Methinks Fareed Zakaria Will Vote for Barack Obama

He writes:

Mccain Vs. Mccain | Print Article | Newsweek.com: On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy... the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed... McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8.... McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil--but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous--that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order... would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.

I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage.... McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic.... His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic. The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies.... What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers? How would the League of Democracies fight terrorism while excluding countries like Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Singapore? What would be the gain to the average American to lessen our influence with Saudi Arabia...?

The single most important security problem that the United States faces is securing loose nuclear materials. A terrorist group can pose an existential threat to the global order only by getting hold of such material. We also have an interest in stopping proliferation, particularly by rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea. To achieve both of these core objectives--which would make American safe and the world more secure—--need Russian cooperation. How fulsome is that likely to be if we gratuitously initiate hostilities with Moscow? Dissing dictators might make for a stirring speech, but ordinary Americans will have to live with the complications after the applause dies down.

To reorder the G8 without China would be particularly bizarre. The G8 was created to help coordinate problems of the emerging global economy....

McCain appears to think that he can magically unite the two main strands in the Republican foreign-policy establishment. But he can't.... We have watched an American president unable to choose between his ideologically driven vice president and his pragmatic secretary of State--and the result was the catastrophe of George W. Bush's first term...

Comments

[christofay]

The understandable response to our elites is to stay in bed and stay under the covers.

Also Fareed Zakaria will vote for Obama? Don't understand the American collective will to self-destruct.

No matter what, Greenspan has already said he's voting Republican for president which is appropriate as one of his biggest fanboys, the one who admits to not understanding economics, would prop the ghost of Greenspan in the corner and let him to continue to central plan. As long as he got good press, I'm sure Greenspan would go for it.

We're Argentina now but with slip and slides.

[bigTom]

I generally like Zakaria's perspective, but I don't see any evidence in support of this line "I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage...." Perhaps he possessed these qualities as a young man, although he was reportedly fifth from the bottom of his class at the academy. His mind doesn't seem to have aged well. Our worst security problem is terrorists getting Nukes??? No! Our worst security problem is ourselves. Of course the arrogant hurtful way we've been behaving in the world has made a lot of people who's visions of vengeance would not be welcomed by ourselves. We started out as a nation who justifiably was proud of our accomplishments, and the ideals which drove us. The problem is that when you let your feeling of self goodness turn into self righteousness, it soon morphs into propaganda. And we've been slipping down that slippery slope for a long time. We are now the worlds greatest security problem. Christofay is part right, we are now Argentina, but with a frighteningly large number of Nukes.

[Tom Lowe]

Sounds like McCain is still seeing the world through the perspective of the politics taught him at Annapolis in the 50s. "China bad Russians bad; we good, we bring goodness to foreigners" No wonder he can't tell Shia from Sunni.

How in the world can you admire this guy? He's dumber than "W", older than stink, and bombed civilians in an illegal war. Get over it!

[Neal]

"I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage...."

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How can you reconcile this:
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"...bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran..."

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And this:
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STEPHANOPOULOS: So was it a mistake to solicit and accept his (Hagee's) endorsement?

MCCAIN: Oh, probably, sure. […]

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you no longer want his endorsement?

MCCAIN: I’m glad to have his endorsement. I condemn remarks that are, in any way, viewed as anti-anything. And thanks for asking.

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And this:
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Speaking in Israel yesterday, McCain referred to the Jewish holiday Purim as 'their version of Halloween.' After McCain spoke, Lieberman stepped in and gingerly took blame for McCain's mistake, saying that he had given McCain the false impression of the holiday's meaning."

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And this:
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In an interview yesterday with NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) dismissed criticism of his multiple false claims that Iranian operatives are “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” by claiming that he “corrected it immediately.” “I don’t claim that I won’t misspeak on occassion, but I will correct it immediately,” said McCain.

Asked if it’s “a fair question” to wonder if it was more than “simply a slip of a tongue,” McCain replied that “to think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eigth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous.”

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and multiple other instances.
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There seems to be only a couple possible answers as to how the initial statement be reconciled to the stupidity of McCain:

Fareed Zakaria---fool or tool?

[Gene O'Grady]

Annapolis in the 50's taught McCain this stuff? Although I'm a little young to speak to that, certainly my contemporaries with professional military training (people who would have been college students in 1964-1970 and had missions like staff support when Nixon went to China, also Egypt I believe) were a great deal more sophisticated than that. I strongly suspect McCain drank and played his way through Annapolis, like our other flyboy did through Yale, both of course being protected by their old men, and picked up his attitudes from the vulgar media and the spoiled rich women he played with.

[Maynard Handley]

Yet another comment on "I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage."

Intelligence? Extend Bush's tax cuts and add a whole lot more. Repeal the gas tax.
Honor? Hides all his assets in his wife's name to bypass disclosure requirements. Bypasses McCain-Liebermann.
Political courage? Give us an example taken from the 21st century --- the copout on torture surely does not count.

Pshaw. I spit on Fareed Zakaria. If he thinks this sentence has any connection to reality, then who cares who he will vote for? He is one of the people pissing in the well of US political discourse by feeding lines of crap to the marginally informed voter.

[Tuco]

"I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage."

Let's be perfectly clear here. McCain is none of the above. He's a fool pandering to the right and nothing more.