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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The first casualty is the truth.
Friedman is a textbook example of the veracity of this old adage.
Pray that Obama has enough wisdom to see through this bullshit.
Everybody in DC sees through the bullshit. They're playing along. Seeing through it isn't a problem.
The problem for Obama is to not be controlled by the MIC. It's likely he will be. You'll know for certain that he's controlled by it if he continues any of a number of programs for perfectly useless but grossly expensive weapons systems, programs which have no purpose except to shovel money at war profiteers.
Innocent women and children are being killed, etc., etc., etc.. What hypocrisy you butchers. Let's see some verbiage to pull out overseas period and concentrate on the problems at home.
these are the times when I love you: In November of last year, Friedman was again beating his little chest ....
Beautiful (and, as you can see, I'm easily pleased and amused). This cowardly "man" lacks even a scintilla of chutzpah to 'fess up, even a little. I wonder--really--whether guys like Friedman and Joe Klein even remember what they've written in the past. There's a strange miasma that seems to be part and parcel of punditry (which, by the way, is a creepy word in and of itself).
Oh, "Zoltan" (and whomever else along these lines), when I say "love," what I really mean is "love."
It hardly matters which innocent women and children were the targets of our death-machine. It hardly matters that there were Europeans calling for us to commit war crimes.
It does matter that we attacked in some other part of the world against a nation or people who had done us no harm and did not even have the ability to do us harm.
That precedent helps the next elected emperor with his plans to kill innocents for his "place in history". And it did help the next one -- Bush II.
After all, we only honor presidents who went to war and killed masses of people.
combining the worst aspects of American Triumphalism with the myopic earnestness of the Free Marketeers saying things like "I want to fill them ,(the Iraqis), with Coca-Cola and Big Macs..." as a way of swaying them to the glories of American Commerce and thus convince them what a glorious enterprise awaited them by turning their country into a land of strip malls lined with American businesses. It's been this purposeful blurring of the distinction between the notions of commerce and democracy that has been so galling (and so damaging to our national diologue), that I find so reprehensible, especially from hacks like Mr. Friedman who seem to float above the fray like a mere gadfly, dropping his half-baked speculations like there was serious theoretical thought behind them.
I for one have not heard a substantial mea culpa from any of these f**kers who cheered on this fiasco with such impunity.
Let's see some verbiage to pull out overseas period and concentrate on the problems at home.
-- shooter242
Have at it.
Then why are you deviant warmonger killers pushing more war in Afghanistan?
Who's saying that here (which means I don't include Obama and/or any weirdos who might show up here and advocate such a thing?)? Don't be so disreputable.
In the first three paragraphs of the Friedman piece he outlines the case of a member of the Iraqi Parliament who was facing sanctions for visiting Israel but who was defended by the Iraqi high court and by Iraqi intellectuals.
In the true spirit of the Empire Pimp that he is, Friedman is illustrating the context of how any increment of movement towards successful Iraqi self-governance is to be discussed. Any "progress" (btw, after I break both your legs, your rehabilitation also counts as progress) shall be credited to American Empire. As advocates of Empire always do, Freidman and company will claim any fruits, no matter how belated or minimal or disproportionate to their cost, as indicators of our rightness.
Thus Freidman can say without worry of reproach, "...the most important reason for the Iraq war: to try to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world...".
There is, at their core, very little difference between this statement and the more nakedly aggressive and violent Friedman statements which Glenn documents. And, just as is true of those other statements, nobody would dare say something this barbaric and intellectually untenable -- that war is a legitimate delivery system for "progressive politics and rule of law" -- unless they felt secure that the presumption of imperialistic righteousness was shared by their establishment cohort. Which of course, for the most part, it is.
Revision for people like Friedman is never about fundamental examination and repudiation of raw power -- about revising our actions -- but about which mask we should put on in order to view ourselves most favorably. Better to revise self-image than policy. If the "kickin' ass and takin' names" posture can't be sustained then we'll try on the costume of the beneficent progressive collaborator. Empire requires replacing the narratives of self-perception for maximum emotional resonance according to changing realities. This is Tom Friedman's adopted role.
Conversly, as Glenn points out, all failures will be laid at the feet of the flawed implementation of Empire, rather than the immoral basis of it. Even George W. Bush, once the heroic wielder of America's two-by-four, can be sacrificed in the service of Empire.
It's been a fashionable myth on the right that the New York Times' collapsing stock price and financial troubles stem from the paper's "liberalism," for which there is precious little evidence. A possibility not considered is that, by bending over backwards to accommodate the right, it has sacrificed its credibility, annoyed its largely liberal audience, and insulted the intelligence of its overwhelmingly liberal home town. The Times' "solution" for its troubles, similar to Deborah Howell's prescription for the Washington Post, is to further toss its reputation in the crapper by hiring such discredited nincompoops as William Kristol to "balance" the supposed liberalism (!) of Tom Friedman et al.
While in ordinary times, there might be some argument in favor of a politically balanced op-ed page, in the Bush era each and every policy, whether military, scientific, social, or economic, is demonstrably misguided and has proven predictably disastrous, and worse, was sold to the public by intentionally misleading means. These policies, and the tactics that sold them, deserve no advocates in a responsible media, and yet here they are, wasting airtime and page space everywhere one cares to look.
The presence of unreconstructed corporatist neocons like Friedman, or a catty, deranged gossip columnist like Maureen Dowd passing themselves off as "liberals" in the New York Times is immeasurably more damaging to public discourse, and democracy itself, than that of a clumsy, obvious righty martinet like William Kristol, because it moves the range of dialogue further and further to the right, even as it drowns out more sensible, reality-based viewpoints.
One wonders what would happen if the New York Times were to toss these overpaid, credibility-destroying gasbags out the door, using only their own archives as evidence of misconduct, and spent the paper's dwindling resources more wisely.
I suppose we'll never know.
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
