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Tom Friedman is no Ernie Pyle. Mr. Pyle, a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent, was famous for getting off his aircraft carrier in World War Two and for writing his dispatches from the trenches. Ultimately, he was killed in combat in the Pacific. Nor is he Harry Patch, who died yesterday. He was Britain’s oldest and its last surviving ex-serviceman from the Great War. He fought and was seriously wounded at Passchendaele, a series of battles in 1917 that cost hundreds of thousands of killed and wounded. Private Patch said, "War is organized murder, nothing else."
Mr. Friedman, on the other hand, is the poster boy for soon-to-be victory in perpetual war. He repeatedly shouts mission accomplished (almost) from the safe haven of an aircraft carrier or from the safer haven of his wife’s family’s once billion dollar fortune.
After spending a week traveling the frontline of the “war on terrorism” — from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan in the seas off Iran, to northern Iraq, to Afghanistan and into northwest Pakistan — I can comfortably report the following: The bad guys are losing.
Tom didn’t say whether he disembarked from this particular safe have – except to escort Adm. Mike Mullen and his hundreds of bodyguards – to talk with anyone who might not agree with him. Like anyone who really knows the region or anyone on the other side of his war on a political tactic.
None of Mr. Friedman’s war mongering or hubris is news to readers of FDL. What I found interesting was his description of the "losers" in his global conflict:
They have failed to persuade people by either their arguments or their performances in power that their puritanical versions … are the answer. Having lost the argument, though, the radicals still hang on thanks to gun barrels and oil barrels….
Because, while the radicals have failed miserably, [their opponents] … have not really filled the void with reform and good government of their own….
[I]t is obvious that everywhere they have won or seized power, [they] … have overplayed their hands, dragged their societies into useless wars or engaged in nihilistic violence….
To the extent that the radical[s]…have any energy today, it comes not from the power of their ideas or examples of good governance, but by stoking sectarian feuds….
The only way to really dry up their support, though, is…to actually implement better ideas by producing less corrupt and more consensual governance, with better schools, more economic opportunities and a vision…that is perceived as authentic yet embracing of modernity…. Until that happens, the…radicals will be bankrupt, but not out of business.
I may be a little confused, but that sounds a lot like today’s Republican Party.
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I’m sure it will all be straightened out – in one FU.
Whomever Tom was describing, Arabist or Moslem radicals that provoke his ire, or Republicans the provoke the ire of many others, his prescription applies to the Obama administration as much as it does to moderate government in the Middle East:
The only way to do that here, as in the Middle East, is to embrace reform and reject the arch conservatism of his peers and opponents.
I really don’t understand what alternate universe Friedman lives in. I have about given up wasting my time reading his stuff, but tried again this morning with his NYT piece. I started to disgorge my coffee after the first paragraph.
The only thing he is good at is to be an apologist for Israel.
Tom’s as much an abject apologist for aggressive, conservative Israelis as Brooks is for Republicans.
The beauty of that quote is that Tom’s stupidity and lack of self-awareness is such that he typed that up (or more likely, had it typed for him…) without even getting the joke. He’s probably wearing pancake right now, repeating it proudly on TV, as the irony sails over his head. Great catch.
Friedman’s whole career has been about comfort, his own. His convoluted prose, his arguments where he constantly mistakes coincidence for causation, his self-involvement and lack of self-awareness are legendary. Irony is for Friedman something the servants do with his shirts.
It is amazing how self-serving and intellectually suspect are the pundits the Times amasses. One would think pandering to discrete communities is more important to them than legitimate debate. No wonder it’s desperate to bracket Paul Krugman with “less shrill” voices.
“Aggressive and conservative” is not the voice of all Israelis or American Jews, merely the wing of opinion Mr. Friedman most cultivates.
Friedman’s a legend in his own mind, period.
if you apply the “Friedman is always wrong” rule, this article makes sense
Friedman say we’re winning, so we’re losing
Friedman says the terrorists are losing, so the terrorists are winning
understanding Friedman isn’t that hard
just figure Friedman is 180 degrees from the truth, and you got it
That would make him Mr. 1984, wouldn’t it.
Friedman said USS Ronald Reagan.
So he wins.
beware the jabberwock ..