Fareed Zakaria Criticizes 'Disproportionate' Afghanistan War On CNN

From the Huffington Post news wire:

Fareed Zakaria criticized the Afghanistan war in unusually harsh terms on his CNN program Sunday, saying that "the whole enterprise in Afghanistan feels disproportionate, a very expensive solution to what is turning out to be a small but real problem."

His comments followed CIA director Leon Panetta's admission last week that the number of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan may be down to just 50 to 100 members, or even fewer.

"If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most," Zakaria asked, "why are we fighting a major war?"

More here, with video.

Okay, this is actually pretty good news. CNN is a bedrock of corporate journalism: that this was allowed to air is nothing short of a signal that there are now cracks in the establishment consensus on the ten year old US policy of perpetual war. I mean, don't get me wrong. This is one news media personality on one cable news channel. But it was the sight of Walter Cronkite condemning the Vietnam War that started the ball rolling for LBJ's decision to not seek reelection in 1968. As fucked up as they are, the corporate news media matter. If they really are starting to drift in this direction, it can only be with the express permission of their corporate bosses, the people who really own and run the country. And if that's the case, it's only a matter of time before we're out of Afghanistan.

It is interesting to note that Zakaria's criticism of the Afghanistan war is only in terms of monetary expense and ineffectiveness in dealing with Al Qaeda. He does not characterize the entire notion of waging war on Muslim populations as counterproductive, doesn't point out how doing so simply serves to recruit more terrorists. He doesn't talk about US support for Israel, no matter what atrocities it commits. He doesn't talk about oil imperialism. He doesn't mention the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. What he does is leave open the option for this kind of Bush era warfare as long at it is cost effective--only this war, being fought in this way, is a bad idea.

Of course, that's no surprise. Zakaria is, after all, a corporate mouthpiece, and his stated views in this capacity must necessarily reflect the corporate point of view, or, at least, the point of view of some of the players within the corporate oligarchy.

But, for now, I'm calling this a nice development.

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