With today’s column [“The End, for Now“], after a brief flirtation with inconvenient truths about Israel, Thomas Friedman sinks back into the pattern of self-serving mendacity. There are probably more falsehoods and inferential falsehoods per square inch in this column than in any previously published by the Times; the only possible rivals are something by Safire, or something else by Friedman.
It says: we bombed, invaded, and occupied Iraq to change “the context of Arab
politics” and address “the root causes of Arab state dysfunction.” A regional
paradigm shifter: that’s all it was. And the word Israel is not spoken once.
He uses the name “Al-Qaeda” several times, to designate the major enemy of the
U.S. in the insurgency; not informing his readers that “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” came
into existence after the U.S. invasion, around 2005, and that its recruitment
tool was the occupation itself. Unlike Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, “Al Qaeda in Iraq”
did not exist before 2003. We created this new “root cause” of disorder in “the
context of Arab politics.”
Friedman’s story is worse than the assembly-line platitudes of Obama at Fort
Bragg on December 14: “Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices
for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right.” Obama’s was a
generic appeal to national self-love, and would be understood, even by its
military audience, as part of the job of a politician who isn’t particularly
concerned with the truth. Friedman, by contrast, rewrites the facts of history
as palpably as the Cheney circle did when they suggested that Saddam Hussein
“attacked us on 9/11.”
These lies get lodged in people’s minds and stick. That is their purpose. And,
just as Leon Panetta recently repeated the “Iraq bombed us on 9/11” falsehood
to American soldiers in Iraq, and then had to issue a retraction, so now will
dozens of Congressmen and columnists and opinion makers lower down the media
ladder repeat Friedman’s rechristening of the insurgency “Al-Qaeda.” But here,
there will be no retractions.
Nicely put, Professor Bromwich. Thank you for the contribution.
An excellent evisceration by Professor Bromwich. I read Friedman’s column as a feeble, half-hearted semi-apology for being wrong about the war, followed by weaselly retractions. All that was missing was his usual moving yardstick: “the next 6 months in Iraq will be decisive . . .”
Well, to his credit, he did get it right one of those 6 months, though. Didn’t he? ;)
Even a broken clock is……
With the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq, we’re finally going to get the answer to the core question about that country: 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 —
god, but he is a piss poor writer, and for anyone who fawns hyperbolic about one of friedman’s articles as a ‘watershed’ moment in his educational trajectory, please return to this bit of excremental nonsense. you’d have to have one shoe nailed to the floor to view anything friedman does as a ‘turning point’. friedman is Rwitty with a pulitzer. in other words, he is irredeemable. and i see no evidence that he has experienced the least bit of embarassment or shame over his decades-long campaign for arab blood. here he treats us to his insincere hypothesizing about the potential for arab democracy, when every word insinuates that ‘arabs’ are inherently masochistic and psychologically incapable of operating except under the whip of a tyrant. what a frickin’ sociopath.
Thanks David Bromwich. I knew Yale, where I went for a grad degree, is good something, after trashing Dr. Juan Cole. You!