Friedman: Fighting 'The Big One'

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/opinion/24FRIE.html

In the wake of the bombing of the U.N. office in Baghdad, some "terrorism experts" (By the way, how do you get to be a terrorism expert? Can you get a B.A. in terrorism or do you just have to appear on Fox News?) have argued that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is a failure because all it's doing is attracting terrorists to Iraq and generating more hatred toward America.

I have no doubt that the U.S. presence in Iraq is attracting all sorts of terrorists and Islamists to oppose the U.S. I also have no doubt that politicians and intellectuals in the nearby Arab states are rooting against America in Iraq because they want Arabs and the world to believe that the corrupt autocracies that have so long dominated Arab life, and failed to deliver for their people, are the best anyone can hope for.

But I totally disagree that this is a sign that everything is going wrong in Iraq. The truth is exactly the opposite.

--snip--

We may fail, but not because we have attracted terrorists who understand what's at stake in Iraq. We may fail because of the utter incompetence with which the Pentagon leadership has handled the postwar. (We don't even have enough translators there, let alone M.P.'s, and the media network we've set up there to talk to Iraqis is so bad we'd be better off buying ads on Al Jazeera.) We may fail because the Bush team thinks it can fight The Big One in the Middle East — while cutting taxes at home, shrinking the U.S. Army, changing the tax code to encourage Americans to buy gas-guzzling cars that make us more dependent on Mideast oil and by gratuitously alienating allies.

We may fail because to win The Big One, we need an American public, and allies, ready to pay any price and bear any burden, but we have a president unable or unwilling to summon either.

[The Zanti Regent]

1. Tommy lives in a Dream World

He still lives in his Lasseiz-fairyland along with his fellow Neo-cons!

[KG]

2. tom friedman - american moron

hey tom, still trying to justify your cheerleading this clusterfuck?

try just disappearing - you're embarrassing yourself.

[MaverickX]

5. hypocritical

try just disappearing - you're embarrassing yourself


Oh so no one has the right to publically disagree with you. How open minded. Can't DUers allow any dissent from popular DU opinions?

[salin]

6. Read that as a comment about Friedman

and his iraq war rationalizing rather than a comment about a DUer.

Btw, I have been curious - what is the story and meaning of your sig cartoon?

[MaverickX]

13. my sig cartoon was in...

A NY Times article about how conservatives attach the word Leftist to anyone they disagree with. And also, anyone who calls Friedman a Bush apologist must not read Friedman too much. I don't agree with him on everything but when I don't that doesn't make him a Bush apologist. You people are just cultlike calling anyone who disagrees with you slightly a conservative. You guys are just as bad as them and throwing around the word leftist.

[KG]

8. not open minded when it comes to bush apologists.

not open minded when comes to assholes like friedman giddily parroting the chimps 'they thought we would just sue them, but we went over and kicked thier ass' blather like i heard the little twerp say on 'fresh air'.

not open minded when it come to cheerleaders for illeagal and immoral invasions. not openminded to RW ass-kissers and boot lickers.

fuck tom friedman and his 'ilk'. fuck the blitzers, zahns, limbaughss, hannitys, savages.

and if some think that's hypocritical well then: tuff shit, i'm a hypocrite.

like i give a shit.

[scarletwoman]

3. Ugh, Friedman -- that smarmy apologist for Empire...

Get a clue, Thomas -- "...some "terrorism experts"... have argued that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is a failure because all it's doing is attracting terrorists to Iraq..." -- this is PRECISELY the plan.

The bush cabal has even said so. It was just a week or two ago where one of those powermad lunatic pet neo-cons said that "...attracting all sorts of terrorists and Islamists..." to a nice centralized location like Iraq was actually a GOOD THING because that would make it easier for the military to kill lots of them all at once.

Unfortunately, Friedman is far worse than merely a useless idiot, he is a bigoted Arab/Islamaphobe, and his delusional ravings are taken as respectable and respected opinion by a public which much prefers comfortable lies over painful truth. Read what the Germans swallowed from THEIR propaganda machines in the 1930's to understand how easily this sort of thing works.

sw

[MoonAndSun]

4. Tommy Boy needs to go to Iraq and do his part in helping

this administration establish democracy in this country. He sits at home in NYC and writes his fairytales while sipping his after-dinner cocktail and truly believes this is going good. He is beyond any hope.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Friedman strikes out again

It's time to send this guy back to the minors.

We are attracting all these opponents to Iraq because they understand this war is The Big One. They don't believe their own propaganda. They know this is not a war for oil. They know this is a war over ideas and values and governance. They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the U.N., coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq — a country that contains all the main strands of the region: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Horsepucky. It is a war for oil. If it is a war for anything else, it is a war for water rights and anything else that Iraq has that can be sold out from under the Iraqi people by a US colonial government.

One wonders whether Friedman believes his own propaganda.

You'd think from listening to America's European and Arab critics that we'd upset some bucolic native culture and natural harmony in Iraq, as if the Baath Party were some colorful local tribe out of National Geographic. Alas, our opponents in Iraq, and their fellow travelers, know otherwise. They know they represent various forms of clan and gang rule, and various forms of religious and secular totalitarianism — from Talibanism to Baathism. And they know that they need external enemies to thrive and justify imposing their demented visions.

More horsepucky. Those of us who opposed the war ahead of it and continue to oppose the colonial occupation of Iraq know exactly what Saddam was. However, we neither believe that the fact Saddam was a murderous tyrant had anything to do the invasion (other than a good point for PR) nor that the world is a better place because a gang of Iraqi murderers has been replaced by a gang of American corporate thieves. Yes, Iraq would be a better place after Saddam's overthorw, if it had been done in the right way. Imposing a foreign rule on Iraq is not the right way.

The occupation is not about bringing democracy to Iraq. It is quite the opposite. One cannot steal natural resources from the Iraqi people without oppressing them. The relationship between the American administration and the Iraqi people is no different than the relationship between the British government and the Indian people before 1948 or the French goivernment and the Algerian people before 1962. The Iraqi people have every right to resist foreign rule and determine for themselves how they shall be governed.

Friedman's attitude towards Arabs in general and Iraqis in particular is condescending and racist. The nation that produced Hammurabi and Harun al-Rashid does not need George W. Bush to show its citizens how to govern themselves. On the other hand, Mr. Bush may very well need the Iraqi people to show him what real liberation looks like.

[bpilgrim]

9. he conveniently leaves out the BIGGEST supporter of totalitarian regimes

in the ME for the past 60 years, US.

and there is no way he doesn't know that. it is simply what his corporate masters want him to say and he knows it so writes it.

he is obviously on the establishments payroll.

he is the most creative one of them though i will give him that. ;->

peace

[Cocoa]

10. the crack at Fox News

it's so glaringly gratuitious.

Just shoring up his reputation as a liberal, for whatever dumb NYT reader that would still believe that.

[Martin Eden]

11. Friedman bites the Big One

He swallows the neocon agenda hook line and sinker, spews it back out with some pseudo-liberal credentials, and expects thinking people to nod their heads at his wisdom.

His biggest delusion is ascribing noble motives to shrubco, and stating this war is not about oil, or empire for that matter. He wrote this sentence in reference to the radical Islamists, but IMO it applies to the neocon cabal he unwittingly fronts for:

"And they know that they need external enemies to thrive and justify imposing their demented visions."

Friedman's other big delusion is his notion that by force of arms we can actually "win" the "big one" in Iraq. Idiots like old Thomas L. are the type that help get us deeper into the quagmire.

The longer we stay, the more Arabs we kill, the worse this whole thing is going to get. We are the foreign invaders -- our rule or the puppet government we install will never be accepted.

[0007]

12. One hell of a article

Hilarious!!

Our media is so bad in Iraq we'd do better to place advertisements with the Arab media. LOL!

[jos]

14. Freidman just keeps embarassing himself

His changing rationales for the war. His call for more of the same policy that has brought us this failure. His failure to acknowledge that the war was wrong, both as a moral and pragmatic matter. And his naive belief that our presence can make the Arab world like a New England town meeting.

This is the best the Times can offer!?