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The narrative Americans and surely Tom Friedman as an American who does punditry and writes cleverly titled books trade on is what Americans do is the work of the 'good guys'.
Americans have put December 7,1941 in high reverence because it was so clear who had mounted a dastardly "sneak attack" on the USN. Any and all revenge and payback Americans could conjure was always that of the "good guys vs. wicked,nefarious Japs" and that directly led to Imperial Japan getting two atomic bombs in August 1945.
Decades later Vietnam got a taste of this after the trumped up and since proven to have been quite likely false 'Gulf of Tonkin' attack on USN opened a long rain of American militarism on Vietnam. All the napalm,summary killings and inflicted death dealing and social rip apart done always because Americans were the 'good guys' who just wanted to do good for the Vietnamese.
Perhaps if on a weekly or monthly basis American political media had given the Vietnamese voice and word to how they felt and thought about American "do goodism" in Vietnam it would have been a very valuable balancing of narrative. That did not happen.
Iraq surely has now fallen to this American preference for decidinig who needs our help and who is going to get the chop while Americans deliver all the goodness we so piously claim is our sole intention for unleashing American Militarism on hapless lands in no position to resist us very well.
Iraq,a land of 26 million,got the full Shock and Awe we Americans like to watch like a video game. The first night of attacks on Baghdad having this surreal quality of explosions and billowing smoke from American attack while street lights still worked and cars traversed streets. How many innocent Iraqis died that first night? Did Americans care to consider this?
Americans have awarded themselves a national history that for Native Americans,Native Hawaiians and Filipinos is a shaped and molded distortion or simple telling of lies. For the many Vietnamese who ended up on deathdealing end of American weaponry and aerial attacks Americans brought death.
Tom Friedman surely has a comfortable berth as an American who likely is well paid to write opinions and books and appear on American television and accord himself relevance or have other Americans bestow relevance on him. What a clever guy is Tom Friedman that he could pronounce six month intervals for Iraq.
Americans perhaps may one day stumble upon a more insightful self-view. Sadly the current American President,G.W.Bush, does not get it. Just the other day I read G.W.Bush claimed he was a good American being he had liberated Iraq and the Iraqi people.
There were no Iraqis given rebuttal opportunity to G.W.Bush and his selfview of the 'good' he brought to Iraq.
Tom Friedman perhaps would have had a different POV if he and his loved ones had been in Baghdad for the first month of the Bush/Cheney 'Shock and Awe' presentation in Iraq.
Tom Friedman has the luxury of observing from afar. The luxury of being bellicose and then revising that record of bellicosity as it suits him later on down the road.
Tom Friedman is a lucky guy. And so American.
