Tom Friedman, Middle East Expert, today:
One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between � no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.
Not surprising? Tom Friedman on the possibility of a democracy in Iraq:
Right, exactly. And I don�t apologize for that. I�m not going to apologize for thinking that if we could find a way to collaborate with people there to build a different future in the heart of that world, which is afflicted by so many pathologies, that that wouldn�t be a really good thing. Tom Friedman on why we invaded Iraq:
What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, �Which part of this sentence don�t you understand?�
You don�t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we�re just gonna to let it grow?
Well, Suck. On. This.
Okay.
That Charlie was what this war was about. We could�ve hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
I guess Freidman was for his argument before he was against it…the back-breaking acrobatics some of the punditocracy are doing to weasel out of their earlier warmongering is appalling. This particular instance is perfectly labeled as “inexplicable,” because is not even clearly a contradiction, but a line of argument so incoherent and haphazard it’s hard to beleive it all issued from the same source.