Zakaria is Hopeful on Iraq

Zakaria’s latest column in Newsweek seems to be adapted from that book you mentioned, Dave. Pretty interesting.

One thing I love about him is that he goes around saying how everyone’s wrong. He frequently does the “it’s been said that so and so. But in reality, the opposite is true.” Does it all the time in his columns. Good stuff.

I also like this line from his column. He’s talking about how the U.S. must broadly include others in rebuilding Iraq. “Naturally, those who supported the military intervention should be given special attention. But a place can be found even for those who didn’t (with the possible exception of Mr. Chirac’s government. Even multilateralism has its limits).” Nice.

You know one cool thing about now that Zakaria talked about months ago. I feel something now with Iraq that I could not feel before: hope. Before there was this resigned hopelessness when you thought about the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular. But now, with the talk of nation building and whatnot, there’s a real sense of hope, that things can be different there. I’m not sure if that alone legitimizes the war, and we still have plenty of time to screw things up, but that there’s hope now where there wasn’t before is not insignificant to me.