Fareed Zakaria, editor and columnist of Newsweek International, spoke about the ambitious plan to launch the Middle East’s first democracy and U.S. foreign policy in the keynote address last week at the Newman Center for the second major Bridges to the Future program of the year.

DU Chancellor Daniel Ritchie and Rev. Paul Kottke, pastor of University Park United Methodist Church in Denver, gave the introductions.

The address focused on the U.S. plan to occupy and form a democracy in Iraq, which costs the U.S. around $86 billion just this year.

Zakaria, though he mentioned the potential problems with the plan and the commitments required to make it work, supported the idea of a Middle East democracy.

“Ultimately what you are trying to do is get at the culture these bad regimes had propagated,” he said.

“The kind of culture where 22-year-old men who have given up hope are brainwashed and beguiled to sacrifice themselves for some greater good,” he said.

He spoke at length about the combined problem of a very young Middle Eastern population and the detrimental influence of radical Islam.

He cited extremists’ “desire to impose the one truth on all” in combination with “the largest youth bulge in the history of the Middle East” as one of the reasons for the culture problems.

In his New York Times bestseller The Future of Freedom, Zakaria writes about the importance of the gradual immersion of foreign countries into democracy.

Buie Seawell, Louis D. Beaumont professor of business education at DU, talked about Zakaria’s ideas on the limits of democracy in foreign countries.

Seawell is the current co-chair of the Bridges of the Future subcommittee Theocracy and Democracy.

“Zakaria is calling our attention to the idea that as soon as there is an election, we (America) leave,” Seawell said.

“If people don’t respect other people’s rights, they will use the democratic process to infringe on those rights.”

“The United States has always been about changing the world, and I believe this will really change the world,” Zakaria said.

Zakaria has been the editor of Newsweek International since October 2000 and currently lives in New York City with his wife, son and daughter.