Glenn, your selective quoting of today's column makes me wonder about your selective quoting of other material not as easily checked.

Friedman specifically said:

"We’re not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can’t prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria."

Actually the problem is your lack of reading comprehension or total sloth, since the part of Friedman's column which you claim I "selectively" ignored is, in fact, one which I explicitly described:

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."

As for this:

So, in your summary of his commentary on the causes of 9/11, what's in the ellipsis? I can't find the text online.

From LEXIS:

Mr. FRIEDMAN: Look, this is about a lot of things. 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.

And that is one of the important rivers of rage, but it's not the only one. The second and hugely important river of rage feeding 9/11 was a real overpowering sense of humiliation. You know, why is it that the key hijackers all were from middle- and upper middle-class families and all became radical Muslims actually in Europe, OK? It has to do with--as Ali Salim, the Egyptian playwright put it, these young men feel like dwarfs, and dwarfs search out tall towers to bring down in order to feel tall. OK.

The Arab Human Development Report told us last year that 22 Arab states, not a single one has a freely and fairly elected government. Twenty-two Arab states do not have the GDP of Spain. Twenty-two Arab states last year imported, translated one-fifth the number of books that Greece did from English to Arabic. OK. This is a part of the world where half the young people want to move away. There is a deep sense of humiliation and a lashing out against successful societies, and the biggest and most powerful one, the United States of America. That's the second river of rage.

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 let's get a grip on this. It is partly about what we do and it's partly about what they haven't done. And you need to keep that in balance because it means you have to address things in our own politics and in our own diplomacy, but you also have to partner with them to try to build decent, successful societies, OK, where people aren't going to feel humiliated. And 9/11, at its very root, is not about the poverty of money. It's about the poverty of dignity. That's when people really get enraged.

The United States might gain more traction with Iran if it were to sign a mutual defense pact guaranteeing that an Israeli attack on Iran (including suspected nuclear facilities) would be treated as an attack on the United States. So far we have seen little indication Iran plans to attack anyone, but there is a history of Israel attacking its neighbors, including bombing a remote location in Syria last year. Were I a political leader in Iran I would want to capability of responding to, or dissuading, an Israeli attack. A mutual defense pact would provide the Iranians some assurance against Israeli military adventurism undertaken protected by a US military umbrella.

We could then encourage Tom Friedman to spend some time in Iran actually getting to know the country instead of encouraging the US to act as an Israeli proxy.

Why aren't they going door-to-door in Baghdad and Basra figuratively and/or literally telling Muslims to "suck on this"? They're the right age for military service. Oh wait, they were too busy getting liberal arts educations at Williams and Yale, that is when they weren't spending time at their parents' 11,400 square foot Bethesda home. Never mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman#Personal_life

Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggle -- which, in 2003, on NPR, he called "the beginning of World War III"

Don't you get it? It's the whole "World War III" aspect of the situation that makes Tom such an important person. If it isn't really World War III, that would make Tom and his cohorts a bunch of warmongering lowlifes who could care less how many people have to die so they can continue to portray themselves as important public figures.

Friedman is a perfect example of the neocon nazi sickness that rules in this country.

There should be war crimes trials taking place right now for these neocons and their deranged way of thinking and of governing.

To me, it sounds like the quote is "looking back, I now feel I understand more what the war was about."

"As Mr. Miller puts it, America right now “cannot defeat, co-opt or contain” any of the key players in the region."

Those are our options, according to Friedman and Miller: defeat, co-opt or contain. Co-existence is not an option. Why it is not is never made clear. We, as a nation, must subjugate, manipulate or "contain" the "key players" in the region, or else...or else what?

Can we really expect to "contain" Iranian influence among Shiites in this region defined by sectarian politics? After turning Iraq from an Iranian counterweight to an Iranian ally with our policy of war and occupation, is Friedman telling us that another war - cold or otherwise - is now the answer to growing Iranian influence in the region?

Containment in the context of the first Cold War had many aspects - economic, diplomatic and military - each of which worked fairly well except when the military component was foolishly transformed from deterrence to projection of force, as in Vietnam. The reasons should be obvious to any three year old. If the objective is to contain, to comprehensively limit restrict expansion in any direction, the concentration of resources in one narrow aspect of the confrontation, as in Vietnam, permits opportunities to the opponent in all other theatres. It is no coincidence that the apogee of Soviet power, and the American acquiescence in global parity as embodied in detente, occurred in the immediate aftermath of the misadventure in Vietnam. It is also no coincidence that the Soviet collapsed after the U.S. had effectively withdrawn its commitment to confronting Soviet communism in southeast asia.

Friedman's function is to apply a seemingly reasonable gloss to neocon fantasies of empire and hegemony in the middle east, and so he plumps for a cold war instead of a hot one. This is as far as he feels he can go in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, but it is sufficient to provide the pre-text for the hot war preferred by his neocon puppetmasters. A U.S. policy of "defeat, co-opt or contain" will inevitably produce tensions in the region which will be used to justify the kind of hot war that caused Friedman to ejaculate "Suck. On. This."