Good God, He's Such a Fool

Could Fareed Zakaria be any dumber than to call Iran's agreement to negotiate a triumph of President Obama's policies? Does Zakaria want to be national security advisor so bad that he can spout such nonsense without even a twinge of guilt? Does Obama even get satisfaction from such op-ed stroking?

Zakaria may want a position in a second term of President Obama, but sadly I don't think Zakaria is spouting nonsense for personal gain. I think the man actually believes he is brilliant--a super genius, even.

The idea that Iran's agreement to negotiate is anything other than a means to buy time and hold off strikes or worse sanctions is about what I've come to expect from a man who clearly couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

How can I know this? Because Zakaria gets dumber as he goes. Zakaria thinks that Iran can come to an agreement with us that leaves Iran with enough 20%-enriched uranium that could be enough (once enriched to even highter levels, a relatively easy step) for one bomb but halt their enrichment to lower levels only appropriate for civilian use.

The only problem is that Zakaria fails to understand that Iran wants nuclear bombs more than it wants a deal. Zakaria--bless his heart--actually believes the Iranians don't want a bomb. Or he believes they haven't decided to take the final step to building atomic bombs. Zakaria--bless his innocent heart again--actually believes Ayatollah Khameini when he said:

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons . . . because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

Well then. That's it. If Khameini said that logic, religion, and theory precludes nukes, why negotiate with Iran at all?

Why not just end all the confrontations and negotiations, shake hands and simply wish the Iranians the best of luck in developing cheap, green nuclear energy? So sorry about the misunderstanding! But hey, you guys try dealing with Netanyahu, eh?

Oh, and Zakaria says to reach his negotiated outcome that Obama has to keep those dastardly Republicans from standing in the way of the big-brained deal that Zakaria outlined. Zakaria prefaced that with this nonsense:

The administration has handled its allies, Russia, China, the United Nations and even Tehran with skill.

Oh my God! Has Zakaria no shame? From now on, Wikipedia will need a picture of Zakaria for their entry for "suck up." Get a room, Fareed.

Sometimes I can still be stunned at how idiotic Zakaria is. Damn, still before noon and I find I need a drink to dull the pain of the idiocy that I inflicted on my frontal lobes.

Oops, He Did It Again

Ah, Fareed Zakaria weighs in on Iraq. God bless him. But the man couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal. But let's look anyway, shall we?

You are never going to guess who Zakaria blames for the current Iraq crisis. Go on. Guess!

Okay, sure, he puts in Prime Minister Maliki. The man who is in charge when the crisis explodes is surely a likely suspect, no?

Zakaria blames Maliki for the failure to get a status of forces agreement to keep American troops in Iraq after 2011, when any sentient being with a half-functioning brain stem (and you'd think this would include Zakaria, but apparently not) knows that President Obama had no interest at all in finding a way to get to "yes."

We could have gotten an executive agreement but we insisted on parliament passing the agreement; and we pledged so few troops that Maliki could not afford to alienate Iran just to attempt to get a mere 5,000 American troops that the Obama administration offered to keep in Iraq. (I wanted 25,000 including 3 training brigades plus special forces and air power to help finish off al Qaeda and keep Iraqis from abandoning politics for violence to resolve differences.) The benefit-cost ratio was just too low for Maliki to risk defeat trying to keep us in Iraq.

Obama let the discussions languish and then when 2011 neared its end, said "We tried. So sorry." President Obama got exactly what he wanted. Don't try to pretend otherwise now.

But you'd be wrong if you thought Zakaria included President Obama as the other man in charge of a relevant country when the crisis explodes.

No, Zakaria blames George W. Bush. Yes, more than five years after the shadow of cowboyism lifted from the Oval Office and the world, Zakaria blames Bush.

Behold, puny mortals, the prodigious output of Zakaria's ginormous brain!

[The Bush administration] quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.

One, we did not disband the Iraqi army. It collapsed and went home. There was nothing to disband.

Two, if Saddam's army hadn't collapsed we'd have had to disband it. In what world would the Kurds and Shias have sided with us if we had simply played musical chairs with minority-Sunni Arab (10-15%) domination of Iraq?

It was also absolutely necessary to purge the bureaucracy of higher ranking Sunnis and promote Shias (and Kurds) in the rebuilt security forces to keep the overthrow of Saddam from looking like new ruler same as the old ruler.

Having betrayed the Shias once in 1991 when they rose up against Saddam and we watched Saddam slaughter them into passivity, could we really have screwed the Shias a second time and not expected them to rise up against us?

Three, we actually fought the hard-line Shia religious parties. Remember Moqtada al Sadr, that breathing piece of garbage who we fought in two separate campaigns in 2004? And then again we fought the Shia hardliners in Sadr City during the surge offensive of 2007? Remember that? Zakaria, apparently, does not.

We had to put the Shias in the dominant position. Had to. Anything else would have led to a national uprising against us that had us fighting Sunni Arabs (Baathists and al Qaeda) and Iranian-backed Shias (while the Kurds hunkered down in the north).

If you must Blame Bush for allowing the disastrous Maliki into office, also remember that in spring 2008, Maliki showed he'd take on the Iranian-backed Shias (including Sadr) by mounting an offensive against them in Basra (the Charge of the Knights offensive). That Maliki stopped looking beyond sectarian divisions after we left in 2011 can't really be blamed on the Bush-era Maliki, now can it?

What might we have done had we stayed after 2011 to keep Maliki in line?

However, if you must include Maliki in the blame game while blaming Bush ultimately for Maliki, let's not forget the Obama administration's role in perpetuating Maliki's rule. In 2010, the Obama administration sided with Maliki cobbling together a parliamentary majority even though he did not win the most votes in that year's election. So the Obama administration ratified the so-called horrible Bush-era elevation of Maliki.

I almost always regret reading Zakaria. The man truly thinks he can get a government position in the foreign policy establishment in this administration. I shudder in horror that the wise and level-headed Susan Rice or that master of diplomatic nuance John Kerry might be replaced by Zakaria.

Without Zakaria, President Obama has managed to pull the spectre of defeat in Iraq from the jaws of Bush-engineered victory. We have enough problems in Iraq without letting Zakaria have any type of influence at all over what we do.

He Really Does Try, God Bless Him

Fareed Zakaria takes a stab at blaming Israel for the lack of peace with the Palestinians. I have mentioned that Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal, right? I have? Good. But I never tire of pointing it out since Zakaria never tires of demonstrating it.

Zakaria cites the statistics that proves Israel is the dominant military power in the region. True enough, but there's more to it than that simple recitation of statistics.

He then says that because Israel is so dominant militarily, that peace will only come when Israel decides to take risks to make peace:

These are the realities of the Middle East today. Israel’s astonishing economic growth, its technological prowess, its military preparedness and its tight relationship with the United States have set it a league apart from its Arab adversaries. Peace between the Palestinians and Israelis will come only when Israel decides that it wants to make peace.

And here I thought evacuating the Gaza Strip was "taking a risk for peace," as Zakaria urges Israel to do.

The short Gaza fight came close to demonstrating why air power--the apex of technological arms--alone is insufficient: Israel was short of Iron Dome air defense missiles.

Yes, the technology of Iron Dome is amazing. Yet if Hamas had kept firing the rockets that Palestinians put together in their garages and the World War II-descended longer-ranged rockets that Iran supplied, that amazing technology just wouldn't have mattered.

The same applies to the Israeli military as a whole. The reality is that Israel relies on reservists for their military superiority. Israel is fine without the reservists as long as a war is restricted to an air campaign--or cyber-war, I suppose.

When Israel mobilizes their ground power, their astonishing economic growth comes to a grinding halt as people who do all the things that make their economy "astonishing" to Zakaria put on a uniform.

Israel is then on the clock. They must win a short and decisive ground campaign--and then demobilize. If they can't do that, their military can't remain in the field for long.

Zakaria thinks that because Israel can win any short conventional war, they can take a risk for peace. The problem is, their enemies won't fight a short conventional war with Israel. And Israel doesn't escalate every armed provocation to the level of a short, conventional campaign.

How does Zakaria's confidence in Israeli conventional power affect Hamas thinking? Despite Israel's overwhelming military power, Hamas struck Israel's cities, confident that Israel would not use their military to crush Gaza and arrest every Hamas leader they could grab to put them on trial and hang them by the neck after a fair trial.

If the Palestinians weren't so eager to continue to kill Jews, the reality of Israel's astonishing economic growth, technological prowess, military preparedness, and relationship with America might make Hamas think perhaps provoking Israel by trying to kill Jews isn't the best idea.

But rather than try to build a real state in the land they hold (which Israel took a risk to evacuate), Hamas and the other (God help us) more radical factions continue to rejoice in the ability to take shots at Jewish civilians. Oh, and if any Arab citizens of Israel are in the way where the rockets land? Oh well.

Or does Zakaria's deep plan assume Hamas be allowed to build a conventional military that Israel can destroy and therefore make Hamas less interested in killing Jews?

Good God, he's an effing idiot. I actually weep when I contemplate the possibility that the Obama administration looks to Zakaria for insights on foreign policy.

God Help Us if Zakaria Has Influence in the White House

If Fareed Zakaria thinks we should not intervene in Syria, I'm tempted to think we should send in 3rd Army right now.

The idea that someone might swoon over Zakaria's analysis of Syria is just depressing. The man couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal, I say. Yet he says we should not intervene in Syria as Zakaria strokes the wisdom of President Obama for staying out (does Zakaria still hope for a position in the second term of the administration?).

We don't have to "own" Syria if we intervene. I don't think we need to impose a no-fly zone or otherwise strike Syrian targets, let alone send in ground troops. Our intervention can consist of sending arms to rebels, humanitarian aid to Syrians outside of Assad's control, and pressure to get Assad to go into exile so that even an Alawite mini-state might evolve away from alliance with Iran.

The idea that attempting to influence events to our favor and against Iran means we own the outcome is just ridiculous.

Because you know what Zakaria's analysis going back to the post-Ottoman Empire settling of borders and minority regimes in the region fails to mention? Iran.

Zakaria completely ignores Iran's interests and actions right now in Syria, perhaps eating up time on the video with his absolutely fascinating discussion of minority regimes. We have an interest in giving our enemy Iran a bloody nose and reducing their influence in the region by destroying the Assad regime, which achieves a bank shot of also weakening Hezbollah and Hamas.

Freaking idiot. I guess I picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue.

UPDATE: I didn't think Syria was a simple case of the Alawites being put in charge after World War I. My memory was that it was far more recent. Alawite domination was a more nuanced process than Zakaria makes it out.

And now that I think about it, Lebanon wasn't a case of Christians being put in control of the entire country, but a confessional system that reserved power to religious groups. The problem was that Christian demographics shrank while their share of power didn't, thus making maintenance the system less acceptable.

Why Zakaria has any fans is beyond me.

UPDATE: Humanitarian help for the rebels will be easier:

The United States on Wednesday eased restrictions on exports to opposition-held areas in Syria to help rebuild shattered infrastructure in a move U.S. officials said will help facilitate oil sales from rebel-controlled areas.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry signed a limited waiver of the Syria Accountability Act, allowing companies to apply for export license for such things as software, technology, water purification, food and agricultural equipment, and construction materials to opposition-held areas.

Now we just need to arm rebels and provide Secretary Kerry with a brain. And a spine.

Get a Freaking Room, Fareed

Oh. My. God. Fareed Zakaria really wants to be appointed to something in President Obama's second term where his ginormous brain can go to work. His latest column's title--I kid you not--is "Hail, President. Well Met". Really.

Zakaria argued that unlike past summits, the recent one between President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China was of substance and not talking points.

Zakaria, who could not find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal, dismisses recent scandals and crises to praise the significance of the California summit:

National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon. He explained to me that the two teams agreed to a format that was a real break with the past: "Usually at meetings like these, each leader brings a set of talking points. This creates a format that highlights problems. This was different: We didn't come in with a set of complaints. The leaders came with ideas about opportunities. It created a completely different discussion and dynamic."

And what did they achieve?

Xi discussed his future internal goals and his slogan "China Dream"--no mention of China leaning forward on disputed borders all around China--and creating new disputes every year.

Obama discussed his first term and hopes for second term goals. One can assume a lengthy discourse on the meanings of "Forward" and "Hope and Change."

Oh, and they discussed the challenges and opportunities of world crises! Metternich, doff your hat, you diplomatic piker.

And they exchanged their biographical backgrounds. The Chinese also busted out the Moutai for toasts. Score!!! As a first date, that's a success, I guess. But a diplomatic achievement?

Notwithstanding his attempt to fluff this president's record, Zakaria even admits nothing much was achieved:

While the purpose of the meeting was to build trust rather than produce a set of results, progress was made on specific issues.

Given the build up of expectations that Zakaria held out, mere trust building seems so pedestrian. But while there were no results in this summit that was a break from the past, there was progress! I can hardly wait! What was the progress, pray tell?

Let's see. China again said their priority is a non-nuclear North Korea. But this time they mean it. Although they are too late to keep North Korea from going nuclear--that ship sailed--in a diplomatic world of child-sex-soliciting ambassadors, I guess the State Department calls this a success (but go easy on the Moutai).

And the other progress?

In the discussions on economics, contentious issues like cyberattacks came up, and each side stood its ground[.]

So China said they wouldn't stop and we said we wanted them to stop--and that counts as manly standing our ground? Good God, this is getting sad. Cyber-war was grouped with economic issues rather than national security so Zakaria could add that we proposed some mutually beneficial energy deals. So it all balanced out.

I did mention that we obviously failed to get China to back off from cyber-warfare on us. So diplomatic progress in no way describes this issue.

Surely there is more to this hail-worthy summit?

Ah, foreign policy. This is where Zakaria pretends to have expertise. China, he says, was "impassioned" about their position on pushing Japan around.

Which means China won't stop trying to intimidate Japan and gain the Senkaku Islands.

Wow. I stand in the shadow of diplomatic giants. Learn me some more, Fareed!

And China stopped complaining about our pivot, he says. Maybe that's because the Chinese finally realized that the spin of the pivot doesn't match facts on the ground (or in the seas). I'd count that a failure. But that's me.

In the end, this meeting is counted as a foreign policy triumph because we established good will with China:

This is mostly rhetoric and atmospherics. "The true test of this summit will be in two or three or five years," Donilon acknowledged, "when this background goodwill has to get translated into specific actions on both sides."

What the Hell. Bonus points since President Obama didn't throw up on Xi, I guess. I'm feeling generous.

Yeah, alleged good will and a buck will get us a cup of coffee in Peking the next crisis. Conveniently, judging this Outreach to the Han World will be put off until after President Obama has left office. So for now sycophants can hail the achievement.

If Zakaria wants a job in the Obama administration, I suggest court jester.

God, two Zakaria brain spasms in one week to address. I'm being punished for something.

UPDATE: Hey, here's some increasingly impassioned talk about Okinawa!

The Chinese government itself has not asserted a claim to Okinawa or the other isles in the Ryukyu chain. But the seminar last month, which included state researchers and retired officers from the senior ranks of the People’s Liberation Army, was the latest act in what seems to be a semiofficial campaign in China to question Japanese rule of the islands.

I'm sure our newly forged good will with China will end this budding misunderstanding.

The Big Thing Zakaria Did Not Know

Recalculating.

In May 2009, Fareed Zakaria--who couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal--told us that everything we thought we knew about Iran's supposed nuclear ambitions was wrong. It was a joke then and it is obviously a joke now.

This writer takes the Giant Brain to task for that statement:

In 2009, Fareed Zakaria wrote an article asserting that “everything you know about Iran is wrong.” Following the release of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday, November 8, it seems, rather, that Mr. Zakaria was wrong about everything. Zakaria suggested that Iran did not really want an atomic bomb; instead, it “could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program.” However, according to the IAEA report, Iran is not content with a civilian nuclear program, and is quickly developing nuclear-weapons capabilities. Iran is currently engaged in several projects that have no applicability for a civilian program, e.g., research on nuclear-payload delivery systems.

In his essay, Zakaria accepted Iranian leaders’ solemn pronouncements that they had no desire to acquire nuclear weapons. Both President Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that atomic bombs were “un-Islamic,” and Zakaria swallowed their statements.

I won't say that everything that Zakaria knows about Iran is wrong. But he was wrong on the one big thing we must get right.

What a fool and what a tool.

Byline Folly

God help us all, Fareed Zakaria is back to writing his own stuff. How do I know? It makes no sense. I've said it before and I'll say it again now, Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

Clearly stroking the presidential ego to position himself for a position in the Obama White House in a second term, Zakaria says of the president's Iran policy:

The Obama administration has brought together a global coalition, put into place the toughest sanctions ever, worked with Israel on a series of covert programs and given Israel military hardware it has long wanted. In addition, the Obama administration has strongly implied that it would be willing to use force as a final resort. But to go further and define a red line in advance would commit the United States to waging a war; no country would make such a commitment.

Every sentence is ridiculous, indicating only that Zakaria is trying to be the administration Official Flatterer.

A global coalition to stop Iran? What rot. There is a coalition willing to inconvenience Iran to avoid having to decide to actually stop Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. I'd like to note that Iran seemed to gather a larger global coalition to support them. And Russia and China continue to run interference for Iran, stopping UN action and diluting sanctions whenever they can.

Economic sanctions are the toughest ever? The issue isn't whether the sanctions are stronger than ever. They have been a joke in the past so that's no great achievement. The question is whether they can be effective. Raise your hand if you think Iran's leaders won't commit their people to eat grass to get atomic bombs.

Working with Israel? How? By refusing to meet with Netanyahu? By making it clear we're working with Israel to restrain Israel? Joint missile defense exercises indicate an effort to live with Iran's nuclear missiles and not an indication we are working with Israel to stop Iran.

Zakaria mentions covert operations. At best, they've slowed Iran a bit.

We've given Israel military hardware? So what? We don' want Israel to use them and aren't working with Israel to find a way to use them effectively. Again, this effort is just meant to keep Israel calm enough for now by making them think they'll have the option to strike for a longer period of time with those weapons.

As for not ruling out force, by making clear that virtually anything--including a bout of interpretive dance--comes before that "last resort" of force, we've given Iran no reason to believe we'll ever reach that stage.

And God almighty, defining a red line doesn't guarantee a war. If we are serious about stopping Iran from going nuclear rather than just pretending we are serious until it is too late to do anything about Iran, we eventually must issue Iran an ultimatum to halt progress toward nuclear weapons and submit to intrusive inspections to make sure they do not pursue nuclear weapons.

If we are serious about stopping Iran rather than avoiding responsibility for stopping them, a red line is exactly the sort of commitment we'd make.

As for Zakaria's assumption that Iran will drag the region into chaos if we strike, that is just an excuse for inaction based on Westerners playing games rather than an assessment of what might happen based on past events.

Might things go really bad if we or Israel strikes? Yes. But they likely won't be worst case.

And the worst case if Iran goes nuclear actually encompasses many worst cases such as nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear proliferation that results in regional nuclear war. Even the best cases where Iran merely uses nukes to shield their conventional and terrorist aggression is pretty bad.

But hey, at least I have no doubt that Zakaria crafted every word of this article.

UPDATE: Krauthammer covers similar terrain.

Pretending that mullah-run Iran with nuclear weapons isn't that bad is sheer insanity. "Folly" doesn't begin to cover the problems with that attitude.

Thus Spaketh the Giant Brain

Fareed Zakaria thinks we should split Iraq into three pieces. Of course he does.

The idea that we could achieve victory by splitting Iraq into a Kurdish state, a Sunni Arab state, and a Shia state was awful when proposed by then-Senator Biden (and others), and it is awful now that Fareed Zakaria is proposing it:

The United States should recognize that Iraq is turning into a country of enclaves and work to ensure that these regions stay as stable, terrorism-free and open as possible. The Kurdish enclave, bolstered by having captured the vital city of Kirkuk, is already a success story. The Shiite region of the south can be stable. It will be possible to work with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan to influence the Sunni groups in the middle of the country, purging terrorists and empowering moderate Sunnis.

The idea that we can avoid the cost of defeating our enemies in Iraq by splitting Iraq into a Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia states is ridiculous.

Let's just assume that somehow the borders within Iraq can be drawn and populations moved--including who gets Baghdad--without a major struggle as Zakaria's proposal would require.

And let's assume that the assets and liabilities of Iraq can be apportioned among the three new states.

Once you get past those minor piddling details that I'm sure the ginormous brain of Zakaria could dispose of with a one-page memorandum to the parties on the wonders of a "soft" partition that avoids those hard details, then we face the reality of three sectarian-based states.

Splitting off an independent Kurdistan could wreck that de facto independent success story taking place within the formal legal status of being part of Iraq. Why risk that success by making a formally independent Kurdistan a magnet for hostility by Turkey and Iran who face sizable unhappy Kurdish minorities? What if Kurdistan wants to unite with the Kurds of Syria, too?

If the Kurds can't get the Turks and Iranians to sign off on this, the Turks could pressure the Sunni Arab state to block the Kurdish state's access to the world. And Iran could pressure the Shia state to do the same. How does the landlocked Kurdish state thrive in those circumstances?

Splitting off an independent Sunni Arab state essentially just gives the region to jihadis who already dominate the region. Without Iraqi troops trying to stop the jihadis, just who would? The local Sunnis haven't controlled the jihadis. Just who will help defeat the jihadis if anti-jihadi Sunni Arabs can't call on Iraqi government troops that include Shias and Kurds?

But Zakaria seriously thinks that Saudi Arabia and Jordan will influence those jihadi groups to behave or will strengthen non-jihadis to create a non-jihadi Sunni state in the west? In what alternate universe would Sunni Arabs be a source of stability rather than offering support for jihadis?

Even if wealthy Gulf Arab states didn't support a jihadi Iraqi state in the west as a counter-weight to Iran and the Shia state in the south, wealthy Arab Sunnis who support jihadis around the Middle East would simply add the Iraqi Sunnis to their list of grant recipients--and put them to the top of the list since they'd control a state of their own.

And what of Shia Iraq left in the south? Without Kurds and Sunni Arabs as counter-weights to the pro-Iran elements within the Shia community that helps limit Iranian influence in current Iraq, the pro-Iran elements obviously become a larger part of that new Shia state. Even if the pro-Iran elements are still a minority, they will be a larger minority. In what world does that contribute to a stable state? How is that possibly in our interests?

One day, when Iraq is peaceful--say as peaceful as it was at the end of 2011 when the Obama administration was boasting of our success, Iraqis could agree among themselves to go their separate ways. Under those conditions, a partition could go as peacefully as Czechoslovakia rather than looking more like Yugoslavia.

Why does anybody listen to Zakaria on anything but the correct spelling of his name?

Yes, I know. I say this a lot. But Fareed Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

I say it because it is true. Don't listen to this man. God bless him, but he hasn't a clue.

And if God is just and loving, he will keep this man from getting a position in the Obama foreign policy establishment.

Please, Pass Me the Clue Bat

Fareed Zakaria is confused. Wait. Allow me to me more specific. He's confused about the interim agreement between the American-"led" West and Iran.

Apparently, differing views about what is in an interim agreement supposedly typed up on paper that they both signed cause Mr. Zakaria to question the value of the agreement in reaching a final settlement:

[Iranian President] HASSAN ROUHANI: So in the context of nuclear technology, particularly of research and development and peaceful nuclear technology, we will not accept any limitations. And in accordance with the parliament’s law, in the future, we’re going to need 20,000 mega watts of nuclear produced electricity and we’re determined to get it at the hands of our Iranian scientists.

FAREED ZAKARIA: So there would be no destruction of centrifuges?

ROUHANI: Not under any circumstances. Not under any circumstances.

CHRIS CUOMO: I mean, what is the deal? That’s supposed to be the whole underpinning of moving forward from the United States perspective. How do you interpret what you just heard from the president?

ZAKARIA: well, I was as struck by it as you were. This strikes me as a train wreck. This strikes me as potentially a huge obstacle because the conception of what the deal is going to look like and the American conception now look like they are miles apart. The Iranian conception seems to be they produce as much nuclear energy as they want, but it is a civilian program. The American position is that they have to very substantially scale back the enrichment of uranium and the production of centrifuges. For the fist time you have the president of Iran unequivocally saying there will be no destruction of centrifuges. So this seems like — you know, this is still — I’m not even quite sure what they’re going to talk about if these are the opening [positions?] and it’s very hard to walk back from as absolute [a provision?} as the president of Iran laid out.

Ya think?

Look, let me apply the clue bat to Zakaria. The man couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal, so, you know, God bless him, and all.

But there is no problem here to getting a deal if you keep in mind what this is about.

Iran wants nuclear weapons.

We want a deal. All signed in multiple official languages and with bright ribbons affixed with wax seals! And oh! Be still Kerry's heart. Maybe a Nobel Peace Prize by the end of 2015!!

Within that penumbra where American and Iranian positions overlap lies a deal: Iran will solemnly promise not to build a nuclear weapon. And we will solemnly pretend to believe the Iranians.

Voila!

I can understand how the Nuanced-Americans in our foreign policy elite--in and out of government--can be confused about this. For they were and remain confused about the Syria deal about getting rid of Assad's chemical weapons.

The elites continue to strut about boasting about how threatened (incredibly small!) American air strikes got Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons.

But the fact is, this agreement is not about getting rid of chemical weapons. It is about buying time for Assad to defeat the rebels. While the temporary disarmament is going on, we won't do much to help the rebels and we certainly won't launch air strikes, as in Libya.

For Assad, he knew that time is more valuable than chemical weapons. Even the passive Obama administration would have to take official notice and do something if Assad used chemical weapons enough to affect the war. Even the Russians and Chinese would not have used their Security Council veto to protect Assad after that. So chemical weapons were of no value to him in this war.

After the war, of course, if he wins, Assad can rebuild his chemical weapons stocks (with newer delivery systems and more deadly agents!).

Or, if you prefer an actual nuclear deal to compare this to, consider North Korea. In 1994, we negotiated a fine deal--the Agreed Framework--that we thought would halt North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Sadly, North Korea didn't agree with our assessment. During the Bush administration, we rudely pointed out that North Korea was pursuing nuclear weapons.

And today, North Korea has blown off a few nuclear devices and is working on making their devices small enough to put on a missile warhead.

Diplomacy with nutballs sure is grand!

So yeah, Fareed, this is a train wreck. But it is not a train wreck because differing views on it are an obstacle to a deal. It is a train wreck because despite the differences, our differing objectives contain the basis for a signed deal that gives each of us what we want.

Not that a clue bat would have any effect on Zakaria. He will require a clue nuke.

Have a super sparkly day.

Fifty Shades of Zakaria

I'm a masochist. I must be. I see a link to Fareed Zakaria's musings and I can't help but put in the ball gag, don the leather (I really apologize for that visual), and read his thoughts.

Zakaria has thoughts on Israel's best interests at this moment in time.

Basically, he thinks that since Israel's enemies are either in disarray, at peace with Israel, or worrying about Iran, that Israel can exploit this better strategic environment to--wait for it!--capitulate to Palestinian extremists:

So while it faces real dangers, Israel has policies to fight them with force and effectiveness. The danger for which it has no defense is that it continues to have control over Gaza and the West Bank, lands with 4.5 million people who have neither a country nor a vote. The feeling on the Israeli right, which now rules the country, seems to be that if the Palestinian problem is ignored, it will somehow solve itself. But it won’t, and the tragedy is that this is the moment, with so many stars aligned in Israel’s favor, when enlightened leadership could secure Israel permanently as a Jewish democratic state and make peace with its neighbors. It is a golden opportunity, and it is staring Netanyahu in the face.

I'd like to note that Israel does not in fact have control over Gaza. There are no Israelis there to govern or control the Gazans. And Israel shares control of Gaza's border with Egypt.

Also, Gazans had a vote after Israel left--once. Hamas didn't see fit to have another vote.

I don't believe that the Israelis are ignoring the Palestinians as much as they are refusing maximalist Palestinian demands that view any deal with Israel as a mere stepping stone to destroying Israel.

Why on Earth would Israel give ground to fanatical jihadis like Hamas when Israel has a stronger negotiating position?

As we've been told on other issues, no deal is better than a bad deal. But as Zakaria shows on this issue, the Left doesn't actually believe that.

Any deal is just fine with them. The deal is the objective, for some strange reason. And if it hurts our side? Well, we probably deserve it. That's the enlightened way to view submissive behavior.

Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal. But I've noted that before, I'm sure you recall.

If the Palestinians want a deal, let them stare their reality in the face and adapt to their far inferior strategic environment by offering something acceptable to Israel that isn't just a ten-year pause prior to wiping out Israel.

The Buttocks Remain a Mystery

I almost thought Fareed Zakaria had a clue.

Honest to God, I got my hopes up when I read this assessment of the Sony Incident:

One of the nastiest regimes in the world effectively threatened to launch terrorist attacks in the United States if an artistic work was shown publicly. And, stunningly, almost everyone involved has caved.

Wow! He's against backing down! He mentions how threats against Salman Rushdie by the Iranians led to Western resistance to attempts to silence us!

But then I had to go and ruin the ride by reading on:

Why does a terrorist threat from North Korea produce appeasement, whereas threats from Islamic terrorists produce courage, defiance and resilience? I suspect it’s because we are fully aware of the barbarism of jihadi terrorists.

Huh? Did Zakaria miss the past 13 years of self-damning questions of "why do they hate us?"

Is he unaware that we arrested a little-known filmmaker over the Benghazi terrorist attack and even aired apologetic public service announcements in Pakistan saying we are sorry for that movie?

Our military has shown great defiance and resolve by taking the war to our jihadi enemies around the world. But there is a strong strain in this country that would negate the defiance by cancelling the Homeland series and making sure no hint of "Islamophobia" ever aired on American television or movie theaters.

Mind you, I'm grateful that so far the American response to the Sony attack has not included cries of despair about the dread "backlash" against North Koreans living here (if there are any).

But the idea that the response to North Korea could take lessons from our response to jihadi attempts to bring the joys of the caliphate to us, too, is nonsense.

Ah, hope springs eternal. I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football again.

So it remains that Zakaria could not find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

It's Like Web Candy!

I think very little of Fareed Zakaria's foreign policy analysis, as a recent column of his prompted me to write.

So it was with some enjoyment that I read this column slamming The Giant Brain for the same piece:

In a false and heartless June 21 op-ed column, "The fantasy of an Iranian revolution," Fareed Zakaria demonstrated -- again -- that he is the consummate spokesman for the shibboleths of the White House and for the smooth new worldliness, the at-the-highest-levels impatience with democracy and human rights as central objectives of our foreign policy, that now characterize advanced liberal thinking about America's role in the world.

That was just the first paragraph. Do read the rest.

God help us all, but some people think Zakaria is insightful. But as I've written before, Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

Stop Swooning Over Obama

Fareed Zakaria--God bless him, but he couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal--actually compares President Obama's foreign policy with Eisenhower's.

While I agree it is a mistake to swoon over Putin's actions, the notion that our policy is Eisenhower-like is nonsense:

It’s true that it has been a quarter-century since Moscow has been so interventionist outside its borders. The last time it made these kinds of moves, in the late 1970s and 1980s, it invaded Afghanistan and interfered in several other countries as well. Back then, commentators similarly hailed those actions as signs that Moscow was winning the Cold War. How did that work out for the Soviet Union? ...

The 1950s abounded with what seem in retrospect deeply dangerous proposals designed to demonstrate U.S. vigor ...

In the midst of this clamor for action, one man, President Dwight Eisenhower, kept his cool, even though it sank his poll numbers. (The Kennedy/Johnson administration ended the passivity, notably in Cuba and Vietnam, with disastrous results.) I believe that decades from now, we will be glad that Barack Obama chose Eisenhower’s path to global power and not Putin’s.

One, resisting Putin is not the same as Putin's militarized path to conquest and power. What kind of equivalence nonsense is that?

But at least Zakaria admits Putin is striving for world power.

Zakaria conflates Eisenhower's refusal to act directly against the far weaker Soviet Union in the 1950s (Ike knew there was no "missile gap" showing nuclear inferiority) with the USSR's failure by the end of the 1980s that was facilitated not by Eisenhower-like "passivity" but by Reagan's vigorous action to actively defeat Soviet aggression and defeat the Soviet Union itself.

Eisenhower also had the reputation of having led the West into battle in Europe in World War II. No Russian leader could discount that.

Our enemies now have to worry about a president who organized communities rather than a global coalition to liberate western Europe from Nazi and Fascist control.

And remember that Eisenhower had massive nuclear superiority over Moscow yet still increased military spending and even maintained a modernized Army of 15 divisions and 900,000 troops in the active forces (1958).

We're scheduled for ten division equivalents with 450,000 troops with the possibility of going down to 8 divisions if the Army is cut to 420,000 because of further budget reductions.

Zakaria is simply trying to paint inaction as a winning strategy. I do not believe Russian weaknesses are an excuse to do nothing, counting on Russia to fail on their own.

Russian weaknesses are a reason to do something to keep them from winning by picking on even weaker opponents.

Stop swooning over Putin? Stop swooning over our current president. Or at least get a room.

Don't Forget We Need the Military-Industrial Complex

Yes, the massive Pentagon bureaucracy is as bad as any other government bureaucracy. Duh. I'd never claim that the Defense Department uniquely resists that weakness of large government. So yeah, I'd be happier if the Department of Defense was operated better--as I would be for all the rest of the government's bureaucracy.

But what gets me about Zakaria commenting on this (other than my general view that he'd have trouble locating his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal) is his lazy reference to Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial" complex (which Zakaria has complained about before).

One, that was back when defense was about the only really huge federal responsibility. We have many hyphenated complexes that have captured government and waste taxpayer money. Defense is merely the first to go this route and has had longer to perfect it.

But more important, that quote about Eisenhower's warning ignores the rest of the speech, which reminds us that even as we must control it, we have an "imperative need" for it:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

So which of the wars that the president is fighting don't need the weapons and equipment our defense industry supplies?

And the modern expert Zakaria cites who says our warfighters have suffered from this military-industrial complex (it's been an "absolute disaster" he quotes) ignores the technological edge this complex has provided our military over the last half century. Has it been wasteful? No doubt. Has it been ineffective? Get real

Hey, as long as we are into policy-by-bumper-sticker-sized slogans, I'm already against the next Zakaria column.

UPDATE: Thanks to Learning Curve for the link (and for the reference to my basic training saga).

The China Analogy Syndrome

Of course Fareed Zakaria attempts to compare the Iran deal with Nixon "going to China:"

But let’s recall what China looked like at the time Henry Kissinger went on his secret trip to Beijing in July 1971. Mao Zedong was, without question, the most radical anti-American leader in the world, supporting violent guerrilla groups across Asia and beyond. And while it didn’t chant “Death to America,” Beijing was the principal supporter of the North Vietnamese, sending them troops, supplies and funds to fight and kill American soldiers every day. China was also in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, one of the most barbaric periods of its modern history.

Initially, the opening to China changed none of this.

The comparison is ludicrous, as I've mentioned.

But even on Zakaria's terms, China's change to oppose the USSR required us to concede defeat in South Vietnam against China-supported North Vietnam--before focusing on the Soviet Union as a common enemy.

Pray tell, what do we have to lose in this revived diplomacy? Do we surrender to Iranian dominance in Iraq and Syria? Does the Persian Gulf become more than a geographic term?

China did not change with Nixon's effort. China used us to help protect them from the USSR as much as we used them to resist Moscow. China was a communist dictatorship that aligned with us against a common enemy, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is gone.

And today China is still a communist dictatorship--and siding with Russia to contain us--that has their much greater military power aimed at us, again.

And President Obama ordered a "pivot" to contain China.

Wow. Feel the reset.

And what's with this claim by Zakaria?

History suggests that as countries get more integrated into the world and the global economy, they have fewer incentives to be spoilers and more to maintain stability.

I'd be real curious to know what his examples from history are. Because China and Russia are more integrated into the world and global economy than ever before, and they seem to be willing to be spoilers who seek to make gains against the forces of stability.

If he's talking about Germany, Japan, and Italy, there was that little thing called "America defeating them and keeping troops on their soil until this day." Being integrated into the world economy was a byproduct of their defeat and not a cause of their ceasing to be spoilers to stability.

So if China's example is to be followed, at some point in the future Iran will still be a nutball mullah-run theocracy that hates us and has a much more powerful military to fight us.

But will we have defeated a bigger threat in the meantime which required Iranian help to cope with? I doubt that very much. So we get nothing but pleasant time with our heads stuck in the sand.

Feel the legacy!

Don't listen to Zakaria. His advice can only lead to disaster. As I've said more than once, the man couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

The Burning Sensation Means the Hope is Working!

Fareed Zakaria defends President Obama on the Ukraine crisis. Of course he does.

Not that I'm saying we should go to war over Crimea. But Zakaria's defense of our president on these cases is just wrong:

Compare what the Obama administration has managed to organize in the wake of this latest Russian aggression to the Bush administration’s response to Putin’s actions in Georgia in 2008. That was a blatant invasion. Moscow sent in tanks and heavy artillery; hundreds were killed, nearly 200,000 displaced. Yet the response was essentially nothing. This time, it has been much more serious. Some of this difference is in the nature of the stakes, but it might also have to do with the fact that the Obama administration has taken pains to present Russia’s actions in a broader context and get other countries to see them as such.

You can see a similar pattern with Iran. The Bush administration largely pressured that country bilaterally. The Obama administration was able to get much more effective pressure because it presented Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to global norms of nonproliferation, persuaded the other major powers to support sanctions, enacted them through the United Nations and thus ensured that they were comprehensive and tight. This is what leadership looks like in the 21st century.

Let me repeat at length what I recently wrote about the Bush-Georgia comparison:

I know that President Obama's defenders attack critics of him by saying President Bush didn't do anything about Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008. That comparison is wrong and we can only wish President Obama will be as effective as Bush was.

Remember, President Bush was constrained in his reaction by the election campaign about to begin as the two parties held their nominating conventions that month. Partisans on the left would have screamed (with actual flecks of flying spittle visible on the video) that the Bushtatorship was trying to gin up a manufactured crisis to help McCain.

And then there was that financial crisis in September that shook our economy dangerously.

Plus there was the natural desire not to risk a war that a successor will have to finish.

And keep in mind that Bush was president for only five more months, including 3 months of transition with the president-elect.

Yes, President Bush did not inflict pain on Russia (other than sticking to their missile defense plans in NATO over strenuous Russian objections) in those 5 months he was in the Oval Office.

But President Obama did nothing in the 5 years he has been in the Oval Office. And he ended the Bush-era missile defense plan.

Had he cared to, President Obama could have tried to stiffen the spines of the EU "investigation" of the war that bizarrely blamed Georgia as much as Russia for the war, and pretty much signaled that the West would do nothing.

On the Russo-Georgia War itself, remember that before Russia invaded, Russia already possessed the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia, with Russian garrisons on the ground supporting local pro-Russia militias.

When Russia invaded Georgia proper and headed for Tblisi to completely conquer the country, our efforts in support of Georgia (a Coast Guard ship docked in Georgia and we airlifted supplies and Georgian troops then deployed in Iraq to Georgia) and the poor performance of the Russian military in the fight combined to get Russia to back off from their expansive aim.

So at the end of the war, Russia held what they had before the war started.

I'd say that President Bush's response was superior to President Obama's reaction to Crimea. And since responsibility for responding to the invasion of Georgia quickly fell on President Obama, why is President Obama off the hook for the American response? Was "reset" and the cancellation of Bush's eastern European missile defense plan on the 70th anniversary of Soviet Russia's invasion of Poland something to be proud of as a signal to Russia?

As for Iran, am I the only person who remembers what this country was like after Nancy Pelosi took charge in the House in January 2007? Democrats would have impeached President Bush for being too harsh with Iran.

And while I certainly salute President Obama for ratcheting up sanctions. What did he then do? Relaxed them just to get Iran sitting at the same table to talk about vastly different things. We want to end Iran's nuclear weapons capability. Iran wants to ratify their nuclear weapons capability (without even admitting they have weapons goals).

President Obama still has time to put his mark on his response to Crimea. Indeed, we don't know if the crisis is over. But positively comparing Obama to Bush over Ukraine/Georgia and Iran is just sucking up in hopes of getting an appointment to the president's foreign policy team.

I swear to God, Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

Three Out of Five isn't Bad

Normally, I don't have much confidence that Fareed Zakaria can find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal. But he did at least grab a hand full with this article that at least starts with the premise that we have to fight Islamist jihadis.

Zakaria has a four-part solution:

Washington and its allies can support Muslim moderates, help their societies modernize and integrate those that do. But that’s for the long haul. Meanwhile, Washington and its allies must adopt a strategy that has four elements: intelligence, counterterrorism, integration and resilience (ICIR).

He at least recognizes that friendly autocrats fueled Islamist opposition. That's why in the long run I think the Arab Spring could bring success since it was founded on the idea that democracy should be the alternative to autocrats or mullahs.

His intelligence focus is good. As he says, we need it from on-the-ground sources to both defend ourselves and to focus our attacks.

Counterterrorism is the work of drones and special forces direct action in his thinking.

Integration is the long term hope that sees Moslems integrating better in Europe. We've done a much better job here, but we are a nation of ideas and not of blood and soil, so I don't know if that is a sound hope on its own.

More to the point, integration has to mean the victory of moderate Moslems in the Islamic Civil War that we are basically collateral damage as jihadis seek to define Islam their way and snuff out moderates who'd rather not have their religion be a death cult.

So far, so good.

His fourth point is just twisted. By resilience he means we should not get panicked and overly worked up over the terrorism as the other three factors are allowed to work.

This seems to be a general theme of the liberal spectrum. They believe conservatives are panicked over what a nuanced view of the world would see as mere noise.

But I've never been panicked about the jihadi threat and I don't see conservatives as being panicked. What those of us who wish to fight the jihadis do is take the threat seriously rather than blathering on about "why do they hate us?" and coming up with tons of reasons why it is really our fault, when you think about it.

There is a difference between panic and resolve to win. Why that seems so difficult to grasp is beyond me.

We have been resilient. We do go on with our lives. We do that so successfully that other people see fit to note that since 9/11 only our military has been at war while our people have been "at the mall."

Or have you been too busy to shop because you are pulling guard duty tonight at the road block at the front of your cul-de-sac with other members of your local defense militia on the look out for dark-skinned foreigners who've escaped the internment camps?

Oh, there aren't any of those things here and you have been shopping and spending all along? There hasn't been any sign of an anti-Moslem backlash here? Well good. Now stop whining about panic and lack of resilience.

Still, we do need resilience. Why Zakaria doesn't see that we've displayed it is beyond me.

There is another problem with the resilience theme. To assume that the function of terrorism is simply to terrorize us in incomplete. It isn't always about us.

Brutal terrorism against the West is also a recruiting tool. Videos of beheadings and bomb blasts and planes flying into buildings are part of the recruiting process for jihadis. That stuff inspires the proto-jihadis sitting around with pent up rage against the world around them that has left them molding away in a society that always seems to fall farther behind the rest of the world.

So even if we had the perfect resilience as Zakaria defines it and shrug off every terrorism death here as something that pales before auto accidents and perhaps even lightning strikes and shark attacks, the jihadis would seek to kill us.

What Zakaria fails to see what we need is military intervention. He explicitly states (and cites an earlier article he wrote) that more military intervention is not the answer to ending Islamic radicalism.

Given that the answer is ultimately an Islamic Reformation that wins the Islamic Civil War for the good guys, I can't argue against that point.

But the problem is getting to that ultimate point in the long run. Until then, military intervention absolutely is part of the solution--or at least part of the effort to contain the problem and keep it away from our shores until the solution is achieved.

If we are facing a threat with a government that has the power on the ground to provide ground power and intelligence, we can restrict our military intervention to air power and other support--perhaps relying on allies and military contractors for much of that.

If the host government is less capable, we may need to provide special forces and other assets to help provide intelligence, as well as to work with regular Army and Marine troops to train the local forces to be good enough.

If the host government is even weaker, we may need to supplement or even supersede their forces until we can build up host government ground forces to take over the role all or in part.

If the local government is not a host and in fact supports the jihadi enemy, we may need to use military intervention to overthrow the regime or just punish the regime with the goal of compelling them to end or reduce that support to "acceptable" levels.

Military power certainly can't solve this problem. But is absolutely necessary to bolster the local forces who fight on the battlefield and fight for the soul of Islam, as well as necessary to contain the problem away from our shores as much as possible.

Remember, the use of military intervention in Iraq where we killed lots of jihadis was ultimately the factor that led more Moslems to condemn jihadi terrorism.

Terrorism was never a fatal flaw in jihadi reputation in the Islamic world as long as Western Infidels died. But when fellow Moslems started being blown up so visibly in Iraq, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia? Well, that's not funny, any more.

So call it ICMIR and just be grateful that Zakaria got this close to the target. It's called the Long War for a reason, you know.

Baby Steps, People. Baby Steps

My opinion of Fareed Zakaria just went up (tip to Mad Minerva):

Time magazine moved quickly to suspend columnist Fareed Zakaria for one month after he apologized Friday for lifting material from a New Yorker essay.

At least the man has the sense to realize his own thoughts are worthless, and that other people are far better at finding their own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.

It's a start for Mr. Zakaria.

UPDATE: Now for some stomping:

Such, then, is the sorry state of American journalistic standards. Borrow a line or two from the New Yorker and it’s a major punishable offense. Repeatedly serve up the flawed left-wing conventional wisdom on taxes, spending, and the Middle East, and get rewarded with your own television show and a Harvard honorary degree.

I think my summary is more pithy.

Evil Triumphs When Good Men Do Nothing

President Obama never wanted to be the leader of the free world. It is clear he is not.

Seriously, Fareed?

As America navigates a changing world, the people who seem to be having the greatest difficulty with the adjustment are the country’s pundits. Over the past few weeks, a new conventional wisdom has congealed on the op-ed pages: The United States is in retreat, and this is having terrible consequences around the world.

The Giant Brain will have none of this talk! President Obama is freaking awesome! You aren't even worthy to give him the Presidential Daily Briefing!

Wait. What? never mind.

Fareed leads his defense of The One with an attack on the Iraq versus Syria comparison:

Forget the Federal Reserve’s “taper,” Niall Ferguson tells us in the Wall Street Journal, the much greater danger is Washington’s “geopolitical taper.” He presents as evidence of Obama’s disastrous policies the fact that more people have died in the “Greater Middle East” under Obama than under George W. Bush. But there is a huge difference in the two cases. In the Bush years, the numbers were high because of the war in Iraq, a conflict initiated by the Bush administration. In the Obama years, the numbers are high because of the war in Syria, a conflict that the Obama administration has stayed out of. If this logic were to be followed, Bush is responsible for the tens of thousands of deaths in Sudan and Congo during his presidency.

Zakaria's defense rests on the notion that doing nothing when you could means you bear no responsibility for any deaths.

Fareed Zakaria--who so obviously could not find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal--clearly still wants a position in the Obama administration foreign policy team.

Neglected is that the death toll caused by the Iraq War was not some sudden change from pre-war deaths. Saddam was already a killing machine and to use the Zakaria defense you have to assume that if Bush hadn't led the invasion effort, no deaths would have followed.

Also neglected is that the overthrow of Saddam itself was won at low cost. The real death toll took place when Iran and Syria essentially invaded Iraq by supporting Baathists and Sadrist death squads while funneling in al Qaeda suicide bombers and killers. So Bush really didn't start the insurgency, now did he?

But if you want to argue that the chain of unintended events that Bush initiated with his decision to remove the bloody Saddam dictatorship fall on him? Well, that applies to President Obama, too. So nice try.

But more to the point, the comparison of carnage is appropriate because the Obama administration very explicitly claimed that their inaction in Syria was a response to the "lessons" of Iraq.

They believed, as Zakaria does, that our intervention caused the death toll in Iraq. So refusing to intervene in Syria would prevent the death toll from rising by letting the Syrians sort out their problems without our presence provoking jihadis and making things worse.

So in a few years of war, we have the casualty toll approaching 150,000 in Syria. In Iraq, in 11 years of war--including recent surges in killings by al Qaeda--the casualty count has not reached that level.

The Washington Post put it well:

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

That's it. Syria is merely one place in the world where the fantasy plays out.

Obviously, President Obama isn't responsible for the decisions of others to be evil. But he is responsible for the policies that he put in place because he believed (still believes?) that the evil was provoked by our actions and by fear of our power.

After five years, our enemies increasingly realize this is how he thinks. So they act. They act evil. And Belmont Club writes that our allies finally noticed:

The capitals of Europe have gone from complacency to a near panic in the last 72 hours, not simply over the crisis in the Ukraine but in the growing awareness that for at least the last half decade they’ve been standing on a trapdoor.

At least president Obama, the leader of the Free World, has.

Yeah, when the frontier ranch is under attack by a murderous gang, you want cowboys and not community organizers.

I'm sure Barack Obama is a fine man. A good man. I have no doubt that he intends good things. But he is not the leader of the free world.

But it's our own fault. Our nation voted for him twice. President Obama has never pretended he wanted that title. At best, he wanted to personify the hopes of "the world" for a better future. But much of the world has hopes only for an America unable or unwilling to thwart their aims.

The reality is, we once stood in the way of evil. We didn't prevent all evil. And we did some things wrong, in the process. But we kept the evil to a dull roar. Now we just want to watch. And our allies will watch--in horror.

The evil has returned to Europe.

And we send Kerry. The evil is not impressed.

UPDATE: To be clear, I am not blaming President Obama for the deaths in Syria (or the invasion of Ukraine, for that matter). I am using the left's own reasoning to also defend President Bush of the charge that because he destroyed the murderous Saddam regime that he is responsible for the subsequent deaths in Iraq.

Remember, too, that it was from the left that we got the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine that so obviously died in Syria. Zakaria clearly rejects that doctrine in his defense of the president.

He Welcomes Our New Insect Overlords

Victor Hanson wonders what planet Fareed Zakaria is on.

I don't wonder.

Honest to God, Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal.