Dear Editor,
After being intrigued by Fareed Zakaria's book The Future of Freedom, I began following his column in Newsweek. I've been trying to reconcile his book's seemingly conservative wariness of unalloyed and immediate democracy with his subsequent (typically leftist) criticisms of US actions in Iraq and his support for less American and more UN/international leadership in that conflict. In "Hail to the Flip-Flopper" (NW 14 Feb 2005), he criticizes President Bush for changing from a 'go-slow' stance on Iraq elections to a (Sistani inspired) insistence on holding to the January vote. But a 'go-slow' approach is exactly what Zakaria himself strongly advocated in his book! His desire to attack Bush is apparently stronger than that to maintain intellectual honesty and consistency.
Steven P Sawyer