Has Thomas Friedman gone insane?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/opinion/30FRIE.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20L%20Friedman


I used to think he was just selling out his credibility so he could get a show with Fox or MSNBC. After I read this attempt at a eduacated answer to the problems facing the world. I can certify that he's just simply lost his mind. Our there any DUers in the NY area that can help me go to the 'Times' and capture Thom and put him in a straight jacket. PM it's for our and his best intrest.

I think liberals and Democrats need to openly acknowledge that the world contains alot of sadistic, evil people who will kill for political or religious reasons.

Liberals need to acknowledge that terrorism is not Bush's fault. It has been around for decades (or even hundreds of years).

Something needs to be done about this global problem of terrorism, but Bush is not the answer or the solution to this problem. He only makes it worse with his pre-emptive policies and aggressive posturing.

In short, we need to present a better alternative to fighting terrorism than the Bush/PNAC doctrine of American world supremacy and pre-emptive war.

=============

Check out "Terror and Liberalism" by Paul Berman (he's a member of the editorial board of Dissent Magazine).

He does a good job of spelling out what we need to do.

liberals don't deny terrorism, shoot our founding fathers were considered terrorist, nor that something must be done.

the elite and therefore their spokespersons - TF - don't like talking about the inconvenient history of the terrorist in the ME and our role in not only funding, training and supporting them but conceiving then CREATING many of them either DIRECTLY or indirectly through our policies that exacerbate the problem but is FORBIDDEN to be discussed.

breaking it down to this simplistic false black and what polemic is what the masters of propaganda get paid for because it is very effective if your never informed.

peace

The truth you speak my friend:)

i must have missed the part about the contenential army fire-bombing churches full of british loyalists, or bombing markets full of women and children. the founding fathers used guerilla warfare, but to label them terrorists is uneducated and wrong.
yes, our policies of the past are coming back to haunt us as a nation, but do you really think buying them off and/or ignoring them and/or talking to them as we have done since the late 70's will solve these problems?? no, sad as it is aggression has opened up some of these countries and only by using force and diplomatic means will we accomplish something that might last in the ME.
also, who has forbidden debate on our past policies???

The founding fathers can be considered terrorists from the perspective of Skynet, because a time-traveling Ben Franklin crashed the Wright Bros. plane into the Main Data Core, thus liberating thousands of Fraggles from the Soylent Green production line.

We did attack British merchant ships didn't we. They had nothing to do with the British army did they? No. We did execute British loyalist as traitors did we not? Yes, so by definition they are terrorist.

He was trying to justify the attack on Iraq by trying to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussain. The BCF hasn't caught Bin Laden and has yet to hold the Saudi's to their 9/11 involvment. Liberals know the problems of international terrorism and have tried to fight against it and asked for investigations into 9/11. It's the BCF that have done everything to stop a 9/11 inestigation. I'm insulted that you feel Liberals don't care about stoping global terrorism.

is that they equate Al Quaida terrorism with the Baath party and Saddam. That pisses me off to no extent.

The two also try to paint it as though those that opposed this war with Iraq are somehow appeasers of Saddam and Al Quaida.

Sorry, I am neither an apologist for terror, or for stupid, unecessary, and unjustified wars. Many of us, did support the action taken against Afghanistan because it was fairly clear that the Taliban had allowed terrorist groups free reign in setting up terririst camps. I can honestly now say I feel like I was duped into believing this administration on anything -- especially that it would capture/ kill Ossama and other top personall of Al Quida.

Not only that, but this admionistration has done absolutely NOTHING about the true epicenters of terrorism -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In fact Bush has simply handled the former with kiddie gloves and has not released any damning them in the 9/11 report. As for the latter, our administration has simply given them a few billion in military aid, further fueling an unstable region.

To his credit, Friedman is right about the problems in the Arab world, especially regarding democracy and freedom. That said, his naive belief that a "free" Iraq would blossom through American intervention is foolish at best. Friedman has especially gone overboard in his French bashing. I never did understand why it was the French's responsibility to march lock and step with American foreign policy, especially when that policy would lead to such disaster.

:grr:

One day this is going to be looked upon as huge overreaction; or as John Stewart titled it for a while "America Freaks Out."

It's all about proportionalality. We do not live in a risk free world and we never will. We ask government to do certain things to keep us reasonably safe, and we pay for them. But we don't have a police officer for every person or a firefighter for every house because at some point the costs outweigh the benefits. We have yet to apply that clear thinking to terrorism.

The war on terror is not against defeatable states. It's not even against a defeatable enemy. It's a war against tactics -- tactics that have been used against Americans before -- The Unibomer, Timothy McVeigh, the guy who poisoined Tylenol capsuls several years ago, and you can't win a war against tactics. We'll never be free from terrorism or its threat. Not unless we submit to the most intrusive, most expensive and unprecedented surveillence and monitoring the world has ever seen. And even that won't work in the long run.

Here's my prediction. More people died in 2001 from drunk drivers, medical mistakes, or hand gun deaths than died on 9.11. One day, we will come to understand that waging pre-emptive war as a means of fighting terrorists is ludicrous. It costs us more than we gain.

We are going to come to understand that a world where a Tim McVeigh, or a Ted Kazinsky can come along and kill is the world we prefer. We will find it, utlimately, preferable to a world where our sons and daughters are fodder for perpetual, impulsive foreign wars; preferable to a world where the government and corporations team up to surveil, document, profile and detain citizens should something look amiss; preferable to a world where education, health and happiness are increasingly scarce commodoties because our wealth is spent on the illusion of perfect safety.

And you know what? Accepting the risk will make us safer. What an incentive it must be to a potential terrorist to know that, if his cards are played right, he can send the US into an expensive and distracting endeavor of undeserved proportions. How satisfying it must be to today's terrorists to see how quickly and easily America capitulated on its sacred freedoms. Could they have hoped for any greater consequnce than the fear that motivates us now?

Take those incentives away, let the terrorists know that they will be efficiently caught, swiftly tried and justly punished; let them see that their actions will have zero consequence on our way of life; let them, and us, come to know the true meaning of "the home of the brave;" let their actions become inconsequential, and we will have won the war.

Yes it was an overreaction. 13 guys with box cutters......SADAAM HA NUKES AND CHECMICALS! It was ludicrous. The average American was goaded into this by fear mongering.

But this doesn't mean that we don't need to invest time and energy in developing the right plan. How do we use our money and military and political influence in the world to reduce the problems like failed states and terrorism.

see my post below there is some good stuff there.

I haven't seen too much discussion of your point that we cannot eliminate terror. The price we are being asked to pay in the "War on Terror" -- in treasure, in lives, in civil liberties, in our states of mind -- is too high, especially when it can't buy what Bush is promising. The few practical things we could do, like coordinating intelligence, securing the ports better, regulating chemical industries, and keeping the National Guard here in case of emergencies, are being opposed by the Bush administration.

Your point that potential terrorists now know that they can turn the nation upside down is especially important. The passage of the Patriot Act, creation of the Homeland Security Department, and the detentions without due process are direct contradictions to the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. We resist terror better by not allowing it to change us (your point) than by this ghastly war.

to justify his horrible decision to side with Bush and his little war. He is losing the struggle and probably will need mind altering substances before long.

He is trying to justify his hardcore support of the war, but I do think he is right that we need to take this issue away from Bush/PNAC and make it our own issue and fix it our way.

I think we need to pull our troops out before more of our soldiers are killed in a unjust war. You can take away fighting terror from the BCF by not continuing the Iraqi slaughter.

Bush and his administration have made a thorough wreck of initialising the war. But even if we could push a magic ejector button on the Bush Administration and have them all sent into quiet exile on a remote island tomorrow, the trauma to Iraq, the Middle East and the Arab, the Islamic world will be intact.

If we don't like the mess he's made, and we don't like his methods of dealing with it, we are rather obligated to come up with some better ways to deal with it ourselves.

The matter won't be going away just because we're angry about it.

Pulling our troops out, letting the people in the land in Iraq build their country and sending them the money to build it how they want:think:

and unworkable. Pulling troops out of Iraq is a good idea and I support doing so. But that will not resolve the abject mess we've made of relationships with the people of Iraq. Even giving them money and backing away slowly will not undo the fact that we have planted the seeds of a violent hatred and a future war, and they've taken root.

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What we use as goverment is not what they want or ever use. They want self rule without are interference and they want it know. They don't want us or anyone else telling them how to do it and we need to honor that.

I think they want help and advice.

They just don't want us telling them what they can and can't do.

We have a moral and ethical obligation to these people that goes beyond 'giving them what they want right this very minute.'

make the situation better?

He's just a Hawk that thinks if we kill enough people in Iraq they'll jump in line with us and make everything better. He just like's Iraqi occupation for the same reasons LBJ liked Vietnam.

The problem is there. Bush fucked up and made a mess.

We need to clean that mess up and make things better.

Pulling out now and leaving the mess behind will allow someone else (someone we don't want) to come in and take over.

Fuck, look at Afghanistan. Warlords have more power than Karzai.

We need to take this issue away from Bush and show the American people (and the world) that liberals are the right people to handle this.

That's the idea of a soveriegn democracy is it not? They get to chose there goverment not us and if we don't like it tough because it's there country not our's the way it should be.

theoretically. But I also know from a keen grasp of history and the obvious that we do them no real favours to back out immediately after handing them monies and giving back the keys to the country.

We have caused a level of upheaval in that country which is far from normal and would not be in place had we not invaded. That level of upheaval leaves a country too vulnerable to predatory rulership, - which is not in it's best interest, - and we have made ourselves responsible for repairing the damage to this country's best interests.

It would be like taking a domesticated animal, starving it, beating it and leaving it in the wild near a wolf pack to fend for itself while saying 'let him take care of himself, it's his right.'

You must be a Clarkie.

When I watched some videos of the Center for American Progress Conference, I was struck with the fact we do not have a foreign policy. There were some really good discussions at this conference about this problem. The participants are people with real experience in this area like former NSC directors, and other former government advisors in this area. Links below if anyone is interested.

Terrorism, failed states, pariah nations these are complex problems, and we need the best minds working on them.


videos of conf

Clarks speech at conf

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Is America Safer?

who believes the occupation of a Iraq was the right thing?

:yourock:

He is fixated--you might even say terrified--by terrorism. Fareed Zakaria had an interesting article on his Website, pointed out by someone else on DU, about how a similar disproportionate obsession with terror on Bush's part is alienating him from practically every other leader in the world, who have better, more pressing things to think about. The reason Bush is focused on terror is because Uncle Karl knows it's the boy's "strong point." Friedman seems focused on it because of Israel.

It would be a tragedy if Democrats spent this upcoming year trying to prove they're more obsessed with terror than Bush is. That's just what Friedman (and Rove, probably) wants them to do.

I forgot that he's jewish:wow: How could I overlook the fact that he just takes pleasure in killing "sand niggers" as him and Dubya calls them.

Man, you are close to being my first ignore.

You think just because he is Jewish, he takes pleasure in killing?

While I despise Bush, I highly doubt he considers people from the Middle East "Sand Niggers." Also, he may be a hawk and view civilians as a sometimes necessary casualty, but I also doubt that Bush likes to kill people.

Bush when asked about a women that was up to be executed in Texas for murder, why when she asked to be spared and the Pope told him not to kill her as well because she was 'saved'. Bush actually laughed about it and said that she was hjust begging. He takes utter and complete pleasure in killing people you don't believe me ask Molly Ivins, ask Jim Hightower they'll verify what I say. As for Friedman, working with Jewish people and asking them about the Israil situation I can say that a majority of jewish people want peace. Friedman is just a zionist that want's to kill "Sand Niggers" like GWB likes to kill anything. Don't acuse me of being a Anti Semite please:)

back off saying that all Zionists want to kill "Sand Niggers". I have no doubt that some Zionists may feel that way, but the larger group just want a Jewish homeland and would prefer not to kill anyone. Plus, I thought that Freidman backed Palestinian Statehood?

Also, Bush may be uncompassionate and cold hearted, but I believe that he really thinks he is doing the right, moral thing by executing convicted criminals.

Bush sees things in Black/White. I think that is the single most frightening thing about him. He doesn't look for the reasons behind something. He just reacts to it in an aggressive manner.

A Israili and a zionist are two different things my friend. A Israili wants to have a Jewish homeland and a peaceful Palestinian neighbor. A zionist wants a expansion of Israil by killing all arabs around him and taking their land away from them because 'God says it's there's'. That's what I'm talking about my friend.

A Zionist is just someone who believes in a Jewish homeland, and there are many different kinds of zionists, including those who favor a two-state solution. There are even zionists who favor Tony Judt's binational single state solution--the original zionists, I just read, among them. You're confusing Likudism with Zionism as a whole. Rabin's Labourites are also Zionists.

I guess you're right about that. I think of a zionist as one of those Sharon animals. I think of the other "zionist" as just Israili's though.

They wanted to create self-sufficient communities throughout Palestine. It was enough for them that they were in Israel; they didn't need a state apparatus grabbing land from their Arab neighbors to justify their existence. They would create their own justification, in peace with their neighbors, on the small parcels of land they had legitimate claim to. It's a tragedy that that simple, village-oriented, communtiy-oriented idea did not become the Israeli idea. A binational state would have naturally followed from that plan.

No, just because he's Jewish doesn't mean he automatically hates arabs. However, whenever he writes about arabs he has a very condesending attitude about them. Anything that hurts arabs is a good thing because somehow their culture is retarded and deficient. To me he's the worst kind of racist...

You're right about Friedman being a condescending son of a bitch.

He made it a point to break all records in Texas. He even bragged about it in the second debate.

But I'll grant you that Friedman is probably not a straightforward Likudite-style, Sharonite Zionist. Nevertheless, his thinking about the Middle East is filtered through a pro-Israel lens, at least to the point that he can't seem to see the problem Israel quite naturally poses to Arabs in the region--and it's a problem that has less to do with religion than with colonialism. The central fact about Israel that its apologists fail to see--or refuse to see--is that it's there because Europe and the US put it there. And now we expect the Arabs to be nice and just accept this bit of latter-day colonialism?

Friedman and the PNACers alike want to believe that the US can fix the whole problem by condescending to teach the Arabs how to be modern "liberal democrats"--meaning corporatist Republicans, actually. Wouldn't it be loverly if that did the trick? But it won't. The very best that can be hoped for is that the Israel problem will be buried long enough until some magic bullet is invented to deal with it when it inevitably resurfaces sometime down the road. That is such a naive "plan!"

I know of no particularly convincing evidence that Friedman was previously sane.

:)

Nice work my friend.:)

Friedman also wrote in one of his columns that India is the example arab countries should follow, because they know about computers and stuff. He worships capitalism, and believes that if arabs could just buy more stuff everything will be o.k.

His logic (or lack of it) is just bizarre, but he's so conceited because he won the Pulitzer. I don't think that award means much.

Our CIA has overthyrown democracy's in Iraq and Iran to put in Dictators of our likeing. The Baath party are marxist and the Shah is a wingnut king. So you can blame our CIA for all of those problems.

Actually, according to TF's book (who knows if its correct), the people of IRAN have the HIGHEST opinion the US of all middle east, because we are against their current despots (the ones who booted the Shah). Again TF could be blowing sand out his butt, but he's been around long enough I tend to listen to some of his rants.

Y'know, why try hard? Hell, he already got the prize! It's time to rake in the cash now, Jack!! :-( (there is no emoticon to express my feelings).

He is a condescending son of a bitch if I've ever seen one. How does one when a Pulitzer BTW?

"But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot."

yeah... sure it is Tom. I am sure our past history in the ME or the rest of the world has 0 bearing on your opinion, obviously, but lets just consider recent history like kuwait and even newer still afghanistan.

doesn't look like democracy from here.

"For my money, the right liberal approach to Iraq is to say: We can do it better. Which is why the sign I most hungered to see in London was, "Thanks, Mr. Bush. We'll take it from here." "

yeah... in your DREAMS - lol

in case you haven't noticed the radical neoCON admin at the helm doesn't take orders, let alone advice from ANYONE, yes, including our 'shoulder-to-shoulder' best buds, and ARE the primary reason there is so much hate and violence directed at the west currently on an ESCALATING path.

sounds like the UBL plan is superior to the bush doctrine up to this point - that might have something to do with UBL's plan DEPENDING upon harsh reprisals and unilaterial behavior by us which - unfortunately for us civilians - is aparantely a central doctrine of the neoCONs 'strategy'

folks around the world see BUSH as the greatest threat to world peace and they are concerned, since nobody seems to be listening to what they think, hello... and are taking it to the streets as usual.

yeah, well take it from here tom...

thank GORE he 'invented' the internet ;->

peace

Because only in someone's wildest hillucinations could that statement make sense.

i'll give him that :evilgrin:

:hi:

peace

Does a panda eat bamboo? :D

That's a creative answer:7

Hell, he was one of the IMF's "Boys From Brazil". Can't get much more elite-pleasing than that!

IMF please? Is that Internationla Monetary Funds?

The contradictions in his arguments are so obvious--and his thinking so muddled and confused, that he really should be relieved from duty by his editors.

I notice that his frequent TV appearances have begun to taper off a bit.

Maybe some of his colleagues are getting the message that this is one SICK puppy.

Perhaps me and you can get together with a net and straight jacket. Go to the Whore Times and catch Thom with the net then put him in the Jacket for his own good. We'll take him to the asylum and let the psychiatrist figure him out.

medical sense....he is a harassed little man with a immense respect for the power of raw bullying.
A respect that can only come from having been bullied and abused as a child.
No joke I used to sorta like T.F. until I caught one of his craven whiny performances on the "Imus in the Morning Program"...the senescent host would make this vaguely threatening statements to Friedman like "yer not one of these pablum puking liberals are you Tom?"
Friedman's voice would then go up a full octave as he frantically tries to prove his war-like bona fides to Imus' degenerate crew....
I can recall Tom screeching praise for Don Rumsfeld's Strangelove-esque toughness whilst Imus chuckled indulgently.
Honestly has Friedman ever heard any of his groveling bootlicking appearances on playback?
How does he live with himself?

www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

He's following the typical path of the neocon, just on a longer arc with more steps in between.

James Zogby has a good definition of neocons:

"Neo-conservatism is the secular political philosophy that defined the reaction of a group of former liberals to what they felt was the Democratic party's policy of appeasement toward the Soviet Union--most especially the USSR's treatment of its Jewish population and its relations with the Arab world. They were a small but influential group of writers, commentators and government officials."


Terrorism has simply replaced communism in the neocon worldview.

To me it means people that want the creation of empire's by any means possible.

or, if you prefer, propagandist.

But I still gravitate toward insane.

:shrug: