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Tom Friedman's Latest Declaration of War
Today's a very exciting day in America. Our nation's most Serious foreign policy expert, the brilliant Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, has today declared our latest new war:
The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president -- but this cold war is with Iran.
So congratulations to us. After years of desperately searching, we've finally found our New Soviet Union. Nay-saying opponents of the New War (those who Tom Friedman, in March of 2003, dismissed as "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists") may try to point out that it's a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own, has never invaded another country, and could not possibly threaten us, but those are just small details. Iran is our new implacable foe in Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggle -- which, in 2003, on NPR, he called "the beginning of World War III . . . the third great totalitarian challenge in the last, you know, 60 years," and which he today defines this way (featuring an amazingly disingenuous use of parenthesis):
That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today -- the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."
Friedman laments that "Team America" -- that's really what he calls it -- "is losing on just about every front." What's most striking about Friedman's formulation is that -- in the 2003 NPR interview -- this is what Friedman said about why 9/11 happened:
I did a documentary last year for the Discovery Channel on the roots of 9/11, and we went with a team all over the Arab-Muslim world for over a period of about six months and interviewed people on what 9/11 was all about. And our conclusion was 9/11 was really fed by three rivers of rage. One was about what we do -- what we, the United States, do, whether it's how we use resources, it's our support for a dictatorial Arab regime so they'll sell us cheap oil. It's our backing for Israel when it does the right thing and when it does the wrong thing. 9/11 is fed, in part, by what we do, OK. . . .
The second and hugely important river of rage feeding 9/11 was a real overpowering sense of humiliation. . . . The Arab Human Development Report told us last year that 22 Arab states, not a single one has a freely and fairly elected government. . . . And the third river of rage is how much these people hate their own governments, governments that keep them voiceless and powerless and prevent them from achieving their full aspirations in a world where they know how everyone else is living.
So 9/11 was caused by our backing of dictatorial Arab regimes, our unconditional support for Israel, our general interference in the Middle East, and the fact that Muslims aren't free. So what does Friedman want to do now? Have the U.S. wage a "cold war" (at least) for dominance in the Middle East alongside our best friends: the dictators and monarchs of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States (plus, incidentally, Israel). In other words, Friedman now wants to do everything that he himself said is what caused 9/11 in the first place.
There's a reason that Friedman occupies the place he does in America's foreign policy establishment. He's perfectly representative of it. It's an establishment in perpetual search of an Enemy and the next war. And finding it (or creating it) is the one thing they do well.
Friedman spent months before the invasion of Iraq continuously supporting and cheering it on based on righteous appeals to the transformational values of freedom and democracy. But once the invasion was complete, he unmasked himself, acknowledging in that NPR interview that the real purpose of the invasion was that the U.S. had to send a message to Muslims generally and "sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head to get that message." That admission was accompanied by Friedman's 2003 "epiphany" on The Charlie Rose Show that the invasion of Iraq was "unquestionably worth doing" because "looking back, I now feel I understand more what the war was about." Only once the deed was done did he magically realize that the real purpose of his war was not, after all, that "a more accountable, progressive and democratizing regime" in Iraq would "have a positive, transforming effect on the entire Arab world" -- as he continuously claimed while convincing Americans to support it.
No, instead, it turns out that the real purpose of invading Iraq, what made it "unquestionably worth doing," was that we needed to invade some Muslim country -- Iraq was just one of many that would have sufficed -- in order, using his words, to "take out a very big stick" and say: "Suck. On. This." That comes from one of the most revealing (and most repellent) three minutes of commentary one can find, illustrating the real face of the Friedman-led American foreign policy class (h/t Atrios):
And now Friedman has shifted his phallic, warmongering eyes from Iraq to Iran. While he denies in passing that he wants to wage actual war on Iran, he says we must find incentives "that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore." In November, he argued that if Barack Obama becomes President, it was urgent that Dick Cheney be his Vice President because "when negotiating with murderous regimes like Iran's or Syria's, you want Tony Soprano by your side, not Big Bird," and thus, Obama needs "a Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm."That's what passes for Serious Foreign Policy commentary in America -- the Most Serious commentary, actually. World War III has started! We need to be like Tony Soprano, threatening everyone with our big baseball bats. Those Muslims -- we can just pick the targets indiscriminately -- need 2-by-4s across their heads to get the message. And the message we need to convey with our baseball bats and 2-by-4s -- still -- is "Suck. On. This."UPDATE: In comments, Rob Mac notes a vital correction.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
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56 Comments so far
Show AllIran never invaded another country? What about the invasion of Greece in 480 BC? What about the invasion and occupation of the Eastern Roman Empire between in the 610s AD? What about Nadir Shah's devastating invasion of northern India in 1739? Iran is a major menace; if we stand by and do nothing, they may invade someone in 2234!
"We need to teach those savages a lesson. They need to be civilized. It is for their own good. Hey Bill, do you think you could go out and shoot all the buffalo? Then those crazy savages would have to start shopping in our stores. Thank God we are here now to teach these people how to live. Don't worry, one day they will thank us."
- Lots of people in early America regarding native Americans
On Tom Friedman's bio, it is stated that as a student, he took "Mediterranean Studies".
Was that Club Med?
Oh, goodie! History hasn't ended after all.
What could be more uncivilized than entering every arguement armed with a baseball bat. I know, I know, lots of things. But still, it is the image of a bully and most I have known usually don't think well, they only react and usually react badly.
"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see me, the world's greatest political and economic thinker, playing golf," Mr.Friedman said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Jeremiah Wright got into all sorts of trouble for saying "the chickens have come home to roost" re 9/11. Apparently Friedman can say the same thing and get away with it - not that he was wrong in 2003
Is this idiot an advisor or anything to any of the preznit candidates? Who is listening to this moron? He is like a virus; who has gotten ill from his illness?
Thanks in advance for any info.
There's a strand of the Democratic party that turned neocon fascist since Bush II and 9/11, and it is personified by Friedman, Billary and Lieberman.
Wanted: decent Democrats -hello Kennedy, Carter, Gore, Dean, Feingold, Kucinich, Obama- to smash them down, not with a 2-by-4, but with moral authority and facts.
And humor. (They deserve to be bombarded with ridicule.)
Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm.
___________________________________
I could be wrong, but this description is pre-Sopranos. My guess is that it was inspired by the memorable scene in "The Untouchables", where Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) presides at a banquet where a known enemy is a guest. Capone makes a little after dinner speech, picking up a baseball bat in the process, and remarks how much he enjoys baseball as he begins to circle the table.
When Capone reaches the chair in which his enemy is sitting, he suddenly and viciously fatally clubs him with the bat.
This is the kind of testosterone-soaked fantasy that neocons savor-- the wealthier and more effete they are, the likelier they are to fetishize about ruthless brute force in the service of "Good".
Put another way, since they believe that their goals (ends) are right and just, that it's perfectly OK to behave like a brutal monster/gangster to accomplish such ends. And, like most career violent criminals, they never see the error of their ways.
What do you expect from a pompous ass who believes that we'll believe "the world is flat" just because he says so. Talk about your pre-enlightenment thinkers. This guy's face ought to be on their flag.
So the billionaire (by marriage) JEW tells the MUSLIMS, "Suck. On. This." This is very helpful.
A cold war is only possible if both sides choose to have one. I hold no brief for the mullahs of Tehran (I think they're largely a bunch of thieves posing as messengers of God -- much like televangelists in the US), but Iran is a major power in the region.
Accommodating Iran's legitimate security needs (look at who its neighbors are) and stepping off the confrontation train makes America safer. It's like LBJ said, I'd rather have them in the tent pi**ing out rather than outside pi**ing in.
Thomas Friedman, Milton Friedman,... Are they maybe from the same inbred family ?
GG's missing the point on this one. When TF says "cold war with Iran," he means cold war with the Coalition of Those Sick Of The United States And Their Big F**king Sticks.
It's "Team America," which includes, er, let's see... Canada (maybe,)... not-so-great-anymore Britain, Israel, The Bahamas, and, er, um...
Versus... Russia, Iran, China, much of Africa, most of Latin America, virtually the entire Middle East, North Korea, and about 100 other countries...
Good thing we got enough Big Nuke Sticks left to "obliterate" all of them if necessary...
BULLSHIT..THE NEXT COLD WAR..IS A COLD CIVIL WAR WITHIN AMERICA..IT IS HERE NOW..AND IS GETTING MORE DESPERATE EACH DAY...
THIS NEW COLD WAR..IS BETWEEN THE FEDERAL LOYALIST FORCES...THE ARMIES OF ZEALOTS WHO SEEM TO FORCE THEMSELVES TO BELIEVE THE UNSUPPORTED "FACTS" OF THE BUSH DOCTRINE...IT IS THESE ZEALOTS..AGAINST THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESSIVES..
ESSENTIALLY..ANY GROUP THAT CHERRY PICKS THE CONSTITUTION..IS ON THE SIDE OF THE LOYALISTS...DO WHATEVER IS NECESSARY TO CONTROL YOUR BEHAVIOUR..
ON THE OTHER SIDE IS ESSENTAILLY ANY GROUP THAT BELIEVES "FIRST AND FOREMOST, THE CONSTITUTION"..PLUS WANTS TO SEE A SURVIVABLE FUTURE..WITH LESS OF THESE "WARS" ON EVERYTHING..NEXT IT WILL BE THE "WAR ON FREEDOM"
Iran basically lost the Iran-Iraq War after 8 long bloody years. They couldn't even threaten Saddam Hussein living next door, let alone threatening the USA from Asia.
According to the delusuional neocon war-profiteers "any enemy can be any thing at any time if the price is right."
"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
-- George Orwell
Anyone reading three sentences of Friedman's puerile, fatuous, simple-minded blather should realize he is an idiot, and never pay any more attention to him. When fools like him rise to the top, and apparently gain a wide audience, what does that say about our country?
"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
"The only way to achieve peace is through total war"
"The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people."
- "Mideast analyst" Michael Ledeen
"Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could."
-Respected Mideast expert Thomas L. Friedman, 2003
What a head case!!! Be very careful who you give three Pulitzer Prizes to. Reading this guy is like reading the stuff put out by Bernard Lewis about Islam.
in six months you will probably agree with friedman
or friedman will agree with someone else
all that is important is the time needed to get better
six months (one friedman unit)
everything else is just window dressing from friedman
and you thought he wouldn't short-circuit six months out from the November election ???
The ultimate stock market coup: to buy Tom Friedman for what I think he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth.
Ignore anyone who writes in ALLCAPS.
Ignore anyone who just spams the same thing into every article's comments.
As a general rule, Orwell usually had things about right.
"There's a strand of the Democratic party that turned neocon fascis"
It goes a lot further back than that.
-Remember, until the Bushes, every American war in the twentieth century was started by a Democratic President.
-The Democratic party has only been anti-war for about two years ... 1972 to 1974, when the popular revulsion with the Vietnam war became so strong that it actually took over the Democratic party.
-There's a long line of 'hawk Democrats'. Sen. Jackson comes to mind. And Senators Nunn and Russell from GA. And this was Al Gore's main role as a US Senator. He was a big proponent of Reagan's "Peacekeeper" nuclear holocaust machines.
-Speaking of nuclear weapons, the only President (so far) to order their use was a Democrat.
-Kennedy in 1960 campaigned on a hawkish platform that accused Nixon and the Republicans from allowing a 'missile gap' with the Russians to occur, and he promised to reverse this.
There's absolutely nothing new about the Democrats being pro-war fascists. The only thing new is the spin word 'neocons' for what's been around for a long, long, time.
Samson,
While I get your point, I do think there's a difference between being keen on defense during the World Wars, or the Cold War, which the United States did not start, and PROVOKING or INVENTING enemies and wars, as the neo-cons and their Democrat collaborators have been cravenly doing.
One feels they're aching for an Arab or Muslim Holocaust. All with evangelical overtones. This is new territory. It's called Insanity.
These people have more in common with Hitler or Mussolini than with Wilson or Truman.
Freidman is the kind of jew who I wish didn't get much press. I know you lefties don't think so, but I think his heart is in the right place, his brain just isn't keeping up.
Iran is no kind of threat to america at all, and of course they are going to be involved in a war on their OWN BORDER! If they invaded mexico, we wouldn't sit back. Take out iran with blue jeans and pepsi, not proxy wars.
"Take out iran with blue jeans and pepsi"
How about leaving Iran alone for a change?
Tom Friedman is a scary person. He likes to appear very intelligent and sensible but he is as much of a war monger as any in the current Bush administration. He lost his moral compass and has become one more republican hack.
Today and the cold war are actually quite similar.
You begin with slanted intelligence. Once the Soviet Union fell, people got to see the internal docs that showed that the CIA had been massively inflating the soviet military expenditures. And that while the US constantly listed the soviets as a threat, they were actually scared of the massive US military build up.
Add in things like us sending nuclear bombers flying towards Russia over the pole on a regular basis, only to turn back at the very last instant, the phrase 'provoking and inventing enemies' seems to apply rather well to the cold war.
The key to all of it is the constant message that we need to give massive amounts of our tax money to 'defense' industries. We change enemies on a regular basis to keep the flow of money alive.
In fact, if you look at the Clinton years what you'd see is basically just a search for the next bogeyman to justify defense spending. Remember the scary Colombian drug cartels that were a threat to American freedom? Or, late in the Clinton admin they were gearing up to make China the next big, bad bogeyman.
Follow the money. The so called defense industries make big contributions to both parties. Both parties repay them with what's now close to a trillion dollars a year of our money. If we didn't have the propaganda bogeymen, someone might sensibly point out that maybe we could spend this money on oh say giving all Americans a free college education. (see other thread today).
So, there always has to be an evil bogeyman enemy. The muslims are just the latest.
We agree.
However it's all the more ludicrous now that our new "enemy" has an economy the size of Finland's.
The soviets had tens of thousands of nuclear missiles.
Iran doesn't have a single one, while their neighbor Israel, our ally, has 200!
And we hear a "progressive" talk of "totally obliterating" 70 million children, women and men.
We hear a "maverick" laughingly sing "bomb-bomb-bomb / bomb-bomb Iran".
We read a "liberal" pundit write about smashing heads with 2-by-4's.
Ann Coulter rules the discourse.
Send this boy off to Texas for a sit-down with the other Friedman, that would be Kinky.
Maybe some plain talk will get his blithering foolishness abated.
I want my country back.
It's not just the world that's Flat. If we hooked him up to some state-of-the-art brainwave technology it too would most likely be Flat!
Is this guy related to "Uncle Miltie"?
wonder6789 - where did you learn history? The US was deeply involved in both world wars (before their involvement was admitted and/or declared and definitely started the Cold War on purpose. With people like you spreading nonsense, who needs freaks like Friedman to do it?
And just who invented this crap about that sick SOB being 'a liberal pundit' anyway? The guy's a fascist pig - a really sick sadistic one at that - through and through. He's a really disgusting sight - right up there with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Lieberman, HRC, and the rest of the fascist pigs. Somebody has him on their website ads and it makes me so sick I can't read it anymore. He looks like a pervert - guess what? He IS a pervert! Sometimes the cover is a dead give-away of what's inside...
One would think that by now the neocons would have no credibility left at all. In every sphere--economic, military, scientific, environmental, foreign policy, constitutional issues, health care, education, energy--they have proven themselves disastrously wrong, shamelessly hypocritical, relentlessly self-serving and arrogantly unrepentant. This cabal of corporate robber barons, fundamentalist kooks, warmongers and imperialists has no shame, learns no lessons and brooks no dissent. What pass for intellectuals in their universe are always wrong but never in doubt.
Tom F. is a complete nut. I saw him a couple of years ago on c-span. He actually was arguing with a person in the audience about little green men from Mars. He was clearly agitated and very uncomfortable. The man he was arguing with seemed to know just how to push Mr. F's buttons. It was something to see. Here was one of America's 'premier' authors losing control on national television. I wish I had taped it. It would be in my collection along side the tape I made of Lansing Michigan resident Lloyd Teets back in 1990 addressing the Lansing city council about the drainage and runoff fees the city was going to impose on the good citizens of Lansing. Mr. Teets was quite a showman and actually made sense whereas Mr. F looked like a mean deranged sob. It was almost embarrasing.
Tom Friedman is Jewish he is writing for NYT what do you guys expect him to write , he sees the American foreign policy as an instrument of Israel's security he is not interested to see if in the current world order
Is it in the intrest of America to side with Arab people and Muslims or not he will not give that a chance, because for him US foreign policy is to grantee a Jewish state even if price of oil reaches 20 dollar per gallon.
He is right to say that American support of Israel the American support of Arab dictators has made Arab people bitter about US that can happen to any body if arab did that to us no body can hide that.
But to change course and correct that it means to take Arab side and that at the end of the day he can not accept because he is first Jewish then American. I do not know when this country will at least understand what the problem is.
For now Mr. Friedman and the NYT mission is to prevent Americans from understanding what the core of the problem is. So if you want to make a problem less understandable you must make it more complicated that is what he is doing.
"Some conversations I have heard in our own countrysound like old records, long playing, left over from the mid Thirties.
The debate of the Thirties had its great significance and produced great results but it took place in a different world with different needs and different tasks....
Let us not engage in the wrong arguments at the wrong time between the wrong people in the wrong country-while the real problems of of our own time grow and multiply, fertilized by our neglect."
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
11 January 1962
Amy Goodman's interview with Gore Vidal today was so refreshing. His heart felt contempt for the Bush people whisks away the facade of respect for office these ignorant conniving swine depend upon and ignorant Americans dependably deliver. Bush is not simply intellectually challenged but also deranged and this illness does not discriminate. Intelligent people like Tom Friedman get it, too. It might be called the Tel Aviv virus. It seems to induce an irrational fear of Muslims. The population of Israel has almost entirely succumbed. 60 years of criminal activity disguised by the rhetoric of righteous self-defense has apparently created such intense collective mental conflict that the immune system weakened and could no longer defend against opportunistic infection, such as this Tel Aviv virus. On the other hand, it could be the result of political genes that activated a fear of extinction at the moment of the foundation of this Zionist dream. The Israelis loath themselves intensely for their failure to behave decently and do not believe they deserve their state, but rather than acknowledge the truth, they blame their neighbors instead.
In any case, Tom Friedman needs to lay down on a couch and tell the doctor all about it. His prognosis is not entirely bleak. Bush, on the other hand, lacks the capacity for any sort of self-examination. If the American people were not themselves broadly deranged, they'd see to the impeachment of this incorrigible man and his crew and undertake to purge the criminals from the government and deprive them of any further political influence.
War monger
NYT's Friedman.
Now Kristol.
I used to hear a rascist moniker for the NYT's which is turning true....sad.
The Grey Lady straight pitches for Israel. While calling itself an American paper. Trust we goy schmucks are laughed at.
Lotta corpses piling up here.
Did you guys know the United States is bankrupt!
I'm amazed that no one (other than Greenwald, thankfully) ever bothers to pick apart the illogical, Rube Goldberg argumentation of Friedman and the rest of America's foreign policy establishment.
armybrat,
Germany had the world's most powerful army at the start of both world wars while the US's was 2nd or 3rd rate.
This is what makes the neocon/Friedman analogies about Iran/"Axis of evil" ridiculous.
The Soviet Union had been a genocidal (Ukraine, 6 million, Bielorussia, 7 million) totalitarian superpower before Germany was even nazi, and after WW2 imposed fascistic rule over nearly half of Europe.
This again is what makes the obsession with Iran ridiculous.
As for Friedman being a "liberal pundit", this is how he thinks of himself and how many readers see him. He's a Democrat.
And my point is precisely that what passes for "liberal" in America today would be considered right wing nut case anywhere else.
Friedman IS a "liberal" in the classical economic sense - and in the way "liberal" is understood in most parts of the world, particularly the third world. He is a billionaire globo-corporate neoliberal. And, because he is a billionaire, he must be much, much smarter than you or me - so we better listen to him and obey him.
He will always be remembered, more than anything, for penning this back in the "Dow 36,000" days:
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas... 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."
Friedman, in his book "the Lexus and the olive tree"
...
wonder6789 where do you get your figures?
I have noticed since the end of the Soviet Union that people in the US have started accusing Stalin of mass murder. This is something that I never heard during the Cold War even. There seems to be no basis for these figures, unless you are counting victims of the Civil War or of the famine. Obviously, this is not the same as genocide.
And calling the Soviet Union fascist is, of course, ridiculous. They were totalitarian, but not fascist. The reason that many top members of the ruling class in America supported Hitler is because he was anti-communist and anti-Soviet.
friedman is a sick FvKC