Dear New York Times: Can You Fire Tom Friedman Soon?
Pleasepleasepleaseplease?
Posted on July 14th, 2006 by Brad
Shorter Tom Friedman: “America’s experiment in exporting democracy to the Middle East is failing because the people of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine have inexplicably elected governments that are hostile to our interests.”
Above: The Moustache of Understanding has finally started to short-circuit.
Inexplicable only to those living in a Lexus made from olive trees!
My boss had a shorter Shorter Friedman:
There was a post-9/11 experiment in democracy in the Mideast.
I’ll start reading him again in about six Friedmans.
Seriously.
I bought a times this morning on my way to work and something about that piece grabed me the wrong way. I think it was Friedman’s tone; the wording made it feel like the “experiment” in democracy was done in a lab, not in a world filled with turmoil, death and volitile hostility. It was as though he genuinely felt that the people of the Middle East weren’t actual people, but sea monkies that that shockingly didn’t do exactly what he hoped they would.
I get the feeling he thought the earth was much flatter than I gave him credit for. He comes across pretty naive for a man who has travelled the world in search of the perfect mixed-metaphor.
Well, one thing’s for certain, the world may not be much flatter thanks to our noble experiment in democracy, but Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine certainly are.
Once again, I would love to grab cheney by the lapels, shake him, HARD, and scream in his face “Just what the fuck did you THINK would happen”? I mean, the authoritarian dictators that have had the power in places like Iraq, Yugoslavia, Congo knew that they were unpopular. They knew that, allowed to make their own political decisions, the populations would choose leaders who represented THEM, their beliefs, their aspirations.
So now the bush/cheney cabal is left in the stoopid position of lauding the freely elected sectarian repressive theocratic regime in Iraq while demonizing, threatening war and attempting “regime change” on the freely elected sectarian repressive theocratic regime in Iran. And once again, Americans are too busy with American Idol and Tom and Katy’s baby to notice the disconnect…
mikey
Damn them for their freedom of choice.
Well duh! Can somebody please provide all of the wingnuts out there a history of Iraq? How stupid do you have to be, to not be capable of understanding that these people don’t like outsiders? Hell just look at the history of man.
And once again, Americans are too busy with American Idol and Tom and Katy’s baby to notice the disconnect…
d00d, catch up with the times. Our eyeballs are glued to So You Think You Can Dance — man can that Travis move…
Seriously, though — I think there’s a serious flaw in the notion that “all people want to be free.” As John Dean’s recent book posits, at least a quarter of human beings derive fullest satisfaction in life from filling a rung on the social ladder / pecking order (how else to explain support for BushCo tax cuts to the wealthiest 2%?). The American experiment is a peculiar one to human history, and while it’s a nice notion to dream about it spreading across the globe, we should also respect the fact that we’ve had our form of government for 10 generations — whereas some of the societies in the Middle East are only a couple of generations removed from bunking with fucking camels.
Mikey – Not to mention the democratically elected palestinian govt that saw the enitre world cut off aid funds immediately, and then when arab countries pledged to make up for it, the west and Isreal put so much pressure on the banks they wouldn’t even transfer the money.
Yeah freedom and democracy everywhere, except when we don’t like the results, then it’s a do-over. I suppose years from now, it’ll worth it to say that the Iran friendly islamic republic that rules Iraq was at least a *democratically elected* Iran friendly Islamic republic.
Friedman’s always struck me as an ethnocentrist — he has that mindset that the great American saint is taking pity on the swarthy brown masses and giving them the gift of democracy, and those ungrateful little shits better use it the way we want them to.
I think it was Devo who said it best…
It’s Gil Grissom in a fake mustache!
He’s probably just disguising himself as this Thomas Friedman character to go undercover and solve the case of a man who was bludgeoned to death with his own economics book.
That explains the incompetance.
Let’s all repeat after me:
The only acceptable propaganda spin allowable for the US to leave the Iraq occupation — the only one that ever existed before we went in — was to blame the locals for their own failures.
Any, any, any other spin makes it seem like Our Leaders have erred not just their tactics but in their goals, which is Not Allowed in polite US society, ever.
John Kerry even recognized this and thus prepared us to blame the Iraqis for failing to stand up. He did it not just because he might believe it, but because he has begun to understand the ideological system in which we live.
Again:
If our Iraq invasion and occupation has not gone well, it is *their* fault.
*Their* being a flexible term, allowing difference excusionistas to give their own pardons. For the more pompous pseudo-literary figures like Friedman, it will be ‘the state of Arab democracy,’ for others it’ll just be ‘the non-JudeoChristians.’
If our Iraq invasion and occupation has not gone well, it is *their* fault.
El Cid, for the residents of Blogostomyâ„¢, they is *the libruls*.
Did something happen to Tom and Katie’s baby?!?!?!?!
“Did something happen to Tom and Katie’s baby?!?!?!?! ”
They found out it wasn’t LRon who reincarnated…it was Xenu!
I was finally guilted into reading the Lexus/Olive tree Friedman.
Granted with 6 or more years of hindsight the book seems to be pithyly weak warmed over internet democratizer hoopla crap.
But it had a nice design on the cover.
It’s too bad your leaders never picked up a dusty copy of Civic Culture.