Glenn Greenwald: The Tom Friedman of 2002 has not gone anywhere

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/18/friedman/index.html

The Tom Friedman of 2002 has not gone anywhere

(updated below - Update II)

For all the self-satisfied talk about how George Bush is incapable of ever admitting mistakes or changing his mind, our elite pundit class is exactly the same way. Tom Friedman single-handedly did more than anyone else to convince liberals and Democrats to support the invasion of Iraq; the only competitors for that ignominious distinction are Colin Powell and Ken Pollack. And while he has spent the last year or so feigning angst over his years of pro-war cheerleading, he has not changed in the slightest.

snip//

As Friedmans' column this morning demonstrates, this is exactly the same mentality which our pundit class continues to embrace today: America can only succeed in the world if we run around constantly threatening countries that we will invade and incinerate them. Thus, Democrats like little Obambi are too weak and not enamored enough of war to be Serious in national security. The country needs the Real Tough Guy Republicans like Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani -- the crazed warmongers -- to stay safe.

The drooling, bloodthirsty desire for war and vengeance which Friedman spewed forth in the months after 9/11 has been suppressed some as a result of the disaster in Iraq, but it is still lurking in him and the rest of our pundit class with all the vibrancy it had in 2002. And now that they are starting to convince themselves that they were Right After All about Iraq, they're starting to unveil it again, in completely unchanged form. They have learned absolutely nothing. They cannot, because they are convinced that they are the Guardians of Great Wisdom and cannot err. Even in Iraq, they did not err.

Almost five years after helping to unleash the greatest disaster in our country's history, Tom Friedman is still openly indulging his adolescent, weakness-based fantasies about ass-kicking and chest-beating Dr. Strangelove threats and the virtues of acting like a mafia thug such as Tony Soprano, "quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm." Friedman sits around watching TV shows and -- for reasons far more psychological than political -- identifies with amoral Tough Guy thugs and gets all excited by the vicarious sensations of strength and power and then disguises all of that as "foreign policy analysis."

Tom Friedman -- and the rest of our media class -- are completely unchanged as compared to what they were like in 2002. The disaster they unleashed in Iraq only caused them to hide all of this for awhile, not to relinquish or even modify it in any way.

[TomClash]

1. My least favorite "liberal" columnist nt

[leftchick]

2. The best is the last....

<snip>

We continuously hear about how grave a problem is the Iranian nuclear program. It never seems to occur to the likes of Tom Friedman that -- just as one might be motivated to buy a gun if one's neighborhood were infested with roving crime gangs -- countries decide that it might be rational for them to acquire nuclear weapons given that the world's superpower is run by warmongering crazies such as Friedman, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Mike O'Hanlon and Fred Kagan. Deranged neoconservative militarism isn't the solution to nuclear proliferation; it's a cause.

[Mist]

3. My favorite definition of Friedman: "A moustache in search of a brain." IIRC,

it came from a DUer.

[liam_laddie]

4. My favorite Tom F. definition...

is the "Freidman Unit." It's a measure of time...six months...which was constantly
used to justify staying the course. "We'll know in another six months whether the
strategy was successful" for whatever on-going disaster was being re-branded.
What a tool of "certain Mid-East interests."

[blm]

5. Friedman's not objective because he acted as gobetween for some time

and between his Saudi royal friends, various neocons, Blair and Clinton 'advisors' he was easily brought along with his coveted position as an 'insider' getting privileged info.

Any HONEST Senate Democrat will tell you that the biggest advisor in 2002 telling Dems in DC to support Bush on Iraq war was Bill Clinton.