NYT's Friedman on the Facebook poll

[FourScore]

Where Did ‘We’ Go?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 29, 2009

I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing.

I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish settler as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?_r=1

[joeybee12]

1. For once I agree with Freidman...

...it makes me sick the way Repuk leaders are using the insanity and violence of the right to gain power...may they all rot in hell.

[Zoeisright]

2. Friedman 'almost' gets it.

He just has to put that shit in there about Clinton's impeachment and how Bush* was 'elected' because of Florida, with no mention of the coup staged by SCOTUS.

But he's right about this atmosphere.

[FourScore]

3. That's exactly why I almost didn't post this.

I don't like Friedman much.

[lamp_shade]

4. WOW

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Think me agreeing with Friedman is a first.