Another sentence from the Tom Friedman column of November 29:
"Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes."
But "have no doubt" protests too much. Friedman pretends to know more than the evidence knows about why we did what we did to Iraq; but no matter.What matters is that "we punched a fist" into a large generic target ("the Arab/Muslim world"), hoping to kill anything, anywhere. It is the righteous boast of an angry man who is sure he will be forgiven. He doesn’t meet the standards of reason and justice, and he knows it. He feels that he has earned our sympathy none the less. The guy–and the country that he speaks for (as he sees it)–is just blowing off steam. Expressing himself. Sending a message. Friedman loves imperialism with a punch-drunk love.
Weiss adds: Reminds me of this admission by Friedman on Slate in 2004, in justifying his support for the Iraq war:
The real reason for this war—which was never stated—was to burst what I would call the "terrorism bubble," which had built up during the 1990s.
This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as "martyrs," and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society.
Oh I see Greenwald is on the same case, violent language…
Metaphors, euphemisms, lies that hide the truth about bodies torn apart and burned, lives ruined, pain and suffering that people like Friedman will never experience.
Friedman is a Judith Miller neo-con. Like Ethan Bronner.
RE: “Oh I see Greenwald is on the same case, violent language…” – WEIS(S)
PRICELESS: “…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.” (Greenwald speaking of Tommy Boy’s screed)
P.S. Oh, Glennzilla…we’re not worthy! We’re just not worthy!
Hey folks, there are some great comments to Friedman’s piece. Go there a make your recommendations — consider it a mini pol on this fraud.
RE: “…there are some great comments to Friedman’s piece.” – syvanen
Looking at the ‘recommends’ for the comments, the best/oldest critical comments are in the 600 range and the “best”/oldest favorable comments are a bit below 200. About a 3 to 1 recommend ratio on the unfavorable to favorable comments.
There are also some great comments posted to Greenwald’s critique of Friedman’s article.
link to salon.com
To hell with comments…
Why isn’t there an organized boycott of NYT?
Greenwald does a materful job of pulling Friedman apart.
Greenwald wiped that dick’s prick with steel wool. The comparison of Friedman calling Hasan mentally unbalanced for killing innocents with Friedman’s pornographic lust for war in which we hit and kill hundreds of thousands of innocents “because we could” was priceless.
“Have no doubt” is an effort to give backbone to an argument that is basically an assertion. There are moral sentiments that underlie Friedman’s thesis, and if you regard only his perspective as the set to look at, they fit together and make sense.
“Have no doubt” also comes from this blog, and particularly from pro-Palestinian perspective that asks for solidarity. Ali Abunimah states “have no doubt”. I don’t know if he does literally, but certainly figuratively. He gives “backbone” to commitment.
Certainty of commitment to an entire strategy, activism, mindset, in a reality that uncertainty is the most accurate description of the politics.
Make sense Witty?
Friedman open his mouth to change feet. Earlier this year, he was hailing the 2006 Lebanon was as a victory for Israel, which he boasted was achieved by Isrlae having inflicted sufficient pain on the civilian population. Not onyl was he not denying that Israel were targetting the public, but that it was a viable and successful stratergy.
I take you you agree and approve?
Incomprehensible. Rewrite this, and state what you mean plainly. This is verbal garbage of the highest order. For someone with the temerity to excoriate Phil Weiss’ journalistic skills, you have a lot of balls to pass this shit off as readable. Or understandable.
Thank you MRW. I was tempted to say the same thing, but I chose to focus on the one statement from Witty that was legible and consistent with his racist and fascistic world view.
Witty is psychological incapable of speaking plainly.
A) he’s incompetent and brainwashed and B) he’s a fanatical racist and Jewish supremacist steeped in ideology.
There is no hope for him. There is at least some middle ground. Someone could say we’re passionate about defending the Palestinians as Witty is for the Jewish country club – that would be a superficial comparison and a superficial truth.
And yet, we can still SPEAK PLAINLY. In fact, if someone were to challenge us we would reveal whether we know or don’t know the ‘answer’ because we are sincere. I don’t mean that in a saintly way – I mean it in a very basic way. Meaning, we aren’t speaking in code. The disagreements we have w/ Zionists is on content and not on rhetorical games (I call Nazis, Nazis – but I could be classified as inflammatory and insulting – however that is quite different from the deep-seated intellectual dishonesty and superficial rhetoric that characterizes everything Witty has ever said here.).
Cliff, reply to the yoga post.
“Witty is psychological incapable of speaking plainly.”
It’s not that he’s incapable, it’s that he can’t afford to. Witty doesn’t say what he thinks or thinks what he says, which is why he in incoherent and inconsistent. Witty is like a lawyer who is trying to avoid giving a stright answer to a stright question, thus his arguments are a proverbial excercise in hopscotch.
Witty doesn’t understand or know about the journalistic requirement to write one idea per sentence.
You really didn’t get my point?
It was that the left applies the same method and purpose as the neo-conservatives, or in this case Friedman (I don’t call him a neo-consertive).
Namely, that if you only consider a limited set of fact and voices, your argument makes perfect sense, but if you consider multiple facts and voices, the argument is flawed and even malevolent.
Each engaging in self-talk.
Oooooh.do now you are apologizing for and defending Friedman? Cute. Yeah, Witty, those liberal credentials of yours sure are intact. How’s that search for WMD’s in Iraq coming along?
Yes we got the point that you don’t have a point.
There is a Zionist poster on Gelnn Greenwald’s blgo, who like you, only goes after Greenwald and his “journlistic integritiy” when he discusses anything to do with Israel and like you , contributes incoherent and inconsistent babble.
So explain to us Witty, what multiple facts and voices makes th ec ase against Freedman “flawed and even malevolent”?
Do you intend to finish your argument, or do you just want to leave it hanging in the ether?
I had interpreted your response as a disagreement with Phil’s analysis of the meaning Friedman intended to convey or his motive for use of the rhetorical device ‘have no doubt’. I’m not sure that I agree with Phil, but I definitely think your take is based on some poor assumptions. (not trying to be rude, just striving to be clinically blunt as always)
It was that the left applies the same method and purpose as the neo-conservatives, …
First, you make this a left-right issue. It is not. While neoconservatives are widely considered to be on the ‘right’, the core members of their movement who define the dominate expression of their ideology, strove for war with Iraq, and strive for war with Iran, are not remotely conservative in the traditional sense. They are extremist pro-colonization Zionists, as are the so-called neoliberals supposedly on the left.
Neoconservatives and neoliberals are like chile with and without beef. The texture and flavor may be different, but both are still chile. Your characterization is a distraction from the unstated reason Friedman is so gung-ho about war against Muslims. It is not that he falls somewhere on some grossly over-abstracted one-dimensional left-right distribution of political orientation, but that he is an extremist Zionist.
… if you only consider a limited set of fact and voices, your argument makes perfect sense, but if you consider multiple facts and voices, the argument is flawed and even malevolent.
Second, you state that Phil is “only considering a limited set of facts and voices.” You imply that he ignores Friedman’s “moral sentiments”. On what basis do you make this assumption?
How would its neglection, and that of other unstated “facts and voices”, invalidate his analysis, or make it potentially malevolent? While it is certainly true that analysis of a subset of data (allegedly Phil’s) may yield results inconsistent with those from analysis of the whole (allegedly including Friedman’s moral sentiments), that doesn’t mean that the latter are not utter nonsense either due to flaws in the methodology of analysis itself, e.g. wildly distorted Zionist assumptions about the motives of gentiles with consequent self-righteous imposition of involuntary sacrifice of life, liberty, and financial security on other Americans, or simply propagandistic duplicity.
Friedman: “… [our objectives were] to destroy two tyrannical regimes … [and] … preserve our open society.”
Both of Friedman’s assertion are outright lies. Your arguments distract from the Zionist motivations underlying Friedman’s worldview and his use of the NYT’s to spread them.
Re: “There are moral sentiments that underlie Friedman’s thesis, and if you regard only his perspective as the set to look at, they fit together and make sense.”
So, you agree in that sense that Mein Kampf makes sense, given when it was written?
“There are moral sentiments that underlie Friedman’s thesis, and if you regard only his perspective as the set to look at, they fit together and make sense.”
Of course, they make sense, they just happen to be immoral, ignorant and extreme.
1. Friedman endorses collective punichment on civilians in order to pressure the public to on the factions that Israel are targetting.
Ze’ev Shiff (Israeli journalist and military correspondent for Ha’aretz), said the same thing, though unlike Friedman, he never endorsed it.
“The Israeli army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously. The army has never distinguished civilian from military targets, but has purposely attacked civilian targets.”
2. Friedman takes this even further, by endorsiung the punishment of the Arab world, whether they are involved in agression or terroism against the US or not. In the case of Iraq, he supported the attack and destruction of Iraq as retribution for 911, even though Iraq had no role in the attacks.
3. He not only does not deny that Israel targets civilians, but actively supports it and argues that it is a succesful stratergy.
But the Friedmans aren’t the ones fighting and dying. As Pat Buchanan noted, it’s “kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown.”
Friedman is akin to a childish video game player, knocking off the zombies (Muslims) and talking like a Mafia goon in the rec room of his huge mansion. And, despite what Witty says, he’s a neocon; just not an honest one; he never made mea culpa for his early support of
Iraq War 2–he use to give Chaney wet kisses; every six months he puts his finger to the wind and adjusts his mask slightly. It’s a joke on the American public that he holds
fawning reputation in our Fourth Estate.
Any comments on the recent announcements from Iran.
1. El Baradei declaring definitively that Iran is NOT cooperating with the International Atomic energy oversight agency.
2. That Iran has publicly threatened to renounce participation in the nuclear non-proliferation protocols.
3. That Iran has announced the construction of 10 additional nuclear processing plants (from the now 2?)
These are more substantive than Sharon walking legally (with the permission of the Al- Aqsa officials) at the Al Aqsa Mosque. And, many are accurately stating that the construction of nuclear arms is a more significant action than the construction of 800 housing units.
Both are destabalizing, but the nukes are life-threatening, even if not a certainty what history will unfold.
Witty’s talking to himself again; let’s consider what he says in the context of what El Baradei said about 6 weeks ago when called upon to address Iran’s non-existent nuke stockpile, that is, that, for starters, Israel is the top actual present nuke threat in the middle east:
link to news.xinhuanet.com
Does Witty know the meaning of the word “substantive?”
One has to assume, because you do not challenge it and instead seek to change the topic, that you tacitly endorse Friedman’s “punching” metaphor and the policies it represents.
“Any comments on the recent announcements from Iran.”
Yes Witty, and yet again, you’re reading and seeing what you want to see.
1. El Baradei has not declared that Iran is failing to cooperate. He said that Iran has refused to accept the terms of the proposal put forward by the P5+1 without wanting to negotiate thoser terms. These were supposed to be negotiations, not a a laying down of the law.
BTW. Israel refused to even sign the NPT a few months ago.
2. No, Iran has not publicly threatened to renouncethe NPT. Some hard liners in thegovernment have. Of course, given that they have been denied their inaliable righs under the NPT, one could hardly blame them if they did.
BTW. Israel, has refused to even sign the NPT.
3. Iran have announced the plans for construction of 5 additional nuclear processing plants, with the possibility of another 5. Iran are 100% entiteld to do so under the NPT.
These are what they are and have no relevance whatsoever to do with Sharon walking legally (or otherwise) at the Al Aqsa Mosque. And seeing as there is still no evidence whatsoever that Iran is construction nuclear arms, it is also of no relevance whatsoever to the construction of 800 housing units. Mind you , Israel is constructing of 800 housing units and has made over 200 nukes.
Both are destabalizing, and the nukes are life-threatening, and Israel is doign both.
Now, so you have any comments of value?
“And, many are accurately stating that the construction of nuclear arms is a more significant action than the construction of 800 housing units.”
Who is ?
February 2002 Friedman quote from Greenwald article: [emphasis Greenwald's]
“There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we’re going to get our turkey back“.
Friedman’s turkey talk is revealing. I do not recall a shred of a sense in early 2002 that Americans lost ‘our turkey’ that soon after 9/11. I think it is complete nonsense. Neither I nor anyone I knew felt anything of the sort. We certainly have now after 7 years of increasingly pointless war, but not when Friedman wrote these lines.
So who is this ‘royal we’ with whom Friedman identifies when he refers to ‘our turkey’? I suggest that he is talking about American extremist Zionists who had been growing increasingly frustrated with lack of progress along the ‘Clean Break’ front. These radicals were very disconcerted by the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 which ended 18 years of Israeli occupation of south Lebanon and any chance of eventual annexation of its land and water resources. However, it is important to note that Israel still refuses to withdraw from the water-rich Shebaa Farms area.
What we have here is a man whose first loyalty is to a country other than that in which he bears citizenship, resides, and works, deceptively conflating the interests of his home country and his favored foreign country in America’s so-called ‘newspaper of record’. Is it rude to notice?
For the record, the Syrian Ambassador to the USA declared on CSPAN last week that
Syria has officially denied any claim to any rights over or in Shebba Farms.
I love it how Israel claims it’s hanging on to that piece of land because “there are disputes between Lebanon and Syria.” No, they only party causing any disputes — by taking land from others, under the aegis of US hegemony — is Israel.