Oh I think Friedman understands. He's playing dumb in order to dupe the regular joe or jane who reads his column so they too will think that the neocons exist to protect them from maniacal, swarthy bogeymen who speak in strange tongues,bow to unnameable deities, and worship our destruction. Friedman is just another henchman doing the sinister bidding of his masters.

It's all about FEAR. There are few things more disturbing that not knowing why someone hates you and wants to harm you. Friedman is playing on this terrible uncertaintly. And when people are scared, they tend not to question a whole lot.

SPORTER: It's a shame, or lack of imagination, to conclude that one who SEES higher necessarily is using a substance to get there. I've been in my share of peace pipe circles, but not for some time... comments related are from a HIGHER consciousness.

Paraphrasing another great gentleman:

"They know not what they do."

you takem too many hits on the peace pipe siouxrose

I tried & couldn't get past the first paragraph of Friedman's tripe.

EDUARTO: Very true.

A TEXAN: You're in the appropriate state. I never did Peyote and my comments were written with no substances ingested. Some people see beyond the limits others are conditioned to unconditionally accept as "reality."

Well, that's what I was going to say, dingo. The US propaganda machine is amazingly effective. I've even seen distraught Iraqis on FSTV, sobbing at the destruction of their houses and the murder of their families, saying "This is democracy?"

WHAT? Why would an IRAQI believe that the US attacked their country for democracy? Apparently the propaganda machine even works when your life has been destroyed. (Kind of like the homeless veterans here in the US, I guess).

But, I think that Vietnam was also an unveiling of US brutality, and it caused revulsion by many people throughout the world.

Everyone posting here seems to believe that 9=11 was a conspiracy by 19 Arabs that managed to shut down the US military for 2 hours, explode two 110-story buildings into concrete dust and body parts, implode another building into itself, cover up who exactly profited from the put options, stop any investigations for 19 months, (until angry widows forced one), and then have an investigation run by Condoleeza Rice's best friend, who made sure that a true investigation wasn't done. Wow! That's a stretch of imagination as difficult for me to believe as that America is a force for goodness and light throughout the world!

I'd have to agree with Mr. Greenwald's assertion that the US was still seen favorably by most of the world before the Bush Administration. Really, the turning point was our undisguised aggressive invasion of Iraq, and how we so emphatically gave the rest of the world the finger for not going along with it.
Do you remember the comments about Old Europe and "freedom fries" renamed not by some guy at a hotdog stand, but by a congressman? Somehow, during this administration, "patriotism" became a sort of grotesque arrogance and hostility which Americans proudly broadcasted to the world. The reelection of George Bush was another big smack in the face to the world. The world was perhaps willing to forgive us our error once, but to sign Bush up for a second term? I know that some people will say the election was rigged and Kerry should have won, but you know...regardless the election was close. It shouldn't have been.
For people who have traveled abroad extensively before and after the Bush Administration can tell the difference. Granted, there are places where wounds of our international meddling have created hatred for decades. But now you almost have to apologize for being American, and distance yourself from the policies of our leaders almost anywhere you go.

Friedman is a self-inflated clown, never impressed me as anything else---an imperial cheerleader

Siouxrose wrote:
"I was told that our earth WAS seeded by more advanced beings some several thousand years back, and that some of the beings that came here mated with the women."

Siouxrose,

????
Please cut down on mescaline and smoking pyote. You are wasting your time
and our time with that nonsense and drivel.

Friedman never finds it "filthy" that the United States constantly vetoes any and all UN resolutions that attempt to condemn Israel's obscene treatment of the Palestinians. But I must be getting old, I misread the part where he says "Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone. There are transvestites we will not tolerate."

Norman Conquest
(since 1066)

"What other country in the world has leading members of its political class who justify unprovoked attacks on other countries — who casually justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people — in such depraved and sadistic terms?"

One has rarely heard it put better. The sad fact of the matter though is : barring a miracle ,in terms of a sea-change in mind-set , this attitude looks all set to persist.

After all , to the Brobdignagian , Lilliputians are little better than the vermin under their feet -to be trampled on -invariably with nary a twinge of conscience.

I think it's not the world, but Thomas Friedman's head that is flat. That's just about the only thing I can think of that can possibly account for his brainlessness.

But then, why does the NYT publish his brainless spew? And why do people read it?

Oh......I forgot. MSM=Frontal Lobotomy.

Tom Friedman thinks the "world is flat", so it's no surprise that he doesn't "understand why Amerika is so unpopular in the world".

Maybe while vacationing this summer in liberated Iraq he'll be chased down a desert highway by liberated insurgents and fall off the edge.

Friedman: "Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power. I am neither a Russia-basher nor a China-basher."

Friedman is trying to appeal to every devil he can find in you. Got paranoia? How about a desire to dominate? What about hypocrisy? What a friggin neocon. When will the NY Times recover from 9/11? Maybe never.

Mr. "SUCK ON THIS" and his visions of "terror bubbles" omits discussion of "terror bubble" causes.

Chronic and sever petroleum/profit addiction can be difficult and challenging to admit.

Poor soul.

Since the full moon is making its energies felt through me, I'll add something that was told to me via a trance medium. I was told that our earth WAS seeded by more advanced beings some several thousand years back, and that some of the beings that came here mated with the women. The goal was to try to LIFT the species here... beyond its "Neanderthal level" of brute conflict, etc.

This source told me that since the early Jews (wandering tribes in the desert?) were some of those mated with, they were in fact CHOSEN for that particular "pollination."

Years ago I took a wonderful course in San Diego given by Dr. Paul Brenner. I believe it was called HEALING & COMMUNICATION. In any event, he turned his class over to a young guy who had just gone hiking in S. America near Lake Titicacca. The young man had purchased a boat made of woven reeds and since no one had ever crossed that lake in such a boat, he was taken for a GOD by the local natives.

I reference this because you can imagine if people lived on earth and MET those from another world, those with more advanced technologies, such persons would be taken for GODS. That was what my guide told me occured on this planet, AND he said those forces still keep watch or track. So maybe there are kernels of truth in the popular past series THE X FILES?

Makes me want to say, "Beam me up, Scotty!" Seems if there are overseeing powers they are letting mankind really get to the edge. Perhaps that's tough love... the only way the human race will survive is if it chooses on a collective level, LOVE & PEACE over war and the instrumentations of destruction.

Since the SOUL is immortal, to the Buddhist, it returns to the impersonal LIFE STREAM (in Western theories, a portion of what the ego knows as SELF is retained, hence past life memory recall in some persons, the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, and such) we cannot take that which belongs to each being. We can in other words SNUFF out this lifetime, but there is a portion that is not reduced to nothingness... and that portion may well carry soul memory into future lifetimes.

Many do not believe this because they apply logic to the seeming evidence of a body with a mortal span. Fine. As Richard Bach once said, "If you argue FOR your limitations, you get to keep them." Why argue for ashes to ashes alone? Even the trees recycle from year to year. And I say to you, Soloman in all of his glory was not arrayed as one of these...

KANE JEEVES: Here I would expand your post to suggest that ALL the patriarchal religions push this "we're the chosen" thing so long as followers follow rules, i.e. subscribe to rigid, authoritarian regimes. I can't speak for the faith of Islam, but certainly some Jews and the end timers go for this chosen stuff.

I say each is the chosen for the particular lessons and aptitudes s/he has come into body to express. Kind of puts the big umbrella over everyone, each a Divine spark of the great Mystery made manifest as this lump of sometimes miraculous flesh.

See Steve Kinzers "Overthrow". And all this boils down to Manifest Destiny. Which boils down to a certain brand of Christianity, but Christianity nonetheless. If you believe you are "chosen" then anything you do By Definition is moral. Which then makes it obvious why clowns like Tom Friedman (and many others throughout our history, Dems and Repubs alike) can say what they say with a straight face.

And that's what we see, plain and simple. Sorry folks, religion is the root of most evil.

I'd love to see EPHRAIM'S piece PUBLISHED in the NEW YORK TIMES! Ditto PAPPY YOKUM & ECIACCIO. Great comments.

Tom who?

Why do they hate us!?! duh!

Prior to the last seven years "America was viewed quite favorably throughout the world"

Glenn G., a nice hatchet job on one deserving creep, thank you.

But beginning in the 1950's American Brutality and deposing of democracies and torture caused us to be hated by many.

We have intervened illegaly and violently in appx. FIFTY different smaller weaker countries.

And we are hated and known for that. Our support of Israel alone....

Neat Movie, The War On Democracy.

Online. Free. FORTY YEARS OF HORROR IN LATIN AMERICA. One cannot say before seven years ago "America was viewed quite favorably"

That trivializes so many deaths, so much TORTURE.

Of course the US was seen favorably by people all over the world. I myself saw it very favorably as a land of freedom. It is called ignorance. I am no longer that ignorant and most of the world has caught on too.

And remember, the country as an idea was popular, but Americans have always been seen as nouveau riche: lacking in class and a sense of history. Boors.

I do contest Greenwald's assertion that America was seen favorably before Bush came along and upset the ship. By whom? Client state dictators? The oppressed and ignorant people? And why? And if the people felt favorably towards America, does it ever change our utterly brutal 242-year history? We were born a colonial enterprise and we will go down as one. And the sooner the better. So dispense with all this crap. I don't think Greenwald is right about how America was viewed before Bush. Friedman and Greenwald aren't really so far apart, if you really think about it.

Mr Greenwald says: "Those who want to claim that the U.S., in the post-World-War-II era, has been the root of most evil are (whether they're right or wrong) in the distinct minority of worldwide opinion. That just is not how much of the world viewed the U.S. — not until the era of George Bush and Tom Friedman's "Suck On This" neoconservative depravity."

I would counter that the "Cold War Propaganda Cloak" obscured ongoing US Imperial policies and their methods until the Cloak was finally removed and the hidden horrors started to be revealed, starting with the Highway of Death, moving to the Genocidal Sanctions/500,000 children's deaths were "worth it", to Clinton's unprovoked cruise missile attack on Sudan and his unilateral undeclared war against Serbia, topped off by the military, not law enforcement, response to 911 which facilitated the escalation of the Iraqi Holocaust. Yes, I did leave out a few, like Panama and Somalia, Plan Colombia, etc. Such actions are no more than the continuation of a long-running status quo previously justified as anti-communism acts during the Cold War Crusade. It's this fact that the current acts justified by the War of Terror are no different than those before them that prompts Friedman's incredulity. His thinking is: Why are we the bad guys now when we did the same things and were the good guys before? And there are a lot of folks at the other end of the income ladder who think and feel the same way, their kids are Carefully Taught How To Hate, and encouraged to become Imperial Stormtroopers. Mr Greenwald's too kind as in his life Friedman is responsible for millions of deaths and the displacement of millions more, like the vast majority of the US Imperial Elite.

Sounds like a big "Whiner" to me (to use Phil Gramm's term).

Surely Nazi pundits didn't indulge in such navel-gazing and feign righteous indignation at the world's response to their actions (or did they, until their positions were no more?).

Tom Friedman is, first and foremost, a Zionist. Other explanations are unnecessary.

Yes, he sucks up to the power-elite.

And since he's ranting about Zimbabwe, it makes me wonder what Zimbabwe has that they want to steal?

The world has always been run by the persons of wealth and power, and their cronies and lackeys, such as Friedman, and our country is no different. It is just that the Bushies have pushed the limits so far our country may have a hard time recovering to the place we were before this bunch of jackals got in.

Please, next time let`s not put in a spoiled, immature cheerleader with a drinking problem, who never had to face consequences for his stupidity, and was pushed through life by Daddy`s money and never had to work or figure to make it. Possibly we should also think about electing someone who married a super rich beer distributor and is out of touch with normal people who struggle through life the best they can.

If we cannot stop this handing the money to the rich and then letting them control everything, our way of life in our country will steadily get worse, just as it has in many others. The greedy power brokers never think about the fact they are ruining our country for themselves as well as the rest of us.

There are traversties that we won't tolerate? Could have fooled me?
?

When Tom Friedman starts calling for war crimes trials for all the Bush/Cheney war criminals, including Republicrats in Congress, I will pay attention to his bloviating. Until then, he's just another overpaid, overindulged pundit/court jester sucking up to the power elite, willfully in denial of the horrors of U.S. imperialism since 1845, which he calls "globalization."

uncommondreamer, he didn't say "suck it up," he said "Suck. On. This." Meaning the Bush-Cheney shock and awe response to 9/11 on a country that had nothing to do with it. That's Fried Man's convenient and deliberate mistake in his Mr. Tough Guy act with Charlie Rose--refusing to even acknowledge the illegality of the invasion since Iraq never attacked us, never had WMD, wasn't building any, and while Saddam was hardly an innocent dictator, he had absolutely no power to attack us or in any way mess with us. Bush invaded because there was no Congress to stop him, because he wanted to show the world he could finish a job his daddy couldn't, and because Cheney wanted control of all that oil for him and his small circle of cronies, including the Bush crime family. Fried Man wants him to have it, too, and is only regretting now that it's been so terribly "mismanaged." He and his fellow war-loving pundits, like Kristol and about a thousand others, are now pissed at Bush for bungling their precious little war. Friedman's brains are fried over this, as the abject failure of the Iraq escapade he so busily promoted and defended is now telling Tommy Boy to Suck On This. You've promoted desolation and utter destruction on a country you knew nothing of except that it could be ransacked and gutted just so you, Tom Friedman, could feel like the original American Tough Guy. Your cowboy wet dreams are now biting your ignorant ass, and the rest of the world knows you're as big a fool as your moronic commander in chief and all his belligerent circle jerkers. Decent people everywhere despise you, Fried Man. Suck on that.

Pappy_Yokum sez: "I wonder whether the Tom Friedmans of our country are genuine in their misguided beliefs, or whether they are deliberately lying in interviews and opinion columns."

***

Yes.

"The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely..."

Seriously, what's to hate?

"It's better to be feared than loved," Machiavelli wrote.

In which case, We ARE truly Number One!!!

Glenn's article is great (as usual), except for his lack of knowledge of history.

Contrary to his claim that a thumb's-down is "what a playful movie critic says about a boring film", it's much, much more serious.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say: "In modern popular culture, it is assumed that "thumbs down" was the signal that a defeated gladiator should be condemned to death"

Obviously, this is what Friedman is proposing for our ruling class. It's the only interpretation that makes any sense whatsoever.

I am susprised and baffled that many comments on this article took what
Friedman is saying or said seriously and tried to refute his
points of view as if Friedman really believed in what he is saying or writing.
Tom Friedman is nothing but a corporate whore and mouth-piece. He damn
well knows that his views are nothing but pure bull-shit and nonsense. He has a good command of the language and projects and aura of knowledge which makes him much cleverer and insidious bull-shit artist.

To "biggy":
Please do not advocate intervention in Darfur or any place else.
You are playing right into the schemes of aggression and war.
The trouble in Darfur started when oil was discovered there. Do you you get my drift??!!

Tom Friedman used to be a smart guy whose opinion I respected. I suspect his office is too close to Bill Kristol's and he must have caught whatever it is that his brain is polluted with. Suck it up? to a country that did not threaten us? I guess that's what Adolph said to the Poles in 1939. Suck it up! We need Lebensraum!

Glenn, your writing as always is spot-on. Many thanks for such amazing high quality work, and all you do.

I wonder whether the Tom Friedmans of our country are genuine in their misguided beliefs, or whether they are deliberately lying in interviews and opinion columns.

How is it that they can continue to ignore the implications of the Downing Street memo?

How is it that they can ignore the many anomalous and inexplicable facts documented around the 9-11 attacks? Why were Prince Bandar and W smoking cigars together on the White House balcony after the 9-11 attacks (according to Unger)? Is that how they grieved the dead?

How is it that the needless destruction of hundreds of thousands of innocents in a preplanned illegitimate war does not warrant any shame or serious investigations, much less explanation or apology?

How can they justify the closing off of our government affairs in a cloak of unprecedented secrecy, while at the same time illegally invading the privacy of American citizens as never before?

How can they justify the torturing of another human being? How can they say "it's not torture" if there is no permanent physical damage? Don't they know that the most effective torture by far, and the most cruel, is psychological torture (McCoy)?

How has our "security arrangement" with Saudi Arabia (as stated in John Perkins' books) horribly distorted our foreign policy? How much influence and control does Israel (and AIPAC and her American rightwing Zionist supporters) really have over United States policies?

What has happened to this nation?

Churchill once said "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." We are now in a time of perpetual war, according to the ruling elites. And the bodyguard has swollen to an army of lies, tended to by an army of liars. G-d only knows the core truths that they are so jealously hiding. They may be so hideous that none of us will ever want to look on them.

Is Tom Friedman feeling the heat of karma with the depreciation of the dollar? Keep the lid on for even cooking.

"why do they hate us?" (plaintive cry echoing across the nation on the morning of sept 11, 2001)

those who had read howard zinn's "a people's history of the united states" weren't among the shocked and confused ones.

friedman's position isn't one of denial (in the 12-step sense of refusing to accept that there's a problem), but purposeful obfuscation of the real problems for pay.

Friedman "We hit Iraq because we could"
This hardly seems like the advice he would give, just him explaining why he thought we hit it. He relates a 'terrorism bubble' that grew in the Middle East that needed popping; that MidEasterners needed to see good ol' American boys and girls knocking on their doors, proving that we cared about more than our Hummers and stock options. Someone had to go down, so why not Saddam? he seems to be saying.

He also famously once predicted that invading Iraq could turn into the hornets nest its turned into.

I disagree with his arguments. Not only do I not find them a defensible reason to enter Iraq, I don't even find them a defensible analysis of the possible reason.

Increasingly, to me, looking at who profited and who paid: Iraq was about oil. 9-11 was just the excuse. The proper way to 'pop the terrorism bubble' was to take it out on Al-Qaida in Afghanistan/Pakistan (and yes, that meant violating Pakistani sovereignty along its border with Afghanistan). The fact the Bush quickly closed our military bases in Saudi Arabia shortly after 9-11 tells me that, for some in the administration at least, the complaints of Al-Qaida were being taken seriously, not merely as part of a 'terrorism bubble', but as the legitimate complaints of a deeply (fanatically) religious group of people. That pragmatic move, more than any, has prevented another 9-11. The Iraq War was just about oil. Doesn't he see this?

Mordechai Shiblikov: Thanks from me also. Always read your comments and this time paid off especially well. Good one.

FRIEDman is already out of touch with the working class in America and all over the world. He knows why but he refuses to admit. It's simple my friend, he's in a STATE OF DENIAL. It's only when he loses his fortunes big time that he'll ever learn.

Clearly America must begin aerial bombing campaigns in those nations that hold us in lowest esteem until their attitudes are properly adjusted.

Mordechai Shiblikov: Thanks for the humor. I am having trouble typing this as tears stream down my face from hearty laughter.

Tom Friedman is an idiot who drinks his own bath water.

Friedman and people like him are permanently damaged. Since everbody is loved by somebody, there will be sympathy for him when he falls, and he will fall, right along with the rest of them. Just like the WTC Towers came crashing down upon itself, so will Friedman and his party of twisted minds. So, this is what it took to see what kind of people some of us really are. If Friedman(s) could and did take a look inside and saw themselves as must of the world does, would they, survive the sight of such a beast?

Tom Friedman may want to go to israel, but hw won't have to start any business there. He is already a billionaire, having married into a family with an enormous stock portfolia. He's never worked an honest day in his life.

biggy: I agree that sanctions would cause more harm than good to the general population. Think about it... if you apply sanctions to a country, who suffers? It's not the leaders. They're still eating good, drinking their expensive brandy and living in their palaces... it's the PEOPLE of the country that suffer. Think about the sanctions on Iraq in the 90's... Do you think that Hussein suffered at all as a result? Hell no! It was the 500,000 dead children and their families that paid the price. Sanctions are a completely ineffective method of diplomacy.

Most of the so called 'leaders' and 'pundits' are so removed from reality, sitting there in their ivory towers, that they really have no clue what the result of their actions are. The United States has been too isolated and too 'protected' to have reality come rushing on in. Perhaps if the United States had experienced modern warfare in their own country, their cities burning, their people being slaughtered, they'd be less likely to stand idly by while their government inflicted this on other nations.

Friedman's actual understanding of world opinion would make him less useful to the Empire as a fawning cheerleader.

It's next to impossible to get a man to understand something when his livelihood (very lucrative livelihood here) depends on him not understanding it.

We do not have the moral right to point a finger at the chip in another person's eye when there is a log in ours. We invaded a country that was not a threat to us and so far murdered a million of its citizens. As reprehensible as Mugabe is, the move at the UN to impose sanctions would have caused serious damage to the people of Zimbabwe more than it would help. I believe that genocide in Dafur deserves immediate and urgent attention in view of the fact that there have been about 250,000 deaths in comparison to 1000 in Zimbabwe. I sincerely don't believe that US administration would go out of its way to help victims in Africa purely on moral grounds. It is most likely to intervene if its corporate interests (i.e. oil) are in trouble.

Tom (Tough Hombre) Friedman and Holy Joe Liebermam can both claim the Law of Return and move to Israel. They can sell Converse All Stars, New Era "slitz" hats and bling to Israeli youth and funnel the profits to the Likkud party, or whatever party is to the far right of the Likkud. Friedman will produce his own carbonated soft drink caled "Suck On This". Lieberman can open a chain of tattoo parlors and go around to all the schools and make phony, self-righteous speeches drawing on every stomach turning cliche of every god awful high school valedictorian speech in history and make a fortune. These are good, practical ideas and they should avail themselves of them. I will be at the El Al terminal to wave goodbye and flip them the bird. They won't do this, of course, because, like George Wanker Bush, they are both a couple of cowards and closet throatstickers who don't want to be shot at.

Give Friedman another 6 months--if he doesn't shape up, send him off to Crawford, Texas where he can manage the George Bush presidential Library. Luckily for Friedman, there are but two books in the library: The Pet Goat and Cutting Brush for Pleasure and Profit.

Good piece but I thought, in discussing the Chinese and Russian responses to Mugabe, Greenwald could have brought up Bush administration support for Uzbekistan's Karimov who is indisputably a brutal and ruthless dictator and who has reputedly literally boiled political opponents in oil. And he might even have gone on to mention Bush support for other monsters and the history of the US supporting ruthless dictators around the globe. In any event, I know Greenwald did not want to stray off-topic, but a Karimov reference could have been brief and instructive.

Karlof1

As you fairly quote him, Greenwald clearly states that "rightly or wrongly" – the view that the U.S. was a force for major evil in the world prior to the Bush/Cheney regime was a minority one.

I agree with you that there has been a brutal continuity in U.S. foreign policy but that much of the carnage has been masked by the influence of American films, music, and popular culture (for good or bad), U.S. science and technology, allegedly democratic American political institutions, U.S. wealth, and, yes, outright U.S. State and corporate propaganda.

That's all that Greenwald has claimed here—that U.S. popularity around the world has been in steep decline the last 7 years. In that assertion he is absolutely correct.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/306.php?lb=btis&pnt=306&nid=...

Annika – I think you are patently unfair to Greenwald and to claim that he's not "really so far apart" from Friedman is just silly.

You can say, "Well, I hate America and it's just plain evil" but that puts you on the level of a George W. Bush mentality and blocks you from any kind of objectivity in discussing American history or the appeal of U.S. influence.

Polls taken over decades have demonstrated high levels of American popularity around the world—with various rises and dips based on events such as the brutal war on Vietnam.

However, there have been substantial erosions during the Bush/Cheney regime. We might argue that the benevolent imperial mask is slipping and the leering face of brutal power is showing itself.

Personally, I think the U.S. has been a largely pernicious force around the world since the end of WWII and I generally try to make that case in discussions with people who hold contrary opinions. But to simply condemn anyone who has held a favorable view of the U.S. prior to the Bush regime as "oppressed and ignorant" seems counterproductive.

It seems to me that it's a kind of intellectual isolation, a leftist version of the "good versus evil" religious mentality that dominates the thinking of the worst proponents of American Exceptionalism, and leads you to make ridiculous equivalences—such as Greenwald is essentially the same as Friedman.