Never Trust a Friedman

If you ever hear the name "Friedman," two gents immediately spring to mind - thankfully deceased Milton "Liberty is a necktie!" Friedman and the regrettably still living, pro-globalization suckpuppet Tom Friedman.

Tommy boy is our subject today as he's got a brand new article out full of tortured logic, bald-faced lying, and the most vile rape of the english language since "lol."

"Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq is the way Iraq is... Were America and its Iraqi allies going to defeat Al Qaeda and its allies in the heart of the Arab world or were Al Qaeda and its allies going to defeat them?"

People tell me Friedman is somehow known for his ideas. Maybe it's a writer thing, but I don't see one coherent idea in this whole damned mess! "Was this as is it was whatever?" Reading Friedman is like watching Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy fuck.

 

"Now gimme a kiss!"

But if you can make it through - rum helps - Friedman's goals become pretty goddamn apparent. He's trying to dodge any sense of guilt over his shameless cheerleading for the Iraq war by admitting it was a failure but the good sort of failure - "It is possible to overpay for something that is still transformational." And goes on to credit the occupation with the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, regardless of what's going on in reality.

He blathers on about Iraq maybe becoming "a model where Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the secular and religious, Muslims and non-Muslims, can live together and share power." And I'll grant that he honestly believes that as Friedman's whole career shows him to be of too limited a mind to conceive of sociological factors that can't be condensed to suburbanite-friendly Power Points -

"No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s." Tom Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Branch.

Correlation ain't always causation, especially when talking about a mess of tribal feuds like Iraq - and really the entirety of the Middle East. But Friedman isn't even going into that. He can't. It's as far beyond his comprehension as long division would be to a Texan and more importantly it doesn't pay. Friedman is very well-paid for his baffling bullshit because as terrible as his prose is, it serves to reassure Americans that they aren't really vicious swine for supporting the bombing of some third-world sandpit for no other reason than feeling pissy. His article is just "We had to destroy the village in order to save it!" updated for the 21st century. He's not just dodging the guilt, he's offering an excuse for Americans to dodge it too, filled with lots of smart-sounding words. 

Tom Friedman is a fool and a liar. And you deserve every bit of him.