For those of you unfortunate enough to actually be PAYING for the NY Times' Op-ed and Other Special Features (great bargain) or those of you who are a bit more devious at glomming on to other sites' password providers (like me) and happen to pick up today's edition, you'll find a piece of writing that, quite simply, EXEMPLIFIES the depths to which mainstream "journalists" will sink in their struggle for worldwide acceptance as the harbingers of conventional wisdom.
Tommy Friedman, we hardly knew ye.
Well, maybe actually we did...after all, this was the same guy who put forth the brilliant proposition some time back about "solving" our problems in Iraq: just double the boots on the ground (m'kay, walrus)
more below...
With apologies to Noam Chomsky's often-irritating habit of "overlaboring his material with extraneous quotations", I will belabor to "do my best" in this effort to "expose the Friedman in all of us".
Friedman continues his wonderful trend of grasping the utter lack of finesse or even competence practiced by the Bush Administration, and then slipping over to the "mainstream" liberal Establishment opinion which essentially buys into the Administration's warped view of reality.
To wit:
"If ours were a parliamentary democracy, the entire Bush team would be out of office by now, and deservedly so. In Iraq, the president was supposed to lead, manage and hold subordinates accountable, and he did not. Condoleeza Rice was supposed to coordinate, and she did not. Donald Rumsfeld was supposed to listen, and he did not. But ours is not a parliamentary system, and while some may feel as if this administration's over, it isn't. So what to do? We can't just take a foreign policy timeout."
Perfectly sensible, although a tart, refreshing glass of Five Alive would help wash down his rather stale writing style, but I digress. Then, of course, he goes off the rails three paragraphs later:
"So if our choice is another Rummy-led operation on Iran or Iran's going nuclear and our deterring it through classic means, I prefer deterrence. A short diplomatic note to Iran's mullahs will suffice: "Gentlemen, should you ever use a nuclear device, or dispense one to terrorists, we will destroy every one of your nuclear sites with tactical nuclear weapons. If there is any part of this sentence you don't understand, please contact us. Thank you."
Christ. I will admit, there are more despicable points of view than the one here esposed by Friedman (for example, those who believe Maureen Dowd was justifed in replacing her older, sexier NY Times photo). But Friedman's comes closest to really giving me the red-ass on this fine Wednesday morning here in the nation's capitol.
Friedman's point pre-supposes several "givens" about the U.S. role in the world today.
1. He believes it is our place to rule the Middle East, particuarly Iraq and Iran, either through military force or the threat of unilateral holocaust.
2. He believes that we, the largest nuclear stockpiler in the world, have the moral authority to dictate to another nation their right to have nukes.
3. We are justified at committing the unimaginable horror of striking at another nation with newer, sleeker tactical bunker-busting nuclear weapons...provided our vaunted intelligence services can assert that Iran is slipping nukes to terrorists or using them in conflict (that is a right we alone maintain the right to use at our discretion).
4. Our efficiency at following through on the actions of a violent, aggressor nation is far more important than any misguided notions of decency or respect for human life.
I guess if Rumsfeld was a better communicator and listener while he was giving his orders to annihilate thousands of lives, we'd all be better off. And especially the Iraqis.
This disgusting moral relativism on Friedman's part is quite simply the norm for conventional journalism: Any idea, no matter how barbaric, is acceptable if it is coached in the easy-to-swallow musings of the "sensible" reporter. He slashes out at the incompetence of an entire branch of government, then proposes a solution that buys into the very same mentality which has involved us in the Middle East since the British pulled out of the region a half-century ago: our interests, our right to intervene, our resources.
Despite his long-held touting of the "possibilities" in our "liberation of Iraq", I don't quite recall him actually going to Iraq at any point, to survey the destruction his witless posturing in print has encouraged since day one of this war. But I suppose the cream of the New York Times writing staff has no need to actually observe the carnage they cheer on.
As a post script, I'd also like to note that his theories on the "flattening world" are also equally bullshit. Hey Tom, how exactly is globalism going to continue at this pace when the amount of energy necessary to move goods and services all over the world uses up our natural resources and causes global calamity?
Wanker.