Fact-Checking Zakaria

When I read this transcript from Fareed Zakaria this bit leapt out at me: The Chinese are by far the largest holders of American debt, for example. They buy billions of dollars' worth of American Treasury bills every week. Now perhaps Mr. Zakaria is engaging in a masterful piece of misdirection by conflating “debt” with “American Treasury bills” but, assuming he means ...

Has Palin Out-Qualyed Quayle?

Dan Qualye was, rather unfairly in my view, a national joke.  From very shortly after George H.W. Bush picked a rising star senator from Indiana that few outside his home state had ever heard of to be his vice presidential running mate in 1988, Quayle became the butt of late night comics, "Saturday Night Live," and other culture-setting institutions and ...

Wars and Wartime Presidents

Fareed Zakaria contends that, President Bush's attempts to brand himself as a "war president," the United States isn't really at war. America (and before it, Britain) has felt it was "at war" when the conflict threatened the country's basic security—not merely its interests or its allies abroad. This is the common-sense way in which we define a wartime leader, and by ...

McCain the Anti-War Warrior?

In the cover story of the new American Prospect, Matt Yglesias describes John McCain thusly: The candidate who, despite his protestations in a March speech that he "hates war," not only stridently backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but has spent years calling on the United States to depose every dictator in the world. He's the candidate of ratcheting-up action against ...

U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Bush Era

Fareed Zakaria argues that John McCain's foreign policy would be bellicose whereas Barack Obama's would be conciliatiatory but, as Dave Schuler notes, both are "confrontational" and "interventionist," just with slightly different priorities. Zakaria points to a recent McCain speech: Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes ...

U.S. Visa Policies Costing Billions

Fareed Zakaria reports that our counterterrorism policies have led to a marked decline in tourism during a tourism boom -- and is even keeping out Brits and Japanese. According to the Commerce Department, the United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined in the midst of a global tourism boom. And this ...

Immigration, Assimilation, and Terrorism

Matthew Schofield wonders why the UK continues to be targeted by al Qaeda despite the fact that "the preferred villain is the United States." His premise is likely untrue (the UK really hasn't been the subject of a more al Qaeda activity than the US) but his answer is nonetheless interesting. Karl-Heinz Kamp, the security policy coordinator at Germany's prestigious ...

Losing The War Against Radical Islam?

Fareed Zakaria notes that there are several hopeful signs in the fight against Islamist terrorism, including the capture of important leaders and several schisms threatening to break apart alliances in Iraq and elsewhere. Moreover, he argues, the jihadists face numerous structural problems. The split between Sunnis and Shiites—which plays a role in Lebanon as well—is only one of the divisions ...

Fareed Zakaria Looks Beyond Bush

In his article this morning in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria looks beyond Bush and calls for an America that is open, confident, and supine. He may be objectively right. But he should know better. More at The Glittering Eye

Death of the Arab Nation-State?

Yoav Fromer expands the Iraq as Humpty Dumpty meme at TNR, perhaps even more soberly: Despite utopian visions of an Arab nation-state with a modernized economy, social justice, and constitutional republicanism, the reality was sobering. Failed central planning, lack of capital, excessive military expenditures, and inadequate education--among other factors--cut short grandiose plans. The result plunged Arab countries into further poverty that ...