After getting involved in a discussion related to Tom Friedman's last column, I noticed he was not too popular around here. I've always thought he was naive but essentially right, and I never saw him as intentionally deceptive the way many here do, but I can understand some of the reasons people have negative feelings toward him.
I just read his latest column, in which he describes how the Bush administration is blocking a report about reform in the Muslim world, and it seemed pretty sensible to me. Is there something I'm missing here?
A lot of people seem to accuse him of being a suck-up to the Republicans, but here he's very critical of the Bush administration:
So there you have it: a group of serious Arab intellectuals - who are neither sellouts nor bomb throwers - has produced a powerful analysis, in Arabic, of the lagging state of governance in the Arab world. It is just the sort of independent report that could fuel the emerging debate on Arab reform. But Bush officials, along with Arab autocrats, are holding it up until it is modified to their liking - even if that means it won't appear at all.
It makes you weep.
Friedman can definitely be unrealistically optimistic at times, but all he's saying here is that yes, the Muslim world has a lot of problems, but there are some people who are trying to reform it, and Bush is trying to block that reform.
I don't see anything objectionable about his claims here--maybe it's naive to expect the Bush administration to do anything positive, but that's no reason not to criticize them for their failures--and I was wondering if those who took Friedman to task for his last column, in which he called for greater international involvement in securing the Iraqi elections, find anything wrong with this column in keeping with their general vitriol toward him, or if there's a general agreement that he is right in this case.
Your thoughts?