Graham Piro at the Washington Free Beacon relayed inane CNN comparisons of Iranian terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani with the French Foreign Legion and French president Charles de Gaulle on Thursday night's Anderson Cooper 360.
ANDERSON COOPER: You talk a little bit about Soleimani, the significance of this and also what we have been seeing in Iraq over the last, you know, 24, 48 hours. What is going on?
FAREED ZAKARIA: Sure. So I think everything was said exactly right. Soleimani is difficult to convey how revered he is in Iran. Imagine the French Foreign Legion, at the height of the French empire. This guy is regarded in Iran as a completely heroic figure, personally very brave.
COOPER: I was wondering earlier when Arwa was talking, I was trying to think of somebody, and I was thinking of de Gaulle, although he became the leader of the country, which is not --
ZAKARIA: Right. It's not quite, but yes. It is something he means bigger than any -- Put it this way. Other than the Supreme Leader Khamenei and maybe the president [Rouhani], he looms larger in Iran than almost any other figure. He is regarded as personally incredibly brave. The troops love him, and he has been the kind of mastermind of Iran's policies in Syria, in Iraq.
So when General Petraeus was fighting the Iraq war, the surge, I remember him telling me that Soleimani was his principal antagonist. That was the guy the American generals were bumping up against. Stan McChrystal had, at one point, had to decide whether or not to attack a convoy that had him in it. And it was a big decision because, you know, potentially eliminating Soleimani would have huge blowback.
These comparisons are bizarre, since de Gaulle led French resistance to the Nazis in World War II, while the Iranian Islamists revere the Nazis and deny the Holocaust. Mark Levin tweeted Piro's article and called Cooper "frighteningly stupid."
It's also odd since Zakaria has compared Trump to Hitler and suggested Trump supporters were "self-destructive whites," asking "Why is Middle America killing itself?" He's suggested "Fox News is a favorite of ISIS...playing into ISIS's dreams of a grand battle against America." Zakaria has advised that you never respond to terrorism with violence: "A well-planned attack on the West, followed by a swift and violent response that further stokes the fires of jihad. Will the West make these mistakes again?"
Notice how Zakaria twice underlined that Soleimani was revered as "very brave" or "incredibly brave." The media elites do not understand how their tendency to describe the viewpoint of Iranian Islamists who chant "Death to America" with utmost objectivity is an ugly contrast with their tendency to demean and disparage the viewpoint of American Trump supporters with utmost bias.
See Curtis Houck's CNN roundup for much more analysis of CNN's highly partisan Soleimani coverage.
