{"id":470,"date":"2007-09-09T10:52:49","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T14:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=470"},"modified":"2011-09-11T18:02:19","modified_gmt":"2011-09-11T23:02:19","slug":"ipsa-loquitur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=470","title":{"rendered":"Unsurprising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Friedman, Middle East Expert, <a href=\"http:\/\/select.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/09\/opinion\/09friedmancolumn.html\">today<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>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 \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So <strong>it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Not surprising? <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2007\/08\/17\/friedman-apologize\/\">Tom Friedman<\/a> on the possibility of a democracy in Iraq:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Right, exactly. And I don\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt apologize for that. I\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdm 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\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt be a really good thing. <a href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=3800770925110269212&amp;q=charlie+rose+friedman+2003\">Tom Friedman<\/a> on why we invaded Iraq:<\/p>\n<p>What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdWhich part of this sentence don\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt you understand?\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd<\/p>\n<p>You don\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdre just gonna to let it grow?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Well, Suck. On. This.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Okay.<\/p>\n<p>That Charlie <strong>was what this war was about<\/strong>. We could\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdve hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 \u00ef\u00bf\u00bd no civil society, no real labor unions, no real &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=470\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Unsurprising<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inexplicable","category-thomas-friedman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}