Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Thanks for the excellent article, not that I didn't realize the truth of it before.
It just flabbergasts me that the neocons that wrote incessantly for the need for the war today still garner such respect and are still supported by so many fans. I think about Kristol and Krauthammmer, et al along with Friedman. They still remain so powerful despite many years of gross, inhumane, badly-executed judgment calls. FOX News stills dominates Cable News. Hannity rules!
What is wrong with life? The politicians and media that brought about the war are very successful. The "masters of the universe" who have caused this economic debacle are getting paid billions to solve the problem they created. Yet the poor worker gets no break from the elitists that make the rules.
I am thankful for you and the liberal blogs and Maddow and Olberman. But it has to feel like you're spitting into the wind.
Lastly, I am distraught over Obama's appointments and his centrist ways and his apparent decision to forgive the war criminals.
C'est la vie!
he was pretty much the first of the non-rabid armchair generals to come out and admit that iraq's big crime was being an arab nation which appeared easy to knock over, as in that 2003 quote of his. i didn't agree, but at least he was speaking the truth that everyone knew at some level. that's a start on a debate; better than the meme that we were over there to save the heartland from 9/11, that we wasted half a decade arguing with.
"There are some people and some topics that should never, ever be allowed to come into contact with each other again.
Brownie on New Orleans.
Cheney on respect for the rule of law.
Rumsfeld on humility.
Colin Powell on honor.
Karl Rove on piety
Bush on foreign policy.
Bush on domestic policy.
Bush on environmental policy.
Bush on economic policy.
Bush on educational policy.
Bush on Christianity.
Bush on, hell, basic grammar or arithmetic.
And Tom Friedman on Iraq.
These are all people -- a short subset of a long and tragic roll of dishonor -- who have absolutely no credibility left.
None. At. All.
So when Mr. Suck On This...the father of the Friedman Unit -- leans back into the front seat with the grown ups to once again start yammering out declarative sentences and his trademark little rabbit pellets of unctuous know-it-all helpfulness, the fact that he is a thoroughly 3rd rate hack who poops out columns for the New York Fucking Times by recycling 20-year-old pilfered wisdom through his Bob Greene Folksy Wisdomator3000 is not what makes my flesh crawl.
It is simply that, any words on the subject of Iraq from Thomas Friedman other than a hand-written note reading "I am so, so, so, so fucking sorry" that he pins to his lapel as he walks into the sea come freighted with so much history, stupidity, blood and loss that the thought of him daring to touch the subject again makes me terribly sad.
And the thought of this dribbler collecting a pay check for doing it makes me physically ill."-driftglass
Critics should immediately post a response to a Friedman article, "You are not allowed to mention Iraq ever again...not in a million "Friedman units" you cowardly war cheerleader".
the same way Hitler 'defended' Germany from Poland.
Friedman's very big stick is very small. His mouth on the other hand is huge and the crap that man can talk! He's like a kindergarten child who's had too much icecream. Blah, blah, blah, blah and not an ounce of sense in any of it.I heard him on Radio National here still pushing bullshit with a shovel the size of Godzilla's right testicle. The neo cons are circling the wagons now and just talking to each other because no one else wants to talk to them. Anyone who tells you the earth is flat needs to be treated with great suspicion and handed a globe and told about Magellan's voyage on which he did not sail off the edge of the world. The neo cons on the other hand have, and they've taken us all with them.
Glenn, my responsive interlineations below:
What's the point of inventing imaginary arguments in your head, attributing them to me, and coming to argue against it?
> Didn't mean to do that. <
I don't really have a problem stating what my point is. I don't harbor secret points that you need to discern using powers of intuition. If I don't make a point, it's probably not very constructive to fantasize that I really meant to make it and then spend your day trying to disprove it.
> Fair enough. <
If you don't consider the fact that someone re-writes their own arguments and contradicts what they said in the past to be relevant to their credibility, that's fine -- that's a bizarre why of looking at things, but fair enough.
> Seems like an exercise in pluperfectionism - a lot of pointless picking of even more pointless nits. <
That, though, has nothing to do with my point. I said what my point was pretty clearly:
But with this intense Friedmanesque revisionism well underway -- whereby war cheerleaders like Friedman were Right and Good all along and it was only the incompetent Bush and Rumsfeld who ruined everything with their "bumbling" -- it seems increasingly likely that the opposite lesson will be learned. Attacking, invading and occupying other countries in order to change their governments to ones we prefer is the smart, wise and just thing to do. Friedman's term for it today is "collaborating with them to build progressive politics." Especially if there is another terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- but even if there isn't -- the only lesson being drawn from the Iraq debacle in these precincts is that from now on, we just need to plan and execute it better, so that the Good and Just people who cheer these wars on have their noble schemes vindicated a lot sooner and a lot more proficiently.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
