Sunday Morning Comin’ Down -- Part 2.

The Pisher of Oz.

On Meet the Press: The first half – if you had no experience with Tom Friedman, or had not watched him describe a deliberate, Neocon arc for lo these many years, you may have given him a “not bad.”

Captain Obvious really does take his little silver hammer to this Administration, by name and policy.

They have “stolen” something from the world. As much as they kick our shins, the world needs America as a beacon of hope. They need us to export optimism. And all the Cheney-Bush-Rice axis exports is fear-fear-fear.

Actual quote

:” And so when we go from a country that, historically, has always exported hope to a country that always exports fear, what we do, and what this administration has done, is actually stolen something from people. Whether it’s an African or a European or an Arab or Israeli, it’s that idea of an optimistic America out there. People really need that idea, and the sort of dark nature of the Cheneys and the Bushes and the Rices, this, this sort of relentless pessimism about the world, this exporting of fear, not hope, has really left people feeling that the idea of America has been stolen from them. And I would argue that that is the animating force behind so much of the animus directed at George Bush.

When Friedman was traveling in the Middle East with James Baker III, they went 15 separate times, and the lead line of 14 of his columns was “Baker failed”.

But the 15th time he succeeded.

This Administration tries diplomacy once – arrogantly, and with clear contempt for the very idea of mediation and subtlety – and then says, “Fuck it” and rolls the tanks.

Then Friedman’s Primary Personality -- Captain Obvious -- reasserts himself, and the Captain begins lecturing The World Generally on what they should do.

And it’s the same shit. His wagging reproof of the fundamental behavior of very bad people as if that were either insightful or sufficient. As if Ward having a little talk with the Beav’ is all that’s needed to snap the Middle East – or the White House – out of what I must assume Friedman believea is just the vapors, or a temporary cranky spell.

As if having a heart-to-piston chat with an Escalade will somehow suddenly make it start burning green tea instead of gasoline.

But no, instead of perceptiveness we get the Captain’s brilliant assay that being bad is, y’know, Bad. Being stupid is…stupid. And bad, stupid people should, y’know, stop that shit.

Because – and I don’t know if you know this, but I have devoted three chapters to it in my new book, “Air is Good” – that being bad and stupid is bad.

And stupid.

Actual quote:

”It is time for the Arab World to “stop getting their buzz” And I, I real—I have a real problem with that because it’s time for the Arab world to stop getting their buzz, OK, off fighting Israel and to overcome their humiliation that way. It’s time to start building something.”

Whew! Well I’m glad someone finally had the guts to tackle that one!

The strategy of smashing the crap out of the Middle East is not going to work. I thought it would, but it won’t.

Actual Quote:

“And the role of America is to be the guiding light there, not to fly air cover so more of this violence can continue indefinitely. If I thought it was going to work, I, I’d feel different. It’s not going to work.”

And this is where my blood starts to get seriously angried up.

Because carpetbombing our way to the Promised Land has pretty much been the Friedman Doctrine since forever. And if he is now, at this eleventh hour, disavowing his long-held and steadfast position, then he needs to stand up like, oh, Mel Gibson and announce in Big Bright Letters that he has been a fucking moron.

And then he needs to resign from the New York Times and spend the rest of the decade traveling from town to town apologizing to Americans who have lost limbs and loved ones to his Doctrine of Benevolent and Transformative Violence.

Because a pillar propping up the mad blood circus of the last three-and-one-half years has been intellectual bulwark that hacks like Friedman have give the Bush Administration. Friedman has provided ideological cover fire for bad men doing bad things -- badly -- and now he wants to skip out on paying the tab.

Wants to relegate to a single, deeply buried sentence the announcement that he has had a change of heart about the basic nature and utility of the projection of American military power in the Middle East as a means to achieving political goals. Fob if off, as if it required no more explanation than him deciding to go with the apple fritters and not the crullers at Dunkin Donuts.

No Tom, you don’t get to shrug this off and move on to your next book.

Like the Pisher of Oz slipping a bogus degree to Preznit Scarecrow,



by handing over the imprimatur of your alleged regional expertise and the firepower of the New York Times, you gave them respectability. You backed these clowns. You clad their naked dishonesty and depravity in your cozy words.

Or don’t you remember?

(Note: These quotes are from all over the Net; most citations are clear, but while grabbing them in one or two cases I was a little fast-and-sloppy. None of this is my original work or words, but those of Obviousologists from all over. All of the added emphasis, however, is mine.)

In a column dated November 6, 1997, entitled “Head Shot,” Friedman wrote:

“When you think about how the US should respond to Saddam Hussein’s latest attempt to evade UN sanctions, just keep this in mind: Saddam Hussein is the reason God created cruise missiles. Cruise missiles are simply the only way to deal with him.”

“Given the nature of world politics today, and given America’s feckless allies, the US will get only one good military shot at Saddam before everyone at the UN starts tut-tutting and rushing to his defense.

“So if and when Saddam pushes beyond the brink, and we get that one good shot, let’s make sure it’s a head shot.”

On February 17, 1998:

“With a bombing of Iraq now increasingly likely, the question being raised by those uneasy with such a strike is: What is the endgame? Is America just throwing its weight around to punish Saddam Hussein?

“The answer is really very simple. It comes down to two words: weapons proliferation. If Iraq—already a repeat user of poison gas—is able to snub its nose at the UN weapons inspectors, then the world’s ability to fight the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction would be fundamentally compromised. Libya and its friends would all be less afraid to develop germ weapons and nukes. We would all end up in a much more dangerous world. That’s why Saddam has to be stopped.”

On February 24, 1998, Friedman wrote:

“Another deal with Saddam Hussein? Hmmmmm. Why does it leave me feeling uneasy—as if I had just agreed that Ted Kaczynski [the so-called “Uni-bomber”] could be my mailman, because he promised, this time, for sure, no more letter bombs? You just know that sooner or later something is gonna go boom.”

January, 2003.

Although President Bush has cast the war in Iraq as being about disarmament - and that is legitimate - disarmament is not the most important prize there. Regime change is the prize. Regime transformation in Iraq could make a valuable contribution to the war on terrorism, whether Saddam is ousted or enticed into exile.

Why? Because what really threatens open, Western, liberal societies today is not Saddam and his weapons per se. He is a twisted dictator who is deterrable through conventional means. Because Saddam loves life more than he hates us. What threatens Western societies today are not the deterrables, like Saddam, but the undeterrables -the boys who did 9/11, who hate us more than they love life. It's these human missiles of mass destruction that could really destroy our open society.

In February 2003 he wrote:

“I don't care what the polls say, this is the real mood. Now, truth be told, I think I get this war, and, on balance, I think it is a risk worth taking -- provided we have a country willing to see it through. But it is time the president leveled with the country -- not just about the dangers posed by Saddam, but about the long-term costs involved in ousting him and rebuilding Iraq. This is not going to be Grenada.”

The same column continues:

This war has two purposes -- one stated, one unstated -- but both require the same means. The stated purpose is to disarm Iraq. The unstated purpose is to transform it from a totalitarian system that has threatened its neighbors and its own people into something better. It won't be a perfect democratic state. That will take years. But it can be a more decent state -- one that doesn't threaten its own people or neighbors. And it can serve as a progressive model to spur reform -- educational, religious, economic and political -- around the Arab world. This is the audacious part.

But, as I said, whether your goal is simply disarmament or audacious transformation doesn't really matter. Because in the end they will both require the same means: breaking apart Saddam Hussein's Iraq, its governing structure, party system and intelligence networks, and replacing them with a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq -- under Gen. Tommy Franks -- à la the postwar occupations of Germany and Japan. A hit-and-run invasion is not an option. Iraq will be controlled by the iron fist of the U.S. Army and its allies, with an Iraqi civilian ''advisory'' administration gradually emerging behind this iron fist to run daily life and produce a self-governing Iraqi authority.

The eternal and eternally-infantile rationalization of the Munificent Occupier. Who knows his intentions are good, and so can't be bothered to read even the fucking Cliff Notes edition of "Colonialism 101": That somehow instead of hating you as you stumble into their culture -- armed to the teeth and stepping on your own dick -- they'll love ya! And as you are provoked or simply screw your way up into greater and greater "temporary" repressions, reprisals, torture and murder, the locals will just shrug it off because the Preznit is so radiantly wonderful. That instead of your own size and strength being turned against you -- using you as lever and club to unify people against you -- "...an Iraqi civilian ''advisory'' administration gradually emerging behind this iron fist."

In June of 2003...

[WMDs] was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now.
Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.
...

The "moral reason" for the war was that Saddam's regime was an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the stated reason: the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to America.
…

In 1998 Friedman urged “bombing Iraq, over and over again,” and a year later advised that policy-makers “blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who is in charge.”

In January 2003, on “Good Morning America”:

Sometimes, Friedman fixates on four words in particular. "My motto is very simple: Give war a chance," he told Diane Sawyer four months ago on "Good Morning America." It was the same motto that he'd used two and a half years earlier in a Fox News interview. Different war; different enemy; different network; same solution.

January 22, 2003, when he tells us Dirty Liberals to shut up and get out of the way:

What liberals fail to recognize is that regime change in Iraq is not some distraction from the war on Al Qaeda. That is a bogus argument. And simply because oil is also at stake in Iraq doesn't make it illegitimate either. Some things are right to do, even if Big Oil benefits.

...
It is not unreasonable to believe that if the U.S. removed Saddam and helped Iraqis build not an overnight democracy but a more accountable, progressive and democratizing regime, it would have a positive, transforming effect on the entire Arab world -- a region desperately in need of a progressive model that works. 

And liberals need to take heed. Just by mobilizing for war against Iraq, the U.S. has sent this region a powerful message: We will not leave you alone anymore to play with matches, because the last time you did, we got burned. Just the threat of a U.S. attack has already prompted Hezbollah to be on its best behavior in Lebanon (for fear of being next). And it has spurred Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah to introduce a proposal to his fellow Arab leaders for an ''Arab Charter'' of political and economic reform.

Yeah. Those po', dumb Liberals.

A Slate.com forum from January, 2004:

In January 2004 [Friedman] participated in a forum on Slate.com called "Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War," in which he stated:

The right reason for this war, as I argued before it started, was to oust Saddam's regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report's prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world. That report said the Arab world is falling off the globe because of a lack of freedom, women's empowerment, and modern education.

And this from Fair.org is one of the sweetest, most concise laundry lists of Friedman’s relentless, pusillanimous attempts to kick the ugly chore of finally facing his failure down the road over and over and over again in endlessly repeating six-month increments of time now known to the world as “ friedmans”

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time." (The New York Times, November 30, 2003)

"It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months." (NPR's Fresh Air, June 3, 2004)

"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war." (CBS's Face the Nation, September 3, 2004)

"Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months." (The New York Times, November 28, 2004)

"I think we're in a six-month window here." (NBC's Meet the Press, September 25, 2005)

"Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be." (The New York Times, September 28, 2005)

"I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together." (CBS's Face the Nation, December 18, 2005)

"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq." (PBS's Charlie Rose Show, December 20, 2005)

"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot." (The New York Times, December 21, 2005)

"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding." (Oprah Winfrey Show, January 23, 2006)

"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months." (CBS, January 31, 2006)

"The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq." (NBC's Today, March 2, 2006)

"I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in." (CNN, April 23, 2006)

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there." (MSNBC's Hardball, May 11, 2006)

Which is a long way of saying that seeing Captain Obvious trying to skate on his tab for cheerleading this debacle pissed me off more than somewhat.

That from high atop his mountain of books and columns, guest shots and fame and cash, he could not stand up and man-up even enough to slip a little ampoule of mea culpa into the fatty hamburger of homilies like, “Listening is Good” and “Hating us more that you love you children…is crazy.”

Oh, and since I’m rounding out Sunday…

On Chris Matthews…Everybody’s bailing.

On Hezbollah – Neither we nor Israel were ready for this. The Arab Street now views Hezbollah as heroes.

Kelly O’Donnell – Crises are coming fast and furious to this Administration. They have the problem of resources. No drawdown.

Gloria Borger – This was a huge miscalculation on the part of Israel. We can’t handle everything, and now were on the losing end of everything.

Andy Sullivan – The entire attempt to stabilize Iraq has failed completely. We’re pulling troops from Anbar Province – which has insurgency problems of its own – to send to Baghdad.

Howie Fineman – This is the problem of Bush policy. We violate the basic strategy of diplomacy during wartime. We divide our friends and unite our enemies.

Matthews – Are we a match to Iran in the region?

Borger – No. Because George Bush is hated in the Arab world.

We are massively overextended in the region.

Sullivan – People like Bush have fantastically strong denial mechanism. This is the recovering alcoholic thingie. He must see the world in strict Black-And-White terms. He cannot tolerate the gray, and the a the gray has seeped in he doesn’t know how to cope.

(Insert sound of me having a spit-take so hard I collapsed a lung. Which made it distinctly difficult to fall to the floor laughing, but I manager.)

Borger – Well, I think he’s inflexible.

And then on to the Sniffing of The Undedrpants of The Hillary: She who is the Snuffly Pundit's mutually masturbatory Government-in-Waiting.

Hillary's like a celebrity stalkers circle-jerk to these Clinton Junkies. They hate her, but as irrelevent and negligent as it is, they literally cannot stop talking obsessively about every creepy nuance of every elaborate fantasy scenario that crosses their minds.

And nothing else in the world can moisten their panty-liners quite like it.

Thus allowing them to completely ignore the fact that there is an actual government – right now – and it looks every day more and more likely that, in a few months, one of its three branches is going to slip out of the grubby paws of the GOP.

Sullivan – Edwards was barely in the Senate. He has no foreign policy experience. No one is going to vote for Edwards as President during a world war! Or Hillary. The Democrats have no credibility on national security! Why are we even TALKING about the Democrats!

Borger – Well who do the Repblicans have who has any credibility on foreign policy.

Sullivan - Giuliani! I wuuuuvs me some hot, firm, manly Rudy!

O’Donnell – Are you fucking kidding me. Giuliani was the Mayor. Of a city. That was attacked. How in the Wide World of Sports does that add up to “foreign policy experience”?

Sully – Shut up! Shutup!Shutup!Shutup!Shutup!

Sully runs sobbing from the set.

He is looking for a stern, masterly, uniformed, muthfuckin’ Leader.

He has to say “Rudy”, but you kinda know that he’s thinkin’…



Then again, based on the Inversion of Reality that one gets when factoring in the Krazy Koulter Klinton Konstant…I believe being openly and unabashedly gay must mean that Sully is as hetero as George Clooney.

Who, by this calculus, must apparently be gay?

See, this is what happens when ignorant people cannot tell the difference between fornication with “For The Good Of The Nation.”

Shorter Matthews Summary: At the hands of the Republican Regime in Washington [although for some reason Matthews has mysteriously omitted that salient fact in favor of the omni-blame-o-riffic pronoun of “We”] our kids have died and our treasure has been bled away to create a Greater Shia CoProsperity Sphere from Baghdad to Tehran to Beirut.

You know, the sort of Nightmare Worst Case Scenario that the Left Blogosphere has been warning about for, oh, the last four years.

The kind of Nightmare Worst Case Scenario that the Right screamed was “Treason!” for anyone to even whisper as a possibility for the last four years.