This morning I woke up to one of the most shockingly delusional Friedman op-eds to date. Self-righteous Thomas Friedman astonishingly writes,
Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving. [Emphasis added]
I would agree that there are in fact voices in the Muslim world that misinterpret U.S. attacks on Arab and Muslim countries resulting in countless civilian collateral damage as being a willful attempt to keep “Muslims down”. But to go from there and argue with a straight face that the opposite – that U.S. foreign policy has as its principal goal to rescue Muslims by bombing them – is a narrative that is credible only to a select few in the U.S. with their heads in the sand. Meanwhile the entire rest of the world sees U.S. foreign policy — like the foreign policy of any other nation — as was it is: based purely on self-interest and never on an honest desire towards altruism or rescuing others. Only the politicians with the help of their “front-men pundits” sell altruism to the naïve as a ruse to do as one pleases. Who you trying to fool, Mr. Friedman?
But once again, I will have to defer to Mr. Greenwald who beat me to the punch on Friedman’s grotesque hypocrisy,
Tom Friedman can declare with a straight face that “anyone who shoots up innocent people is … mentally imbalanced” without seeing how clearly that applies to himself and those who think like he does. It’s that self-absorbed disconnect — seeing Hasan’s murder of American soldiers as an act of consummate evil and sickness while refusing to see our own acts in a similar light — that shapes most of our warped political discourse. And note the morality on display here: Hasan attacks soldiers on a military base of a country that has spent the last decade screaming to the world that “we’re at war!!,” and that’s a deranged and evil act, while Friedman cheers for an unprovoked war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and displaced millions more — all justified by sick power fantasies, lame Mafia dialogue, and cravings more appropriate for a porno film than a civilized foreign policy — and he’s the arbiter of Western reason and sanity.
But even worse is the glaring dishonesty driving everything Friedman writes here. Our perpetual war cheerleader today laments that there is a “Narrative” plaguing the Muslim world that is a “cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America.” These crazy, stupid, irrational Muslims seem to believe “that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand ‘American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy’ to keep Muslims down,” when the reality is that “U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny.” They see devastating attacks launched by the U.S. and Israel collectively on six Muslim countries in the last decade (including Gaza) — all of which Friedman (along with his fellow Muslim-condemning NYT colleague) supported, naturally — and those Muslims simply refuse to understand why they deserved it and why it was all for their own Good. According to Friedman, these benighted Muslims simply refuse to see the truth: that our two post-9/11 wars were “primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics.”
Grave Error 
War: ideology and resources. Any other statements are either disingenuous or willfully deceptive.
Iraq; about oil and the Village Idiots need to make himself look like the victor that his father couldn’t be. Although, the Iraqi people did want to be under Saddam’s reign of terror, and did ask for us to remove him.
Afghanistan; about drug trade and our ideology with regards to drugs. As always though, that is a losing proposition as long as the gubament is unwilling to take the Machiavellian mechanics and put them into play.
Your commentary, especially as someone who has never served, about our military willfully bombing citizens, is not only slanted hogwash pressed by your apologist agenda; it is thoroughly disgusting.
Having opinions on politics is everyone’s hash; but if you don’t, and never will, have the stones to serve your country, be quiet about how the military is run, you haven’t even remotest notion from which to formulate an opinion. And no, the mass media’s version of what goes on, doesn’t count as fact either. According to the MSM, anyone who served/serves in Iraq or Afghanistan is a baby killer and a thug.
You’re right, I don’t have the stones to serve. But that said, there is a difference between supporting troops and supporting a war. The opposite argument would go something like this: we have soldiers, so the only way to show them our respect is to send them somewhere, anywhere to fight. Is all military intervention justifiable simply because it is done by “our” troops?
It is an absurd notion.
Then perhaps you should learn the difference between “the military” and “the DOD”.
Much like the media, you are making the very same, semantic albeit greatly important, error of making the two tantamount; which they are most assuredly not.
“the military” is the citizen soldiers, their families, the ones who suffer for our freedom, and because of a choice to honor our traditions and our Constitution, pay for it across the board. “The DOD” is a bunch of lobbyists pretending to be in “the military” and having the same credibility and usefulness as the rest of the prostiticians. Ones who pay nothing, and are the only true rapists, pillagers and war mongers, along with their complicitous cohort thugs in Congress.
So, which are actually speaking of, or do you even know?
And look at all the war-mongering tough guys and decision-makers who always choose to send the soldiers into battle: Bill Clinton, George W., Hiden-in-Bunker Cheney, and now Obama + the macho blood thirsty pundits from Friedman to Brooks to Krauthammer and Kristol — those guys ain’t never going to war, but they sure don’t have a problem sending others to war. At least keep-em-away-from-a-mike Biden has his son over there. But the rest are arm chair quarter backs.
I am not going to war, so I surely can’t advocate someone else doing it for me.
I don’t disagree with you at all here; especially with the Village Idiot and Darth Cheney … notorious pussies. But hey, at least Maobama didn’t let himself be outclassed by them, he strapped on his vagina too!!! Part of being a media drone; you get a desk, a lamp, bad hair, no logic or facts required AND basic office supplies which includes back-breasts and two working ovaries. Now that is professional privilege!!!
Never advocate war, but if war is present, always advocate swift victory.