Can you believe Tom Friedman in today’s NYT?
"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."
Maybe, what they read instead is , "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
Be sure to read the comments to the column. Poor Tommy is lambasted.
I don’t get it. This guy should be having trouble getting space in the Classified Ads to publish crap like this. Instead he’s given editorial space?
500K Iraqi children dead during the 90s.
Isn’t that enough proof we love Muslims?
Oh and what about our intelligentsia? Hollywood, mainstream journalism, TV talking heads, our political system, etc.
Friedman is fifth column traitorous piece of garbage like the other Zionists in this country.
Jeremy ben Ami backstopped Friedman in an appearance on C-Span Washington Journal this morning . Like Friedman, Ben Ami’s declarations of J Street policy made it crystal clear that the groups mission is to serve as a rear guard for AIPAC and to ensure that the TWO STATE solution, which the J Street-Brit Tzedek v Shalom alliance knows perfectly well will fail, but which is essential to create so that it, and Palestine, can fail, lest the only just resolution, one state, be imposed upon Israel.
ben Ami’s statements on C Span were textbook zionism: Palestine must recognize Israel’s right to exist, must renounce violence, must surrender the right of return.
In exchange, Israel will “compensate” displaced Palestinians for their losses, and will also resolve the problem of Israeli settlers by economically compensating them. Nothing remarkable, or even non-neoconish/zionist/AIPACist in ben Ami’s 30 minutes of C Span fame.
What was remarkable was the responses of the callers to C-Span: of 9 calls or Tweets fielded, 6 were not pro-Israel (including one that ben Ami declared was, wait for it — antisemitic), 2 were Israel-neutral, and one, a self-described messianic Jew, that is, a Jew who converted to evangelical Christianity — asserted that Israel MUST exist so that the Lord will come….
Perhaps two years ago Robert Lieber of Georgetown University sat in the same Washington Journal chair. One could almost see Lieber reading the talking points he had memorized: “Americans share Jewish values;” “polls show that the majority of Americans favor Israel and disfavor Palestinians.” When a caller — presumably one of those Americans — argued that many Americans DO NOT support Israel and Israeli values, Lieber barked at him: “You’re wrong!” “Americans favor Israel.”
The worm is turning.
Lieber didn’t recognize it two years ago.
Friedman doesn’t get it.
I suspect the motivating dynamic of J Street is that they DO understand that Israel and American Jews are increasingly in disfavor, and they are redoubling AIPAC’s efforts to protect their turf.
The callers who spoke out against Israel did not speak with any rancor or animus against Israel or against Jews, but rather argued in support of American interests and values.
ben Ami attempted to make the case that an American pro-Israel stance would work to the benefit of American interests, but inasmuch as ben Ami forthrightly urged sanctions against Iran in order to bring Iran to heel, the state that, said ben Ami, Isrealis consider their “major existential threat,” his concern for American interests cannot be considered genuine.
Why do I say that?
The world knows what economic sanctions do. In remarks at the University of Virginia Miller Center, Ohio University professor John Mueller repeated that economic sanctions were the “necessary cause of more deaths in Iraq than were killed in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.”
J Street supports the policy that the US ought to lead the world in slapping sanctions on Iran that will kill more people than the US killed in Japan in 1945.
How can that be in the best interest of the American people?
You don’t think Iran is at all responsible for sanctions? If Iran gave two shits about its populous it wouldn’t announce the creation of 10 more enrichments plans along with earmarks for 20 million dollars to combat Western influences.
They are digging their own hole, why not spend that 20 million on food for their people?
These would be ten enrichment plants that Iran has every right to build under treaty arrangements, right? Totally unlike Israel — who of course, doesn’t have to pay for military expense, because American taxpayers pick up the tab. And isn’t part of any sort of treaty obligation, making Israel a rogue nuclear threat — and a proliferating one at that, having marketed the technology to the apartheid government of South Africa. At a time when they were under sanctions, no less.
Funny, how Israel has carte blanche to ignore sanctions as far as you’re concerned…
And of course, yonira has to completely dodge like 90% of the post in order to take a target of (he thinks) opportunity — to demonize Iran, of course. Typical, typical Zionist. Suddenly growing a conscious when civilians can be exploited for them to hide behind.
dipshit, why not spend that money to feed their hungry?
that’s what i asked.
Dipshit, why doesn’t Israel? Or the United States, for that matter?
in fact, yawnira, Iran does feed its hungry — I suspect Iran’s essential commitment to government support of its people, in practice as well as theory- is what drove Ephraim Sneh mad.
Former defense minister Sneh is the protagonist of the demonization campaign against Iran that focused Israel’s propaganda on Iran’s nukes. In a speech at AIPAC in Wash, DC in 2008, Sneh urged the assembled US congress/AIPAC bootlickers to cause Iran’s government to worry about how they would feed their 70 million people. I call that speech inciting genocide, a violation of the Convention against Genocide.
Sneh wears another government hat in Israel: son of a prominent Communist, Sneh complains frequently that Israel is not living up to its socialist commitment. Israel has serious internal problems of poverty — such poverty that each year over 50,000 Israeli women have abortions. Despite Israel’s attempts to so strangle Iran’s economy that Iran, too, will kill its children, Iranian government policy and national character does feed its people.
Chaos — US feeds Israel.
ben Ami spouted the usual neocon bs that the US annual tribute to Israel is actually beneficial to US, inasmuch as the lucre is used to buy US -made weapons. Of course, it would be antisemitic to stretch the thought a bit and realize that a shekel of its own that Israel does not have to spend on white phosphorus to kill Gazans is a shekel that can be spent on Israeli socialized health care.
So Chaos, you are telling me that more people are dying of malnutrition in the US and Israel than were killed in WWII?
What sanctions are being imposed on the US and Israel?
Yonira,
They are digging their own hole, why not spend that 20 million on food for their people?
You are completely unaware of current Iranian politics. Ahmadinejad’s popularity, and the reason why he won elections, is because he helped the poor tremendously all over Iran. Read Roger Cohen. Read some fucking info other than what you surmise here by whatever flakey intuition you use. Iran is NOT a poor country. It has 75 million people and the majority are middle-class and well-educated.
Sneh’s dad was a real communist. The son is an opportunistic hack.
I know its not a poor country MRW, that is exactly the crux of my post. There will be no humanitarian crisis there unless they are neglected by their government.
And please explain the massive protests and crackdowns following the ‘democratic and fair’ election of the monkey Ahmadinejad?
And why don’t you comment on this gem:
Iranian parliament moving toward death penalty for blogging on certain topics
link to cyber.law.harvard.edu
Why? You can’t be bothered to comment about the actual substance of the article, instead you seek to distract from the issue and protect the neoconservative push for war mongering — and all you had to do was change the “q” to an “n” in your anti-Muslim screed.
huh? what do you u mean?
Also I am vehemently against any attack on Iran by either Israel or the US. Iran will crumble from within soon enough. The Iranian government won’t be able to strong arm its opposition forever.
Oh, and is that what happened in 1953?
economic sanctions are an attack on Iran. Once more with feeling: John Mueller: “sanctions on Iraq killed more people than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.”
Sanctions kill.
Sanctions are planned for Iran.
The Iranian people are quite capable of reforming their own government in their own style in their own time.
I notice the Jeremy ben Ami argues that J Street was formed to lobby the US government to intervene to solve Israel’s problems — take away: Israel is not capable of solving its own internal contradictions.
Further, ben Ami is among that oh so progressive group that says of itself that it represents the majority of American Jews, and that J Street strongly support economic sanctions against Iran.
Talk about internal contradictions.
no, its what happened in ’79, unless your implying that all of the Iranian opposition parties are taking orders from Britain and the US
Next you’ll try to convince me (and yourself) that Iran is a democratic country and the Supreme Council does not call all the shots.
Iran is at least as much a democracy as Israel is, in point of fact. At least in Iran citizenship is tied to actual nationality, and not “Jewishness” defined in a self-serving fashion that reinforces the cult of Zionism.
no, I do not think Iran is at all responsible for sanctions. Were Jews responsible for the Holocaust?
wow that is a stretch dude….
Did the Jews have a nuclear program which friendly or unfriendly was being hidden from the IAEA?
There lack of transparency is why there will be sanctions, not their knack with money or their propensity towards world domination.
The Holocaust comparison is getting old, especially when the analogy is so ridiculous.
Yonira,
The Holocaust comparison is getting old
Then stop using it.
Did the [Israeli] Jews have a nuclear program which friendly or unfriendly was being hidden from the IAEA?
Yes. Still is.
Nice argument, you should be a lawyer.
Did Israel sign the NPT? Did Iran?
I never bring up the Holocaust as a comparison because there is nothing to compare it to, 12 million ppl killed because of their ethnic make up, religion, and lifestyle is unfathomable.
Yet Ephraim Sneh and you, apparently, are willing to risk the death by starvation of 70 million Iranians because they have a
thanks for going on record, yonira.
Your words: hiding a nuclear program from the IAEA, a program which may be well within Iran’s NPT rights to enrich or may not be, creates in your mind and the minds of Israeli influence peddlars, the casus belli to wage war by sanctions.
I say casus belli because sanctions kill, less quickly but, as John Mueller said in a clip linked elsewhere, “sanctions killed more Iraqis than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.”
Witty is squealing like a stuck pig at the whiff of a threat of BDS imposed on apartheid Israel,
~which actually has commited war crimes and
~which actually is responsible for the mass destruction of innocent civilians, and
~which actually does have nuclear weapons.
On a blog (link to blogs.law.harvard.edu
associated with one you linked, the argument is made that “Israel should be responsible for [destroying] Iran” because Israel does crazy so well, and because “Israel sees Iran as an existential threat.”
Your words again: Holocaust was visited on Jews because of their
Your words.
Thanks for refining the point: The “existential threat” that Iran poses to Israel is that Iran refuses to allow their economy to be subjected to the Israeli “knack with money.” Not ignorant of history, Iran is aware that in numerous instances, that “knack with money” involved suborning governments and economically raping innocent civilians for the personal gain of some individuals who were Jewish.
The “propensity towards world domination” — hmmm, are you Patrick Clawson? Clawson’s doctoral thesis discussed the process of bringing “third world economies” into the global capitalist system, and used Iran as one of the examples. Clawson explained the process in Marxist terms, noting that capitalists exercise not only financial dominance over labor, but that capitalists acquire social dominance over their erstwhile workers.
That is what the entire project, most recently begun by Ephraim Sneh in 1992 and signed on to by Knesset shortly thereafter, is about: Israel intends to exercise economic and social dominance over Iran, and is not averse to killing however many innocent people get in the way of their project, consistent with the statement of Madeleine Albright (a Jew) when asked whether the death by sanctions of half a million Iraqi children caused her a twinge of conscience: she “calmly assert[ed] that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children” link to fair.org
.
Sorry I forgot to mention I was mocking you and all the ilk who actually believe that shit.
yonira, have you noticed that your attempts at irony always fall flat?
Yes, its definitely something I need to work on.
I say don’t change a thing. You’re quite funny enough just as you are.
For you Chaos, I won’t change a thing.
You flatter me. Insincerely, even. We already know you are in capable of change. That would require you to accept new factual information.
Tom Freedman in not more bigot than Chaim Weismann or Herzl who believed: “A land without people (Palestine) for the people without land (European Jews)”.
If you ask people like Freedman: “Who rescued Jewish Serfs (slaves) from Christians in Spain in 711 CE?” His answer most probably would be: “Hindus”!
Thanks to America and NATO, Bosnian Muslims who were 51% of the population – got no country of their own. They’re forced to share the 49% of their remaining homeland with the Christian Croats.
15 Jewish groups in the US are still trying to free Darfur from those Islamists in Khartoum.
Somalia is no-man land and Israel is behind the piracy there.
Kuwait is back into the hands of USrael friendly sheikh family.
Lebanon will only be free when Hizb’Allah stop killing the poor unarmed Israelis.
Gen. Musharraf, the best friend Jews ever had in Pakistan (according to AJC president) helped Bush to defeat Taliban and popularize heroin for the Zionist drugs-mafia.
And for the last three decades America is helping Israel to liberate the Muslims in Iran…..
Bullying Iran only exposes West’s hypocrisy
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Israel is behind the piracy in Somalia?
RE: “…two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny…” – Friedman
MY COMMENT: Might it be early-onset Alzheimer’s?
Glenn Greenwald, clearly a national treasure, has a brilliant, must-read denunciation of Friedman in salon.com. My feeling about Tom is that he’s not nearly as bright as his friends and enemies think he is. I think the label “neo-con” is too kind, because most of them are evil but brilliant. Friedman, perhaps no less dangerous because he is considered so influential, seems clueless, naive and even juvenile more than anything. I don’t recall every seeing anything original and/or insightful from him. His popularity has mystified me for many years.
I have wondered about his popularity also David. What I have chalked it up to is the general state of mild mental retardation brought on by endless propaganda that people call news.
My read on Freidman also. I think he is quite stupid. The puzzle is why he continues to have such a prominent forum. I think it is because he writes well, at least he crafts literate sentences. For those devoid of critical analyitic skills, i.e. the majority of readers of the NY Times, they interpret his well crafted sentences as wisdom.
David Samel, [Syvanen, as well]
My feeling about Tom is that he’s not nearly as bright as his friends and enemies think he is….clueless, naive and even juvenile more than anything.
Underscore that. The man is a pompous fool.
Friedman is popular because he plays it nice – the affable fellow seeking truthful answers and some justice … we all know better, he is an actor and has enough finesse to appear objective in some moments on camera and through his written words, but he does Cirque du Soliel like acrobatic contortions with his logic and analysis (if you can call it that) and hypotheticals he proffers as a means to appear centrist and fair when he is really just parroting the israeli line most of the time
Someone mentioned the comments to Freidman’s article. We should recommend some of the better ones — afterall this forum is pol of our feelings towards this fraud.
Yup, Friedman and Wolfowitz saved Muslims the way Sverdlov and Trotsky saved the Romanovs.