Et tu, Fareed?
Following up on an earlier post, I wanted to see what Fareed Zakaria was saying about a potential war with Iraq during the period between his secret meeting with Paul Wolfowitz on November 29, 2001 and the beginning of hostilities in March of 2003.
Surprisingly, less than two weeks after brainstorming how best to sell a showdown with Saddam, he wrote this:
The debate over Iraq is taking place far more furiously outside government than it is inside. The formal meetings of the president’s top national-security advisers–the “principals committee”–has barely discussed Iraq. (It was mentioned briefly in last week’s sessions.)
From Bob Woodward’s recounting of the Wolfowitz meeting, which included Robert D. Kaplan from The Atlantic Monthly and throng of neoconservative policy thinkers, the general takeaway:
‘…was that Egypt and Saudi Arabia … were the key, but the problems there are intractable. Iran is more important…’ But Iran was similarly difficult to envision dealing with… But Saddam Hussein was different, weaker, more vulnerable… ‘We concluded that a confrontation with Saddam was inevitable. … We agreed that Saddam would have to leave the scene before the problem would be addressed.’
In fairness to Zakaria, he does, over the course of more than a year, make the above argument in his columns. But a couple other things happened, and didn’t happen as well. First, he makes little or no attempt to reconcile the administration’s public argument (WMD, Nuclear Weapons, terrorism, Prague, Al-Qaeda ties, mushroom clouds) with it’s private argument, that Saddam Hussein was weak and his toppling would serve as an example to America’s real enemies. Second, as the war draws closer, his argument for “Iraq, the nuclear powerhouse” inches its way up the bullet list, obscuring his earlier arguments that an Iraq war “would change the Middle-East and be totally awesome and sweet.“
On a couple occasions he even suggests that the United States should attempt, by using a form of Diplomatic Jujitsu, to trick Saddam Hussein into forcing war upon himself. No, this is not intended to be another “Fareed Zakaria is dumb” post, although he clearly is, considering he went from this,
“Let me make a prediction. If the administration stays on its current path, there will be no conflict with Iraq.”
to this,
“The United States will soon be at war with Iraq.”
in less than a Friedman.
No, this is not one of those posts. This is a “Fareed Zakaria sold you out to get his pet war and kept his job so STFU you macaca sucka motha-fucka” kind of posts. Below are some excerpts from his Newsweek columns on Iraq during the period in question. Read ‘em and weep.
December 10, 2001
The debate over Iraq is taking place far more furiously outside government than it is inside. The formal meetings of the president’s top national-security advisers–the “principals committee”–has barely discussed Iraq. (It was mentioned briefly in last week’s sessions.)
September 2, 2002
Saddam Hussein is building nuclear weapons. In fact he wants them so badly that he has, over the past decade, forgone $160 billion in oil revenues so that he could keep his labs free of inspections. He has attacked his neighbors three times and used chemical weapons on his own people. Most important, all other methods of handling him have been exhausted. The sanctions against Iraq have crumbled. Three years ago Saddam had access to $200 million to $300 million. Today smuggling and sanctions-busting gets him about $3 billion.
This problem is not going to go away. Unless Saddam is stopped, in a few years the world will almost certainly face a nuclear-armed megalomaniac. That’s why we need to get to work, find a trigger and –then carefully start shooting.
August 5, 2002
But he is a potential threat, particularly if he manages to acquire nuclear weapons, which is certainly his goal. Pollack makes a persuasive case that given leaky sanctions, at some point the world will have to deal with Saddam, nuclear-armed and dangerous. Why not now, when he is weak?
September 2, 2002
Let me make a prediction. If the administration stays on its current path, there will be no conflict with Iraq. However justified the cause, the United States will not initiate a war against another country without a specific provocation.
—-
If the administration wants to take military action against Iraq–and I believe it should–it will have to find a provocation, a casus belli. Some suggest that we push Saddam Hussein and hope he reacts. Kenneth Pollack, the Council on Foreign Relations scholar, proposes that the United States launch a major covert operation against Saddam. When confronted in the past, he has lashed out. In 1996 the CIA helped launch a Kurdish uprising against him. In response he invaded Arbil, a Kurdish city under the protection of the Anglo-American no-flight zones. If once again we make him feel the heat, Saddam might do something stupid, like attacking his neighbors or collaborating with Al Qaeda.
December 2, 2002
To stop events going down this road, the administration must force a crisis.
—-
American evidence, gathered from the sky, is largely circumstantial–photographs of buildings that appear to be chemical-weapons factories and such. Today those buildings are probably either empty or manufacturing baby aspirin. (They could, in a few days, be turned into chemical-weapons facilities.)
February 3, 2003
A major producer of weapons of mass destruction would be eliminated. Since there are very few states that have set out to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, taking one off the list is a big step toward safety. Other would-be weapons producers will likely think twice before going down a similar path.
February 17, 2003
Imagine the situation. A week from now, pressured by France, Germany and Russia, the United States decides to give the inspectors more time. It announces that, come to think of it, Saddam isn’t that much of a threat. Though the president of the United States has said repeatedly that he would have “zero tolerance” for Iraqi deception, he didn’t really mean it.
—-
A senior Asian diplomat told me recently that prior to this month he had never fully understood the saying “When you have drawn your sword you must use it.” “I always thought the phrase didn’t make any sense,” he said. “One could always just put the sword back in. But watching the current confrontation between the United States and Iraq, it’s clear. You’ve drawn your sword. Now you must use it.”
March 24, 2003
The United States will soon be at war with Iraq.
—-
For more than 25 years he has sought to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and has, in several documented cases, succeeded. He gassed 60,000 of his own people in 1986 in Halabja. He has launched two catastrophic wars, sacrificing nearly a million Iraqis and killing or wounding more than a million Iranians. He has flouted 16 United Nations resolutions over 12 years that have warned him to disarm or else, including one, four months ago, giving him a “final opportunity” to do so “fully and immediately” or face “serious consequences.”