torn Afghanistan who live in fear from day to day. Without knowlegde of what may be of their fate what with the deployment of troops into the country every so often, civilians have become so afraid that they are driven into insurgency. For crying out loud, these people were once the lowly- incomed men and women who knew nothing but to support their children. Now in exchange for guns, their children suffer. On the other hand, U.S. troops weren't recruited to fight an endless battle which has been waged until now. What is the reason for all these, we reiterate? To find a fugitive in a lost land? To show them and the world that we are still the Super Power. To stop another 9/11? What were we trying to accomplish in the first place?

It is time for us to send our debilitated troops back here where the soil isn't foreign and filled with losses. It is time for Iraq and Afghanistan's insurgents to go back to their lives and work on rebuilding their country. It is time to exonerate these people and tell them to move on because the future is not made of the past.

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Resolving the GWOT

12 months ago

This post at Democratic Populist Blog alerted me to an important screed.
Zakaria’s Article Suggests Peaceful Steps Toward Resolving War on Terror

March 3, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Here is an article written for Newsweek about the situation we face in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fareed Zakaria begins by setting up the Swat Valley scenario and asking the big question and its derivatives. [Text in Italic font is quoted out of context, normal font is paraphrased or mine.]

...what should we -- the outside world -- do?
- How exactly should we oppose these forces?
  - direct attack--Predator/Hellfire
  - indirect attack--exploiting local alliances.
    - -- but I think it's also worth stepping back and trying to
      understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism.

Here Zakaria launches into the local history and current conditions which favor demand for imposition of Shari'ah. But the real problem is exemplified by this phrase: the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism. That phrase assumes the existence of moderate, non violent Islam as a standard with violent radicalism as an exception to the standard. Like all assumptions, it makes an ass of the assumer.

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