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09/21/2003 Archived Entry: "Tom Friedman: Still insane."
Tom Friedman: Still insane.
His NYTimes op-ed this morning reveals all over again that he's a wheel or two short of a wagon. Emphasis all mine...
The big thing that has happened in Iraq, which you can really feel when you're there, is that there is a 100 percent correlation of interests between America's aspirations for Iraq and the aspirations of Iraq's silent majority. We both want the same thing for Iraq — that it not become Iran, that it not become Saddam, but that it become a decent, modern-looking Iraqi alternative. This overlap of aspirations is hugely important. This is not Vietnam.
That's such a strange paragraph, I hardly know where to start. Hmm, let's see - a 'thing' has 'happened' in Iraq that you can 'feel' when you're there. That 'thing' is that Iraqis don't was Iraq to turn into another country or one person, but that it turn into a 'modern-looking' 'alternative' of itself. And that, of course, is proof that Iraq is not Vietnam.
Friedman is beginning to sound like Dennis Hopper's character in 'Apocalypse Now.'
Do you know what the man is saying? Do you? This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, with fractions. What are you going to land on, one quarter, three-eighths, what are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something -- that's dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there's only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them.
Replies: 3 people speak up
Did you know 'if' is in the middle of 'life', man?
Posted by Night Owl @ 09/21/2003 01:11 PM NY
GET THE NET!!!
Posted by Yasmin @ 09/21/2003 01:31 PM NY
Ha, ha. Your best and funniest analysis yet. For a guy who can not speak or read Arabic, does not understand the culture or the history of the region, how in heaven's name did Friedman become a sage on the Middle East?
I've feared that Friedman has gone over the edge for quite some time now. But this take on the Iraq situation confirms it. Obviously, Friedman is totally Hegelian - synthesis, anti-synthesis etc - and the fact that he's been eating the mushrooms in the backyard since he bought the house has elevated his level of awareness to cosmic proportions. His talents are wasted working at the NYT; he should reside in Delphi and tell us what the third milleneum will be like.
Keep up the good work.
Posted by Carter @ 09/21/2003 10:33 PM NY
