How many times does Bloody Bill Kristol get to be wrong about everything before he's drummed out of polite society? Here he is on ABC's This Week ignoring completely that it's the policies he has endorsed that have resulted in the Middle East being "in flames" to begin with, claiming that coming to a peaceful deal with the Iranians on their nuclear program will make it worse and blaming the turmoil in the region on President Obama pulling our troops out of Iraq.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to get into the politics in just a minute.
But Fareed, let me begin with you on this tangle the United States is now in with Iran. We're negotiating with Iran in Switzerland. We're fighting on the same side as Iran in Iraq and we're allied with those fighting against them in Yemen.
Does that make a deal more or less likely or is there no way to know?
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": I think, you know, the Middle East has become so complicated that the fact that there are some places where you have a greater enemy, like ISIS, should not be that surprising.
What's happened is from Libya to Syria, the entire Middle East has become fragile and unstable because every regime has -- has cracked.
And what you've found is beneath the regime, there was nothing. There were no state institutions. There was no civil society. There actually was no country, that people have -- have withdrawn to their oldest identities.
Nobody is fighting and dying for Iraq or Syria or Libya. They're fighting and dying because they're Shia or Kurds or Arabs...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So in that...
ZAKARIA: -- who...
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- in that kind of a chaotic world, one of the things the administration is already -- is arguing is that this deal with Iran could be a game-changer, could transform the Middle East.
Do you believe that?
ZAKARIA: I think it -- it certainly would help, because it's important to remember what's the alternative.
The alternative to the deal is either a major escalation militarily. It would not be like the Iraq strike, because Iran has a huge nuclear facility. It would take weeks and weeks of bombing. The Iranians would respond in all the countries that they are -- they are active.
Or, you have a situation where no deal, have sanctions, but the Iranians went from 150 centrifuges to 20,000 under sanctions.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Bill Kristol, I know you met Prime Minister Netanyahu this week. You and he disagree.
BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Yes, no, we agree. He's -- here's a little more moderate.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No, disagree with Fareed Zakaria. KRISTOL: Oh, I think he...
(CROSSTALK)
KRISTOL: No, I'm -- Prime Minister Netanyahu is more moderate than I am. We had an argument about that.
(LAUGHTER)
KRISTOL: No, it's a terrible deal that will, among other things, it will legitimate Iranian hegemony, which is already spreading around the Middle East. The Middle East is on fire and a deal with Iran that -- that, in effect, allows it to be a nuclear threshold state makes them pay no price for anything they've done in the past, the cheating and the lying, that lets Fordow, this entrenched facility in a hillside, continue moving -- continue operating.
President Obama himself said you can't allow that for a peaceful nuclear program. Now, he's going to allow it. It will be a disastrous deal. It will make things even worse in what is already a very bad Middle East.
[...]
STEPHANOPOULOS: And then Fareed Zakaria, you know, we just heard Jennifer Granholm talk about Hillary Clinton being a candidate of continuity on the economy. It seems like the Republican candidates are really focused right now on national security, drawing big differences with Democrats on national security.
ZAKARIA: And they are wrong in political terms. There's no question that the public's view of the Middle East is this is one unholy mess, they're all crazy, they'll suck us dry, stay out.
Bill Kristol's father, Irvin Kristol, once wrote in the 1965, I think it was, he said the job of conservatives in those days was to explain to the American people why they are right and American intellectuals why they're wrong. Obama knows that the American people are fundamentally right about this.
KRISTOL: The American people do not like to see America humiliated around the world. They know that the Middle East in flames ultimately is dangerous for us. I totally disagree of this analysis of the American people.
ZAKARIA: Ground troops in Syria and Iraq are not something anyone would support and it would mean the United States would be in the mid one unholy mess.
KRISTOL: Well, I think that it is an unholy mess thanks to the fact that we have totally withdrawn.
You first Bill. You first. You want troops in there so badly, go strap on a gun and let us know how that works out for you. I'd prefer diplomacy myself.
