Fareed Zakaria: 25 year slice of American experience provides hope
In an excellent overview of what America was and has evolved to, Fareed Zakaria describes how perfectly our government’s performed in a way that benefits Al Qaeda, while destroying our country’s essence.
He covers a number of major points extremely well:
We will never be able to prevent a small group of misfits from planning some terrible act of terror. No matter how far-seeing and competent our intelligence and law-enforcement officials, people will always be able to slip through the cracks in a large, open and diverse country. The real test of American leadership is not whether we can make 100 percent sure we prevent the attack, but rather how we respond to it. Stephen Flynn, a homeland-security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that our goal should be resilience—how quickly can we bounce back from a disruption? In the materials sciences, he points out, resilience is the ability of a material to recover its original shape after a deformation. If one day bombs do go off, we must ensure that they cause as little disruption—economic, social, political—as possible. This would deprive the terrorist of his main objective. If we are not terrorized, then in a crucial sense we have defeated terrorism.
I strongly encourage you to read the whole essay. It’ll remind you there remains much reason to hope.
The sole critique my cynical eye would add is he gives short shrift to the pernicious and corrosive influence of extreme capitalism on all our choices. War profits the powerful few. Profits buy elections. Materialism and consumerism waste our resources. And I fear money controls most of the possibilities with a chokehold.
What Zakaria portrays as a matter of wisdom and will looks to me like it can’t happen till we achieve clean elections publicly financed and temper the powers of the extremists of greed.
June 4th, 2007 at 4:12 am
I’m going to read the essay b/c you told me to but Fareed doesn’t impress me. That paragraph you cite, for instance - what a big DUH. It’s a more egghead-y version of: it’s not how many times you get knocked down that matters, it’s how many times you get up! My mother was saying exactly what he has finally come around to when the WTC was crumbling into dust. She should have a column in Newsweek and a guest slot on those dopey Sunday morning shows. (seriously, she’s awesome.)
June 4th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Boo, Fareed: (from 2004)
Since this is my first post I want to address Jacob’s central question, that Fred and George have pressed so effectively. Given the costs, was the war worth it? I think it was. Many of the costs (ruptured alliances, the postwar mess) can be alleviated (through better planning, diplomacy, etc.). I don’t minimize these and have been vocal in pointing them out. But they do not invalidate the entire enterprise.
I’ve often been associated with the “democratization spillover” argument, so let me point out that the elimination of Saddam Hussein has been a big plus for American national security. The most anti-American and expansionist regime in the Middle East has disappeared. An actual and potential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait has been eliminated. A violent, rejectionist state has faced consequences. This has had a sobering effect on the region: See Syria and Libya’s recent behavior. Given our interest in a stable Middle East, this is good.
Given our growing interest in a more decent Middle East it is even better. For the last few decades we have defined deviancy down in that region. Behavior that would be utterly unacceptable from other countries gets a pass because it’s the Middle East. If we learned tomorrow that, say, the Brazilian government was supporting various terror groups, trafficking in chemical and biological agents, and allowing its media to glorify anti-American violence, we would be appalled. When it’s Syria we shrug our shoulders and say, “It’s the Middle East.”
I’m sick of watching these people slowly come to Jesus about planning and waging a war of aggression. Why should we listen to anything they say now outside a meeting of War Mongers Anonymous?
June 4th, 2007 at 7:20 am
I wasn’t aware that Fareed had been a war supporter early on. I understand that a lot of what we read these days is old news to those of us who made similar arguments at the outset and throughout, and yeah, Fareed hardly offers anything new. But as major MSM outlets move from unquestioning obeisance to exit calls, to handwringing over Bush’s intransigence, I consider this to be the next step in the progression: a reminder that the problems created do not have to be permanent if we recognize what we must do.
I kinda get sick of the yammering about America’s moral authority because, as a historian, I consider that claim to be gossamer thin. Yet I hear so many speak as if the country is in irreversible decline, that the pottery’s permanently broken, that I do consider it useful to hear those who retain a can-do attitude.
I may not agree with their prescriptions to get from A to Z, and I may not consider them particularly brilliant. But guys like Fareed at least display the transition the MSM is making, which I do think is important and influential.
On the other hand, your Mom sounds even more interesting. You oughta interview her!