New York Times columnist Tom Friedman suggests arming ISIS to counter Iran

[Panich52]

Daily Kos
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman suggests arming ISIS to counter Iran
Mar 21, 2015 5:37am PDT by Mark Lippman

It makes you wonder if some eager young Senator, or David Petraeus, isn’t already in Syria conducting the negotiations.

Tom Friedman
New York Times
March 18, 2015
O.K., so we learn to live with Iran on the edge of a bomb, but shouldn’t we at least bomb the Islamic State to smithereens and help destroy this head-chopping menace? Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?

I simply raise this question rhetorically because no one else is: Why is it in our interest to destroy the last Sunni bulwark to a total Iranian takeover of Iraq?

...

It almost sounds like the New York Time is in the recruiting business now.
There wasn’t much concern about the “Sunni bulwark” last September when Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations event. According to the transcript there was laughter and applause as Zarif spoke candidly about the role Iran was playing in Iraq.

{web page}
Council on Foreign Relations
Iranian Foreign Minister Pledges support for Iraq Against ISIS

We have looked at the situation and that is why we've played a central role in dealing with ISIS. I wouldn't call it Islamic State, because it's neither Islamic, as President Obama rightly pointed out, nor a state. It's a terrorist organization, a sophisticated terrorist organization that has come to being because of a number of reasons. But Iran has taken a leading role in that.

More
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1372346

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Those conservatives. Always coming up with new ideas. Or, rather, new twists on old ideas. Ones that excuses the build up of that military industrial complex DDE warned us about. Or that lead to WW III.[/i{

[LittleBlue]

1. One of the dumbest suggestions I've ever seen published

in a serious paper.

[guillaumeb]

2. and how did this idea work:

when the Reagan Administration armed the Taliban to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan?

What is that saying again about those who do not know history? I keep forgetting it.

[louis-t]

3. Uh, does he remember de-Baathification?

Jeez, short memory.

[hifiguy]

4. It's now official.

Friedman is as stupid as Sarah Palin. Jayzus, put down the fucking crack pipe, Friedman.