0 getting their diplomas. thank you for watching state of the union. i'm candy crowley in washington. head to cnn.com/sotu for analysis and extras. if you missed any part of today's show, you can buy it on itunes. fareed sa cara is next for our viewers here in the united states. this is "gps the global public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world, i'm fareed zakaria. let's start the show with a look at syria, guantanamo and how to fix what ails us in america. we have a terrific panel, joe klein, richard haass and anne-marie slaughter. next, salman rushdie thoughts on the bombing in america. what is the easiest way to drive the u.s. deficit down and create jobs? what's a quick and perhaps easy way to drive the u.s. deficit down and create jobs? i will give you a hint. we need to turn illegal in to legal. i'll explain. but first here's my take. those urging america to intervene in syria are sure of one thing. if we had gotten in sooner, things would be better in that war-torn country. had the obama administration gotten involved earlier, there would be less instability and fewer killings. we would not be seen in john mccain's words this week -- >> atrocities on a scale we have not seen in a long, long time. >> in fact, we have seen atrocities much worse than those in syria recently. in iraq, only a few years ago, from 2003 to 2012, despite there being as many as 180,000 american and allied troops in iraq, somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 iraqi civilians died and about 1.5 million fled the country. jihadi groups flourished throughout iraq and al qaeda had a huge presence there. the u.s. was about as actively engaged in iraq as possible. and yet more terrible things happened there than in syria. why? the point is not to make comparisons among atrocities. the point is the situation in syria is much like iraq. we can learn a lot from our experience there. all the features of syria's civil war that are supposedly the result of u.s. nonintervention bloomed in iraq, despite america's massive intervention there. in iraq, under u.s. occupation, jihadi terrorists flourished. they employed tactics that were brutal beyond belief putting electric drills through people's heads and burning others alive and dumping still breathing victims into mask graves. these struggles get vicious for a reason. the stakes are very high. joshua america's leading scholar in syria points out that syria is the last of three great minority rule regimes in the middle east. in lebanon, the first. the christian minority was displaced in a 15-year bloody civil war. in iraq, the u.s. displaced the sunni minority but then fought back brutally. again, a long, bloody civil war. syria is following precisely that battle. the minority regime fights to the end because it fears for its life once out of power. the sunnis of iraq even against the american military because they knew that life under the majority shia would be ugly as it proves to be. the ruling sect in syria will fight even harder because they are a smaller minority and have further to fall. now, would u.s. intervention, no-fly zones, aid to the opposition make things better? well, it depends on what one means by better. certainly intensify the civil war and it would also make the regime of bashar ail-assad more desperate. perhaps assad has already used chemical weapons with his back against the wall, he might use them on a larger scale. if the objective is actually to reduce the atrocities and minimize instability, the key will be a political settlement that gives each side minorities and majority an assurance that it has a place in the new syria. that was never achieved in iraq, which is why despite u.s. troops and influence, the situation turned into a violent free for all. if some kind of political pact can be reached, there's hope for syria. if it cannot, the u.s. assistance to the rebels or even direct military intervention won't change much. syria will follow the pattern of lebanon in iraq, a long, bloody, civil war. the united states will be in the middle of it. for more on this, read my "time" column this week. find a link to it on cnn.com/fareed. let's get started. syria will be one of many topics for today's panel. we'll also talk about boston terror, the gitmo hunger strike. joining me joe klein political columnist for "time" magazine. richard haass president of the council on foreign relations and the thou or of this the book "foreign policy begins at home." and ann-marie slaughter, the future president of the new america foundation. all right. you heard me anne-marie and i think having read your stuff that you disagree with me. why am i wrong about syria? >> in the first place, you're wrong, because this isn't iraq. iraq we were a large part of the problem. we went in, we took out the government, our continue being there contributed to the insurgency and the conflict. i think we should get rid of the various analogies and look at syria as what it is, which is a conflict that has gone on for two years that has killed 70 to 80 thousand syrians, displayed a million or more and is destabilizing the entire region, destabilizing lebanon, turkey, iraq, jordan, throatening possibly israel. just looking at this and then looking at the fact that now the administration has acknowledged that they have been using chemical weapons and indeed there's evidence they have been using chemical weapons since christmas. we have to act. if we do not act, this country will come apart completely. we are looking at five to more years vicious, internal war that then filters in to the region and equally importantly, president obama said if he uses chemical weapons that's a game changer. that's a red line. now they have used chemical weapons and president obama is saying, well, we need to figure out the facts. agree he needs to figure out the facts but he is basically trying to create room for himself so he doesn't have to act. i think his credibility is on the line. his kred sblt on the line with respect to iran and more broadly we need to lead. this problem is getting worse and worse and worse and we have to assemble a regional coalition and actually act. >> i know you are more cautious. tell me about on the chemical weapons piece, does that make a difference? i'm struck that we call them weapons of mass destruction, which was something essentially invented during the bush administration because they were worried that saddam wouldn't have nuclear weapons and so they lumped everything and called it weapons of mass destruction. >> actually predates that. chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction because they're much more local in their effects. on the other hand, we have said that if they were to be used, something of a red line. i think we have to act, as anne-marie said, but there's acting and then there's aking. syria is not the entire chess board. it's one square. how much are we wise to commit there? i would say simply given everything else going on in the region, iran, given what's going on in asia and our strategic requirements to rebuild here at home, we need to limit what we do. second of all, you have to listen to what you have been saying how much are we wise to accomplish given the nature of syria and actually think given the sectarian divides in that country, almost no matter how much we commit, we will not have an outcome that will be commensurate. we do some things, lethal aid and maybe cruise missile strikes and more importantly than what we do is not we do not do in syria. >> do you think obama should have drawn that red line? >> no. i think the president has been talking way too much across the board when it comes to foreign policy. you know, the chinese believe that, the chinese act as if the strongest person in any room is the guy who speaks the least? china it's always the guy who speaks the least. the president with this red line and also with the notion of taking deterrence off the table. and in iran has been making a series of statements that he's going to have to follow through on at some point or another and he may not want to follow through on. you know, i think that the president's actual position on iran would be containment because nobody really wants to go to war there. and, so, i think he has to be a lot more disciplined in the kind of things that he says. he's been very disciplined in the kind of things that he has done. and i think that he's essentially done the right thing in syria. >> can i ask you what you would like it see us do because one thing i'm struck by. people who want to intervene often say that and not only thinking of you, anne-marie, but john mccain inlandcy graham, of course we would never use american troops or do anything that would put us in the middle of it. how are we go going to achieve these fairly ambitious goals. jon stewart said we are going to do it by remote-controlled freedom magic. >> i suppose the only way to get a laugh on such a dismal subject. >> so, a year and a half ago i suggested that we armed those groups that we knew to actually support the principles we would support. exactly the group, the syrian support group who for the first time we're transferring aid to directly 18 months later. we do know who those groups are and we could have been providing them with much more arm as for a long time. as things have escalated, i think we need to be more active. the next thing we could do is take out their air force. right? through cruise missile and air we could make it much harder for him to use chemical weapons. richard, i don't know, assad's father used chemical weapons and killed 20,000 people, possibly up to 30,000 or 40,000 at one go. that's enough mass destruction for me. i can't imagine being subject to a chemical attack. but i would take out his air force and, actually, i think, it is possible to have a no-fly zone or to have safe zones, which would ultimately. what we need to do is tip the balance of power within syria so that the people supporting assad have a reason to come to the negotiating table. we do have a political settlement, but zero incentive for assad and his people to actually negotiate. he's got russia and iran behind him and we want him out. we need to tip the balance of power. >> trying to take out their air force and all that to fly over the whole country, that's called going to war. you have over 5,000 pieces of air defense there. that's a big undertaking. secondly, we won't have a negotiate a settlement here. this is a fight to the finish. among the majority, once they get rid of this regime, the only thing they agreed on was getting rid of this regime. zero agreement about what comes next. we are in for a prolonged civil war in syria. like lebanon, like iraq, sectarian things have to burn out. this is going to take years. and it's going to spill over into lebanon and already has spilled over into lebanon. i'm really worried about hezbollah getting those chemical weapons but i do believe that we have pretty, a lot of evidence now that when we go in the kinetically, the unintended consequences dwarf our original, wonderful intentions or sometimes no so wonderful intentions. >> we will have to take a break right now. when we come back, guantanamo and some of the domestic challenges that president obama faces. mom always got good nutrition to taste great. she was a picky eater. well now i'm her dietitian and last year, she wasn't eating so well. so i recommended boost complete nutritional drink to help her get the nutrition she was missing. and now she drinks it every day. well, it tastes great! 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