Making Facts Fit The Narrative

Making Facts Fit The Narrative

A Review of Fareed Zakaria In Foreign Affairs

by

R.E. Prindle

Zakaria, Fareed: The New China Scare, Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb 2020

Mr. Zakaria subtitles his screed:  Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger, that is, China.  My objection to Foreign Affairs, Mr. Zakaria and the whole Leftist-Liberal Establishment is that while professing to be far in advance than the Conservatives they cling to the whole post-WWII fantasy of American hegemony or supremacy.  That time is gone.  We are now living in a new Global era which is inter-locked economically while national sovereignty is taking a much diminished role.

Because of the shifting of whole national populations into the United States it is no longer possible, if it ever was, to speak of a unit called America.  America was a dream of the past.  Because of the extreme diversity of the US there is not one but several ethnic Americas.  The Chinese themselves already have a significant presence in the US and are inundating our neighbor to the North, Canada.  These domestic Chinese identify more with China than the US so it is not appropriate to speak of a China while disregarding its ex-pats in the rest of the world.  It is more or a Chinese diaspora and has to be dealt with as such.

Mr. Zakaria is himself a Moslem and in speaking of his ‘chosen’ country he speaks of it as an other and not as his own.  Thus in his subtitle he speaks that ‘America shouldn’t Panic.’  We, who have been born here, perhaps several generations ago, don’t recognize the China problem as panic, we recognize China as a competitor on the world stage that is seeking world dominance or, put another way, it wants to be the Top Country.  China being 90 some percent of the same ethnic group, Han Chinese doesn’t have the identity problem that the US does.  China does not cater to its minority peoples they dominate and subordinate them as with the Uigurs on its Eastern frontier.  Nor are they polite; they round the Uigurs up, put them in concentration camps and ‘indoctrinate’ them out of their ways, which are Moslem, into Chinese ways.  If Europe or the US would attempt that the world, including the Chinese, would put up a howl.  Yet if the West wants to maintain its culture it must ‘indoctrinate’ its minorities as the Chinese do.  Even the Hindus of India have belatedly become aware that their culture is under threat from the Moslems and repressive measures are being taken.

Let us be clear there is no China Scare in the US contrary to Mr. Zakarias assertion.  We are dealing with the new Global situation on a calm rational basis.

By a New China Scare Mr. Zakaria does not mean to refer to a second China scare, he is referencing the defensive measures taken against the Communist threat after WWI and WWII.  By ‘scare’ he means an irrational response to an imaginary threat.  Thus he tries to force the facts to fit his narrative. 

In point of fact there was a Communist threat that had to be quelled.  After WWI the alert and astute Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer rose to the occasion rounding the Communists up and actually deporting a few hundred to the Socialist Homeland, the Soviet Union.  His efforts were compromised by the Domestic Reds in prominent positions.

After WWII HUAC rose to the occasion abetted by 1950 with the activities of the courageous Senator Joseph McCarthy who also were defeated by internal Communist forces, but the Communist momentum was derailed after both wars and forced to reorganize.

Now, Zakaria follows the official CIA line in which ignorant American fears dominate their actions.  Thus they say that in both the aftermath of WWI and WWII there were no Communist threats and the effective responses to defuse those threats were merely panic attacks.  While our great generals had won the wars and our brave American soldiers had outfought their terrible enemies immediately on arriving home they had panic attacks rather than recognizing enemy tactics.  In WWI Mitchell Palmer who acted so magnificently has been defamed as a paranoid dodo.

After WWII Pres. Truman’s actions are characterized this way by Zakaria following the CFR playbook:

In February 1947, US President Harry Truman huddled with his most senior policy advisors, George Marshall, and Dean Acheson and a handful of Congressional leaders.  The topic was the administration’s plan to aid the Greek government in the fight (scary response in Mr. Zakaria’s thought processes) against a Communist insurgency.  Marshall and Acheson presented their case for the plan.  Arthur Vandenberg, chair of the Senate Committee On Foreign Relations, listened closely and then offered his support with a caveat.  “The only way you are going to get what you want,” he reportedly told the president, “is to make a speech and scare the hell out of the country.”

Now, one might say that Pres. Truman, acting in his capacity and duty as the President, presented his speech to alert the country to the threat of World Communist domination which was real and imminent at the time having been encouraged by the Communist sympathizer former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who Vice President Truman succeeded after having been purposely kept ignorant of the world situation even though Roosevelt was obviously a sick and dying man.

Zakaria says that Pres. Truman was not rational but an irrational scare tactician manipulating the country to get what he wanted.  Zakaria could have co-written Howard Zinn’s trashy history.  This is the way that the Left discredits by insinuation and defamatory characterization ignoring the facts.

Mr. Zakaria continues:

Over the next few months, Truman did just that.  He turned the civil war in Greece into a test of the United States ability to confront international communism.

You see how Zakaria turns the situation from an internationally communist backed insurgency into a civil war, and instead of an international defense against the spread of communism into an ego test of the United States ability to confront international communism.  Obviously Truman and the US was at fault and not Joseph Stalin and international communism.  Thus we go from a communist insurgency to a civil war, to a ‘test’ against international communism.  This says something as to why the CFR would allow such trash in their magazine.

Quote:  (note the language)

Reflecting on Truman’s expansive rhetoric about aiding democracies anywhere, anytime, Acheson confessed in his memoirs that the administration had made an argument “clearer than truth.”  Something similar is happening today in the American debate about China.

Unquote.

Not the negative characterization of the phrase ‘Truman’s expansive rhetoric about aiding democracies anytime, anywhere’ and Acheson ‘confessed.’  Did he really confess or merely state what might have been an obvious truth to him.  And his ‘clearer than truth’ may be meant positively rather than negatively.  It can possibly be read both ways but Zakaria make Acheson ‘confess’ which is negative.  This is the Leftist way.

Perhaps English is Mr. Zakaria’s second language while Arabic is his first. Oh, I know, I know, even though Mr. Zakaria is a Moslem he is as ‘American’ as apple pie.  He may even have been born here, right?

Mr. Zakaria says that similar to the ‘Red Scares’ is happening today  in the American debate about China.  Not true, there is nothing similar at all.  This is a different time, different circumstances and a different grope for power.  What Americans should panic about is Mr. Zakaria’s being given space to spin his anti-American vitriol.  Would it be out of line to ask from which university Mr. Zakaria received his degree in history?