THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Somebody Else’s Mess

[kevinmc]

George W. Bush delivered his farewell address on Thursday evening — handing the baton, and probably the next election, to the Democrats.

Why do I say that? Because in his speech to the nation the president basically said that on the most important, indeed only, legacy issue left in his presidency, Iraq, there would be no change in policy — that a substantial number of U.S. troops would remain in Iraq “beyond my presidency.” Therefore, it will be up to his successor to end the war he started.

“In one fell swoop George Bush abdicated to Petraeus, Maliki and the Democrats,” said David Rothkopf, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, referring to Gen. David Petraeus and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. “Bush left it to Petraeus to handle the war, Maliki to handle our timetable and therefore our checkbook, and the Democrats to ultimately figure out how to end this.”

The sad thing for the American people is that we have no commander in chief anymore, framing our real situation and options. The president’s description on Thursday of the stakes in Iraq was delusional. An Iraqi ally fighting for “freedom” against “extremists”? There are extremists in the Iraqi government, army and police. There is a civil war on top of tribal, neighborhood and jihadist wars, fueled not by a single Iraqi quest for freedom, but by differing quests for “justice,” revenge and, yes, democracy. The only possible self-sustaining outcome in the near term is some form of radical federalism..........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/09/thomas-l-friedman-somebody-elses-mess.html

[Tom Joad]

1. tf is a cheerleader for war and occupation.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/06/3645/

Reading his “Letter From Baghdad” column in the New York Times on Wednesday, you’d never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war. Now he laments that Iraq is bad for the United States — “everyone loves seeing us tied down here” — stuck in the “madness that is Iraq.” And he concludes that the good Americans who have been sent to Iraq will not be deserved by Iraqis “if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids.”

The column, under a Baghdad dateline, is boilerplate Friedman: sprinkled with I-am-here anecdotes and breezy geopolitical nostrums. For years now, the man widely touted as America’s most influential journalist has indicated that his patience with the war in Iraq might soon run out. But, like the media establishment he embodies, Friedman can’t bring himself to renounce a war that he helped to launch and then blessed as the incarnation of virtue.

On the last day of November 2003 — eight months after the invasion — Friedman gushed that “this war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan.” He lauded the Iraq war as “one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad.”

But the assumptions built into a Friedman column are murky outside the context of his worldview. “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist,” Friedman wrote approvingly in one of his explaining-the-world bestsellers. “McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Here's a strange thing from Friedman, the arch-free trader and 'flat world' promoter

There is an opportunity now for Democrats, and Americans will be listening — but they need to articulate a concrete endgame policy, and it would have to include at least three components:
...
Second, a commitment by the next president to impose a stiff tariff on all imported crude oil, to make sure we become less dependent on what is sure to be a more unstable Middle East as we leave Iraq.

Suddenly, Friedman doesn't want an open market in oil - instead he wants to use tariffs for political reasons. That would be excellent news for domestic producers, of course - they'd be able to make more money on what they extract, while imported oil (which couldn't be totally eliminated) would have to work on the minimum profit margin possible. I wonder how that would work with NATFA - Canada and Mexico are the 1st and 3rd largest exporters to the US. 2nd and 4th are Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Hmm.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

[Joanne98]

2. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[bemildred]

3. Oh for Gods sake shutup. nt

[Rydz777]

4. Friedman is a pompous little twit. n/t

[Kahuna]

5. I want some of the drugs he's on...

:eyes:

[old guy]

6. If there is anyone on earth less relevant than John McCain,

it would be Friedman!!! Why does he even have a job?

[amandabeech]

7. I can't wait to hear his views on Iran and Syria.

This guy belives his own press releases more than anyone I have ever known.

I have a couple of friends, one a very good journalist, who until very recently, thought that he was god. I haven't raised the issue with them, but I hope that they're satisfied.

[chimpymustgo]

9. "Friedman units", anyone? The man's a parody.

-snip-

Friedman (unit)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.<1> A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months.<2><3><4><5><6><7><8> The Huffington Post cited it as the "Best New Phrase" of 2006.<9>

The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing journalist Thomas Friedman's repeated use<10> of "the next six months" as the period in which, according to Friedman, "we're going to find out...whether a decent outcome is possible" in the Iraq War. As documented by FAIR, Friedman had been making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: "The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."<11>

The term has been used in general to describe any pronouncement of a critical period for the U.S. occupation of Iraq.<7> Such pronouncements have been made by numerous politicians and military officials involved in the war.<12><13><14>

-snip-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_(unit)