Thomas Friedman

Sorry Thomas Friedman, The World Is Round

by Stephen Marshall, The Disinformation Company

http://www.alternet.org/, July 5, 2007

[In an excerpt from the new book, Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, Stephen Marshall takes on liberals like Friedman, who would have you believe that our capitalist system is inherently just and self-regulating when, in reality, it is anything but.]

[The following is an excerpt from Stephen Marshall's new book, Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: The New Liberal Menace in America.]

Now every true revolution has a scribe, someone who is able to channel the zeitgeist into a passionate, living chronicle that fuels the insurgency and propels it to its ultimate historical destiny. The French Revolution had Voltaire, the American had Thomas Paine. For the new capitalist revolution, there is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. I know this because as I walk through the business class cabin of my United Airlines flight, passing all the young legionnaires of the jet-set globalist contingent, I count four copies of his bestselling book, The World Is Flat, and that's just in the first three rows. Seeing the books reminds me that Friedman was the only major figure to refuse my interview request. It's a drag, because there is probably no other liberal who fits the description of a wolf in sheep's clothing than America's preeminent globalization advocate.

Friedman was one of the first A-list liberals to peddle the idea that Iraqis would treat American soldiers as liberators. He believed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein represented the very best aspects of American liberalism. Six months after the invasion -- the same week I was interviewing Sgt. Hollis in Samarra -- Friedman declared, "This is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the U.S. has ever launched -- a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world." Like so many of his other liberal peers, Friedman denied there was economic dimension to the conflict. This war was different from past wars that their generation had protested. "U.S. power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world during the cold war," wrote Friedman in his column.

And yet, as many Iraqis told me during my time in-country, the imposition of democracy from a foreign power seemed to contradict the very essence of political freedom. Especially when the Americans were doing everything in their power to control the new system. Overwhelmingly, Iraqis seemed to believe that the creation of an authentic democratic structure would mean adoption of Islamic (sharia) law, which a great majority of them want. But for American liberals like Thomas Friedman, sharia represents a major failure; it would mean having spent billions to liberate a society only to see it retreat from the secular freedoms imposed by its former dictator.

To protect itself from this outcome, the United States stacked the newly liberated nation's political deck with as many pro-Western Iraqis as possible. But this only strengthened the convictions of many who saw the invasion and its promise of delivering true freedom as a wedge to open Iraq for U.S. corporate and military goals. A few days before leaving Baghdad, I listened to Rana al Aiouby, a young Iraqi translator, argue over tea with Hesham Barbary, an Egyptian businessman who had come to cash in on the new reconstruction contracts.

"So the Americans came here to save the Iraqi people?" al Aiouby asked incredulously.

"Partially," Barbary replied.

"They didn't come here to help the Iraqis. Everyone knows why the American came here ... because their economic system just collapsed. So they have to help themselves, and even if they'll make a disaster for the others, just, they want to survive. That's it."

Voices like Rana al Aiouby's are not present in Thomas Friedman's real-time history of globalization. They can't be. Prowar liberals like Friedman, architects of the new millennial liberal project, cannot afford to second-guess the motives driving America's War on Terror. From the outset, Friedman believed implicitly that Bush's Iraq War plan was a high-stakes gamble based on ideological motives, "the greatest shake of the dice any president has voluntarily engaged in since Harry Truman dropped the bomb on Japan." Others echoed the sentiment -- "This is Texas Poker," as arch-conservative Robert Novak put it -- pushing the idea that Bush had risked billions of dollars and thousands of lives like some Vegas roller. The analogy is instructive. Who bets the house on an abstraction? No one. So we're to believe that Bush and Cheney went for broke to bring democracy to Iraq? That's insanity. This is an administration so mired in cronyism and conflicts of interest that to believe they would take such a huge bet on a political ideal is delusional. And yet that is exactly what the pro-war liberals have done. The question is: why?

In Friedman's case, I believe it is because he implicitly understands that America is facing an insurmountable challenge to its global economic hegemony. His research for The World Is Flat brought him around the world to investigate the new paradigm emerging in transnational business. What he finds is that the old vertical ("command and control") systems are being replaced by horizontal ("connect and collaborate") ones and, in the process, blowing away walls and ceilings that were once integral to the rigid hierarchical structure of global commerce. He first made this discovery in Bangalore, India, where menial data entry and phone operator jobs in the accounting and banking fields are now being performed by English-speaking workers. This has been going on for years but, as Friedman explains, he was too busy covering the War on Terror to notice. It's not until Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys -- India's equivalent to Microsoft -- tells him "the playing field is being leveled," that Friedman realizes what he has stumbled upon.

Over and over again he exclaims: the world is flat, the world is flat, the world is flat! Capitalism is undergoing its new revolution, one that will be as transformative as "Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, or the Industrial Revolution."

But, like all revolutions, this one will have its winners and losers. Of the former, most obvious are corporate CEOs who will fatten their bottom line by tapping into the vast reservoir of cheap foreign labor. On the other side is Joe Six Pack, who will suffer from a net loss in American jobs. Much of the success of Friedman's book lies in his dire warnings to Americans that they are on the verge of a major crisis. Not only are hard-working, low-wage Indian workers stealing their jobs, but hard-working, tech-savvy Chinese students are increasingly taking seats in top undergrad and graduate college programs. And, Friedman frets, if America doesn't wake up, it will face a potentially disastrous decline: Or, as Infosys's CEO Nilekani later explains, the American middle class "has not yet grasped the competitive intensity of the future. Unless they [do], they will not make the investments in reskilling themselves, and you will end up with a lot of people stranded on an island."

So what does his support of the invasion of Iraq have to do with his The World Is Flat thesis? Everything. Like any good writer, Friedman understands that America loves a disaster movie, but only if it has a happy ending. So while the outlook may be grim for average workers, he is careful to paint a picture that is ultimately reassuring. The coming storm, he explains, will catalyze the transformation of America. "Each of us as an individual, will have to work a little harder and run a little faster to keep our standard of living rising." But this is never applied to the realm of U.S. foreign policy and how it might be shaped by these new threats to U.S. supremacy. Instead, a sort of delusional picture of globalization is presented, one in which the government plays no role whatsoever. And in this omission, in his obscuring of such an obvious force in world finance, we are given a hint at the lengths to which Friedman will go to deny the truth. Placing his Iraq coverage side by side with The World Is Flat, the message is that government is driven by a mission to liberate and democratize the world, the vast majority of whom will, like the post-Saddam Iraqis, joyfully embrace American-style capitalism. Not only is this a verifiably distorted vision of reality, it is a dangerous one. Because it keeps the millions of readers who bought Friedman's book from understanding why so much of the world has turned against America. And how dire the consequences of this ignorance will prove to be.

Pox Americana

Slipping into my window seat, I smile to myself. There, in the adjacent seat pocket, with a gold sticker shouting its status as "the bestselling nonfiction book in the world today," is another copy of The World Is Flat. I nod hello to the young female executive sitting next to me and pull out the book I have brought along. It's a thin essay by the 75-year-old Marxist intellectual Samir Amin that issues its own grim warnings about the future of our globalized world. Titled The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, the cover photo shows a Chinese kid dressed in army fatigues, standing on the Wall of China holding a Coke can.

If Thomas Friedman is the prophet of 21st century capitalism, then Samir Amin is his anti-Christ. But to hear Amin tell it, Friedman is the only one leading humankind into the depths of Hell. Writing from Dakar, Senegal, where he runs the Third World Forum, Amin's thesis is essentially that liberalism, if allowed to continue on its path of creative destruction, will lead to an apocalyptic end. He likens the globalizing force of liberalism to a virus that has destroyed all ideological competitors and that is now making its final assault on its host species. According to Amin, the ethic of liberalism -- "Long live competition, may the strong win" -- is now ravaging societies of the Third World, causing further "social alienation and pauperization of urban classes."

It's nothing new from the far, far left. There are shelves full of books by anti-globalization writers from the developing world. What made me pick up Samir Amin's essay, though, was the striking specificity of his warning. In Liberal Virus, he argues that liberalism's most decisive effect will be to divide the world into an apartheid system that sees 3 billion peasant farmers pushed from their land and forced into the cities where they will die. This, he explains, will result from the implementation of a 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) mandate that all agricultural markets be opened to the expansion of commercial agribusiness producers. Without the ability to make a subsistence living from their own land, half the world's population will have to migrate to the urban centers where there is no work for them. And thus, he concludes, they will be trapped in an "organized system of apartheid" on a global scale.

"What is going to become of these billions of human beings, already for the most part, the poor among the poor?" Amin asks. You don't have to be a red-blooded socialist to intuit his answer. "Capitalism," he concludes, "has become barbaric, directly calling for genocide." In this drive to satisfy the insatiable hunger for new markets of its Western clients, the WTO is sanctioning a process that will "destroy -- in human terms -- entire societies." Writing in a style that starkly contradicts Friedman's cheery cartoon of the flat world, Amin paints an ominous image of capitalism as a force that is in constant need to consume itself and the communities that lie in its path. Through his eyes, the agents of globalization bear an eerie resemblance to the Borg that battle Star Trek's Jean Luc Picard and his Enterprise crew. American liberalism echoes the Borg with the claim that it only seeks to "improve the quality of life for all species" through the spread of democracy while simultaneously warning the world that "resistance is futile -- you will be assimilated." But that is not to say Amin views liberalism as the victor. Rather, he describes it as a "senile system" that ultimately cannot stop the horror of its destiny.

Again, it isn't hard to find doomsday prophecies about the evils of capitalism. But what is interesting about Amin's book is that he offers an explanation for the phenomenal success of Friedman's ideas. Expanding his metaphor, Amin describes the liberal virus as one that "pollutes contemporary social thought and eliminates the capacity to understand the world, let alone transform it." So there is a kind of delusional episode occurring within the mass American psyche, one that has obscured what Amin terms "really existing capitalism" and replaced it with a fictitious model based on an "imaginary capitalism." According to Amin, liberals like Thomas Friedman conjure the illusion of a system that is inherently just and self-regulating while, in reality, it only creates permanent instability and requires constant intervention and protection by the armored shield of the state. "The globalized 'liberal' economic order," he writes, "requires permanent war -- military interventions endlessly succeeding one another -- as the only means to submit the peoples of the periphery to its demands."

I started reading Amin's book a few weeks after finishing The World Is Flat. And what struck me was that his description of the forces driving globalization was far closer to that of Sgt. Hollis, the tank commander I met in Iraq, than to Thomas Friedman's. What's more, his theory about the impact of the liberal virus on our ability to interpret the world drove me back into Friedman's book, where I found a quote that basically mirrors Amin's. Just before the halfway mark, Friedman writes: "The perspective and predispositions that you carry around in your head are very important in shaping what you see and what you don't see." Of course, he's not applying this to himself. Rather, it's a blunt critique of the fearful, knee-jerk reactions that American politicians and union leaders have thrown up to "protect" the U.S. economy from a genuinely "open" market. But the point is that, as we well know, everyone is the captive of their perspective. It frames and defines our worldview. Hence, for Friedman, the liberal business columnist, globalization = good, while for Amin, the African Marxist intellectual, globalization = bad. And for millions of readers who aspire to be a part of the new capitalist revolution, Friedman's vision is far more appealing than Amin's. Who can blame them?

But what if he's wrong? What if Friedman is as short-sighted and ill-informed as the military and government leaders who claimed to have had no forewarning of the Sept. 11 attacks? Beyond the sheer tactical breakdown of that day, much of the blame for the failure rests in a kind of voluntary blindness assumed by a great majority of Americans. It was that myopia that prevented so many brilliant and influential foreign policy analysts, defense experts and journalists from foreseeing the coming threat. And they continued to ignore the messages being sent from the developing world, collectively evading the difficult work of questioning what aspects of American foreign policy might have brought on such an attack, even after thousands of Mexican soccer fans chanted "Osama" at a post-gill match against the United States. Proving how little he has learned from his worldly travels, Friedman repeats the hollow mantra in his book, describing the terrorists as "angry, frustrated and humiliated men and women." And not far behind them, in his estimation, are the anti-globalization protesters -- comprised mostly of Trotskyites, anarchists and old hippies -- who are influenced by a heavy dose of anti-Americanism and defined by their denial of the inevitable triumph of flatness, arguing over the moot point of "whether we globalize." Naturally, Samir Amin is one of these people.

And herein lies the most troubling aspect of Friedman's popularity. He, and his readers, assume that anyone who opposes globalization from the side of the developing world -- either violently or ideologically -- is driven by a deep sense of shame at their poverty and inability to keep up with the West. But, at least as it applies to Samir Amin, nothing could be further from the truth. What Amin is articulating is a detailed warning about the same globalized world for which Friedman is such a wide-eyed proponent. But Friedman, and the millions who buy his books, is immune to it, because from his perspective, the forces of liberalism have only left enriched and industrialized societies in their wake. And this is precisely the kind of shortsightedness that crippled the West's ability to understand, or indeed prevent, the 9/11 attacks. In the somber days after al Qaeda hit New York and Washington, D.C., Americans like Friedman were unwilling to identify the causal forces that had inspired the terrorists. "Why do they hate us?" Friedman rhetorically asked in his column. Because of our freedom, he answered. Because, the liberal answered, we are liberals.

It would be easy to attribute Friedman's blockbuster sales to his orgiastic, gee-whiz, look-ma-no-hands celebration of all things corporate -- he never fails to name-drop his favorite brand names, from eating a Cinnabon while waiting to board a Southwest Airlines flight on the way to see his daughter at Yale to the 3M logo'd cap being worn by the caddy of an Indian executive who uses a distant HP skyscraper as a tee-off marker. Or to the fact that it is easy and very profitable to scare the shit out of an entire generation of Baby Boomers by essentially telling them their kids are in a neck-and-neck race to the top of the global food chain and, guess what, they're losing. In those respects, the book is a brilliant and well-conceived product. But I believe there is a much deeper significance to Friedman's success. And it has to do with the fact that America has reached a stage in its quest for global dominance in which it has no choice but to aggressively and openly tap these impoverished countries for cheap labor. And Thomas Friedman has come to put a lipstick smile on that old, twisted visage.

Scribbling notes on a drink coaster as the plane climbs past 10,000 feet, I think of Thomas Friedman writing his book in his own spacious business class seat on Lufthansa. Looking out of my window, I suddenly realize how he came so easily to his revelation. There, below me, the dark blue Atlantic Ocean stretches west for 1,000 miles and darned if it doesn't look flat. I wonder how much of Friedman's worldview has been shaped by the rarefied company of billionaire CEOs he keeps. Perhaps he has fooled himself into thinking that the invisible hand of liberal economics still softens to caress the weary shoulders of the poor, offering the opportunity for all people to reach the heights of corporate domination. We'll never know. What we do know is that it's been a long time since the champions of free market capitalism pretended to have any priority other than their quarterly profits and year-end bonuses. Of course, many of them have started making noises about the environment and poverty, but never in a way that will actually bring them to analyze root causes of these global ills. Until that happens, we can assume that it's mostly PR. And in this regard, Friedman plays a very important role as a kind of useful idiot. If capitalism is the sport of wolves, then the kind of happy-go-lucky globalization heralded by Thomas Friedman is the sheep's clothing. It's a sheath to cover the glint of their blade.

Stephen Marshall from the book Wolves in Sheep's Clothing by Stephen Marshall. Published by The Disinformation Company, Ltd.; April 2007;$16.95US; 978-1932857-42-9

Another Open Letter to Thomas Friedman

by David Sirota

www.huffingtonpost.com/, 2/16/06

Mr. Thomas Friedman
The New York Times Washington Bureau
1627 I Street, N.W., 7th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20006

Dear Tom:

It's been 8 months since I last wrote to you, and I must say, you have really outdone yourself in that time. You have long been one of the biggest proponents of the hostile takeover of our government by Big Money interests and you have always occupied a special place as one of the most pompous and grandiloquent horse's asses in all of American pop culture - and, I know, that's saying a lot in the era of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and David Brooks.

But recently, you have really outdone yourself, striving mightily to mimic in column form the depths of human behavior previously reserved for the sweatshop task masters you hold up as the great hope for humanity's future.

You have continued to shill for the Iraq War you helped push America into, too dumb, too arrogant or too embarrassed to acknowledge what America's intelligence agencies, Colin Powell, John Warner and others acknowledge: that it's time for a change. As you pimp yourself out on television, we the little people you look down on with such scorn are able to watch you lose your grip on reality. Oh sure, your media friends and the fancy elites you hang out with would never mention any of this to your face - questioning your contradictory statements and caustic demands for more Americans to die in Iraq is as odious to the cocktail party crowd as asking you whether your 70s pornstar moustache symbolizes your long lost desire for another career in the San Fernando Valley.

But I digress.

The truth is, Iraq is not why I write you today. I am sending this letter in response to your column today - another signature Friedman piece, signature for its mindlessness and its craven genuflecting to your billionaire friends. A little background first: I had gotten used to this from you and like many Americans, had stopped reading your drivel entirely. But I came back to your work when I happened to see your comments during a televised lovefest between you and Tim Russert (undoubtedly, one of your good friends - both of you share a burning affinity for power worshipping).

As you probably recall, you bragged about writing columns in support of the Central American Free Trade Agreement even though you acknowledged you "didn't even know what was in it." You didn't know that the pact included no protections against the environmental destruction you pretend to care about, you didn't know that the pact included no protections against child slave labor, and you didn't know that the pact includes provisions banning American taxpayer money being targeted at companies that keep jobs in the United States. No, as you said, "I just knew two words: free trade." It was a stunning admission even for you, a person who calls themselves a journalist. Apparently, you missed that day in journalism school where they taught about only reporting things as fact that you actually take 5 minutes to investigate (and apparently, Russert missed that day too, because he didn't bother to ask a follow up question when you admitted to the country you write columns about things you don't even look into).

So after I saw this, I started again occasionally reading your work again. My motivation was less intellectual curiosity and more circus freakshow oogling: I wanted to see how far the editors at the New York Times editorial page will continue to print your increasingly incoherent babbling. And from the looks of it today, there are no limits - you apparently have free rein to print in the largest newspaper in the world whatever theories you come up with, no matter how totally divorced from reality they are.

Today, your column starts out by invoking your Judaism, which is disgusting unto itself - please, I beg you, stop invoking a religion based on social justice to package your propaganda that trumpets the evisceration of the social safety net and the economic persecution of American and foreign workers.

You quickly move on to say "I've always believed in free trade, accompanied by better pension and health care safety nets." Of course, you offer us no explanation for what you mean, but then, that's likely the point: there is no explanation, because as economists on both sides of the ideological spectrum agree, the kind of free trade that you "have always believed in" forces American workers to compete with slave labor, and thus has accelerated the slashing of workers pensions and health care benefits, even as corporate profits and worker productivity skyrocket. Perhaps we are to read from your line that you believe in all of that, but that you believe the solution is just to have everyone's jobs be outsourced, and incomes be replaced with welfare. We, the readers, can't be sure.

Then you go on to say "I'm not a free trader anymore. I'm now a radical free trader." Why? Not because of hard data on stagnating wages, increased poverty, higher economic inequality - no, using that to make conculsions wouldn't be the Friedman way. No, you are a "radical free trader" now (as if you weren't before) because on a few of your junkets, you picked up a few interesting anecdotes that help you keep shilling for Big Money interests. At one point, you cheer on how your CEO buddies are really excited to outsource more American jobs. At another point, you provide us an anecdote of a businessman in Nebraska, and write breathlessly: "Midwest Indians publishing Arabic brochures for Nebraskans importing from Koreans for customers in Kuwait." Oh, how Friedmanesque. Like your colleague Paul Krugman today, you could have just as easily written about Wal-Mart's Arkansas white corporate executives exploiting Chinese slave labor to sell dry goods to now-unemployed people in Toledo. But no, only the little people think about that.

Your piece, not surprisingly, ends in crescendo of attacks, as you piously lecture the vast majority of Americans who tell pollsters they are sick of your free trade propaganda, sick of our government selling us out, and sick of trade pacts that include no basic wage, environmental, labor or human rights protections. You scream at us that "the way you keep good jobs in this country" is by giving people "the freedom to do whatever can be done with anyone, anywhere, anytime."

Thank you, at the very least, for finally being honest. Because what you have now finally admitted is that you really, truly in your heart do not care about ordinary people. You have written in print that you believe our government's policy, legislated in our name, should be to give corporate executives the freedom to, among other things, employ child or slave labor, the freedom to dump poison into rivers, the freedom to bust unions and the freedom throw political dissidents in jail. You believe they should have the freedom to do all of that, and still be able to sell the products made under those conditions back into the American market because as you write "whatever can be done will be done by someone, somewhere." And in a sense you are correct: somewhere in some oppressive dictatorship like, say, China, someone is being chained to a factory floor to do work at 30 cents an hour. The disgusting part is how you think encouraging that atrocious situation is good for society.

Now, of course, you want us to believe that you all these people who can do things somewhere are getting the jobs to do these things because they are supposedly better trained or better educated. That was the crux of your book, The World Is Flat. The Chinese, you say, are supposedly getting way smarter than Americans and you somehow expect us to believe that's how they are getting our blue collar jobs. You never bother to explore what people like Sen. Byron Dorgan have shown: namely, that these countries are getting our jobs not because businesses see a comparative economic advantage in terms of skills, but because they see a comparative advantage in terms of political oppression.

Let's put it very clearly so even a pea-sized brain like yours can process this concept and comprehend it: These countries' major economic advantage is not a natural one, like them having better soil, and it is not a merit-based one, like them having smarter people. No, their major economic advantage over America in terms of attracting jobs is the willingness of their governments to allow their environments to be destroyed, their workers' to be paid slave wages, and their citizens to be thrown in jail when they form a union or protest this oppression. It is, in other words, a manufactured advantage - and worse, it is one that the trade policy you advocate actually REWARDS. When our government says it is AOK for companies to sell products made in a Chinese sweatshop here in America, we are not only encouraging the outsourcing of our own job base, but we are actively endorsing oppression, rather than trying to end it.

You cheer this all on, leading us to the logical conclusion that, for instance, had you known about it, you would have applauded Jack Abramoff's efforts to make sure forced abortions and sweatshops continue to run free in the Marianas Islands. In your twisted world, that was a great lobbying effort because it might have helped push your "whatever can be done will be done by someone, somewhere" theory. Apparently, your highly touted support for spreading democracy, freedom and modern civilization is only applicable to you supporting invading countries like Iraq based on lies. When your supposed desire to spread these virtues comes into conflict with your more intense desire to help your billionaire friends cash in on oppression, the latter always wins out.

Now, I know, Tom, we need to understand and sympathize with your limitations. Yes, yes - we can only imagine how hard it must be for you to see all of us little people from the bay windows of your 11,000 square foot mansion in Bethesda. It's tough, we know - how could we expect you to understand what's going on in the real world or appreciate the consequences of the policies you advocate, when you've married into one of the wealthiest families in the world? We can't - and we shouldn't. But still, your column today reeks of what should we call it...Insanity? No, you are certainly elitist, but you aren't insane...Ah yes, the word for your behavior is none other than desperation.

Like David Brooks who recently called for an end to American voters deciding elections here in America, and like David Broder who attacked as "elitist insurgents" voters who dare to challenge incumbents in Congress, you, Tom, are showing all the psychological signs of a person who knows they are being slowly unmasked as a fraud and thrown onto the scrap heap known as irrelevance.

You are lucky, to be sure: the billions of dollars of family money at your disposal will insulate you from any economic effects of your own irrelevance. And there is no doubt that you will find aid and comfort within the Beltway media establishment - there's always room there for another piglet suckling at the teat of power. But rest assured that no matter what happens in the upcoming election, we are done being mesmerized by the propaganda from Washington's corporate front groups, we are done drinking in the platitudes of politicians who turn around and screw us over, and we are done with pundits like you who seek only to provide happy, sedating elevator music as you work overtime to shove us onto a conveyer belt that takes us into the economic slaughterhouse you champion.

Sincerely,

David Sirota

**********

Why NYT's Friedman Should Resign

by Robert Parry

www.consortiumnews.com, August 21, 1006

New York Times foreign policy analyst Thomas L. Friedman finally has come to the conclusion that George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq - which Friedman enthusiastically supported with the clever slogan "give war a chance" - wasn't such a good idea after all.

Noting that "it is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are babysitting a civil war," Friedman wrote, "that means 'staying the course' is pointless, and it's time to start thinking about Plan B - how we might disengage with the least damage possible." [NYT, Aug. 4, 2006]

Yet, despite this implicit admission that the war has unnecessarily killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 2,600 U.S. soldiers, Friedman continues to slight Americans who resisted the rush to war in the first place.

Twelve days after his shift in position, Friedman demeaned Americans who opposed the Iraq War as "antiwar activists who haven't thought a whit about the larger struggle we're in," presumably a reference to the threat from Islamic extremism. [NYT, Aug. 16, 2006]

In other words, according to Friedman, Americans who were right about the ill-fated invasion of Iraq are still airheads when it comes to the bigger picture, while the pundits and politicians who were dead wrong on Iraq deserve pats on the back for their wise analyses of the larger problem.

The Rabbit Hole

At times, it's as if Official Washington has become a sinister version of Alice in Wonderland. Under the bizarre rules of Washington's pundit society, the foreign policy "experts," who acted like Cheshire Cats pointing the United States in wrong directions, get rewarded for their judgment and Americans who opposed going down the rabbit hole in the first place earn only derision.

As for Friedman, despite botching the biggest foreign-policy story in the post-Cold War era, he retains his prized space on the New York Times Op-Ed page, which, in turn, guarantees that his books, even ones with obvious and pedantic themes such as The World Is Flat, jump to the top of the bestseller lists.

Friedman, who once liked to call himself a "Tony Blair Democrat" (before the British prime minister was unmasked as one of Bush's chief enablers), now positions himself closer to formerly pro-war Democrats who have triangulated their way to positions critical of Bush's execution of the Iraq War but not the invasion itself.

In other words, Friedman has re-branded himself what might be called a "Hillary Clinton Democrat." He also has begun promoting as a favorite new theme something that was obvious to many Bush critics years ago: that one pillar of a sane Middle East policy would be to aggressively confront America's addiction to oil.

Some readers might praise Friedman for his belated second thoughts on Iraq and for his new enthusiasm for energy independence. But is it fair for Friedman to keep disparaging Americans who were prescient about the Iraq fiasco - and who have urged a less violent approach to the Islamic world?

Many Iraq War critics, from former Vice President Al Gore to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who took to the streets in early 2003, proved they had a more reasonable strategy on Iraq - letting United Nations inspectors finish their search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction - than did Bush's war council and his cheerleaders in the U.S. news media. [For an early warning of the Iraq disaster, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down."]

As for the larger concern about reducing Islamic extremism, many Bush critics point to the traditional advice of counterinsurgency experts who warn against an over-reliance on force to quell unrest because excessive violence tends to alienate a country's population and drives them toward rebellion, rather than toward peace.

To win hearts and minds, more subtle strategies are required, targeting the root causes of popular resentments, offering realistic options for a better life, and then systematically isolating die-hard extremist elements.

In the Middle East, such a strategy would demand an equitable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, steady support for political reform, and expanded economic opportunities for the region's common people, not just the wealthy elites. A sensible U.S. energy policy - less desperate for oil - would help, too.

Violent Outbursts

Given the bitterness felt by many Arabs over what they see as their decades of humiliation by the West and for the corruption of U.S.-backed Arab leaders, there also must be some forbearance for outbursts of violence.

Overreaction to provocations by small bands of Islamic extremists may be understandable from an emotional viewpoint, but tit-for-tat violence can be counterproductive in stopping the region's cycles of violence. Indiscriminate counterterrorism plays into the hands of the terrorists.

Many Americans understood this reality in 2001-2002 supporting targeted attacks against al-Qaeda in retaliation for 9/11 while opposing Bush's strategy of using military force to remake the Middle East.

These Americans recognized that Bush's vision of a countries either "with us or with the terrorists" was simplistic and dangerous; his one-sided approach to backing all Israeli policies was harmful both to Arabs and Israelis by eliminating the key U.S. role as "honest broker"; and his crypto-racist rounding up and imprisoning of Muslims on the flimsiest of evidence was destructive to America's reputation for justice and equality.

In this view, Bush's black-and-white reaction to a world of grays was a recipe for disaster. But this reasonable opinion was largely excluded from the national debate.

Yet, while major news outlets turned mostly a deaf ear to these voices, influential pundits like Friedman preached the glorious benefits of war, from the Op-Ed pages to the TV studios. Indeed, Friedman has been among the highest-profile foreign-policy analysts who have advocated the use of U.S. air power, especially against Iraq.

'Give War a Chance'

As media critic Norman Solomon wrote in March 2002, Friedman's pro-bombing influence stretched from his Times Op-Ed column to regular segments on PBS news programs, not to mention appearances on "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation" and even the David Letterman show.

Solomon wrote: "Friedman has been a zealous advocate of 'bombing Iraq, over and over and over again' (in the words of a January 1998 column). Three years ago, when he offered a pithy list of prescriptions for Washington's policymakers, it included: 'Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who's in charge.'"__Solomon continued: "In an introduction to the book Iraq Under Siege, editor Anthony Arnove points out: 'Every power station that is targeted means more food and medicine that will not be refrigerated, hospitals that will lack electricity, water that will be contaminated, and people who will die.'__"But Friedman-style bravado goes over big with editors and network producers who share his disinterest in counting the human costs. Many journalists seem eager to fawn over their stratospheric colleague. 'Nobody understands the world the way he [Friedman] does,' NBC's Tim Russert claims.__"Sometimes, Friedman fixates on four words in particular. 'My motto is very simple: Give war a chance,' he told Diane Sawyer" on "Good Morning America." [For the full Solomon column, see Consortiumnews.com's "Giving War a Chance."]

Seeking Vindication

Though the disastrous consequences of these cavalier recommendations became apparent fairly soon after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Friedman instead searched for slivers of vindication amid the carnage.

Finally, in early 2005, he penned a column entitled "A Day to Remember," calling himself "unreservedly happy" about the Iraqi national election and declared "you should be, too." [NYT, Feb. 3, 2005]

A few weeks later, Friedman was adding tentative progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and Lebanese demands for a full Syrian withdrawal as further evidence of the wisdom of invading Iraq. Friedman hailed the three developments as historical "tipping points" possibly foreshadowing "incredible" changes in the Middle East. [NYT, Feb. 27, 2005]

Four days later, Friedman added a touch of self-pity to his sense of vindication. "The last couple of years have not been easy for anyone, myself included, who hoped that the Iraq war would produce a decent, democratizing outcome," he wrote. [NYT, March 3, 2005]

But the reality was never as Friedman presented it. The Iraqi election was a means for pro-Iranian Shiite parties to consolidate their dominance over the previously powerful Sunni minority, setting the stage for more sectarian violence, not some democratic national reconciliation.

The tentative progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks resulted from the death of long-time Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, not as a consequence of the Iraq War. Indeed, a post-Arafat election in the Palestinian territories led to a Hamas victory and to the latest round of Israeli violence against Palestinians in Gaza, now including Israel's arrest of deputy prime minister Nasser al-Shaer and more than two dozen Hamas cabinet members and legislators. [NYT, Aug. 20, 2006]

As for Lebanon, Bush's encouragement of Israel to launch a heavy assault against Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon - echoing his "shock and awe" strategy in Iraq - has left much of Lebanon's economic infrastructure in ruins and has elevated the status of Hezbollah guerrillas in the eyes of many Lebanese and across the Middle East.

Catching the Wave

In other words, few of Friedman's assessments have turned out to be either thoughtful or accurate. Rather than anchoring his work in objective fact and unbiased analysis, he seems instead to have mastered the skill of catching the wave of Washington's latest "conventional wisdom."

While that ability has proven very profitable for Friedman, it has hurt U.S. foreign policy and contributed to the deaths of 2,600 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians in the Middle East.

But Friedman is not alone. Many major news organizations fill their opinion columns and their on-air commentary with well-paid pundits who also cheered on the Iraq War.

The Washington Post's editorial section offers up nearly the same line-up of columnists who ran with the pro-war herd from 2002 through 2005. Some, like David Ignatius, have slowly begun to retreat from their enthusiasm for invading Iraq; others, like Charles Krauthammer, remain true believers in the neoconservative cause.

Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt stays ensconced, too, despite admitting that his pre-war editorials shouldn't have treated the alleged threat from Iraq's WMD as a "flat fact" instead of an allegation.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen - who like Friedman presents himself as a slightly left-of-center thinker - is another pundit who admitted misjudgments on Iraq without really accepting blame or showing remorse.

"Those of us who once advocated this war [in Iraq] are humbled," Cohen wrote in a column on April 4, 2006. "It's not just that we grossly underestimated the enemy. We vastly overestimated the Bush administration.

"Victory in Iraq is now three years or so overdue and a bit over budget," Cohen wrote. "Lives have been lost for no good reason - never mind the money - and now Bush suggests that his successor may still have to keep troops in Iraq."

It may be positive news that the likes of Friedman and Cohen have finally acknowledged realities long apparent to many other Americans. Still, the halfhearted mea culpas - often combined with continued slights against those who were right - fall far short of the accountability that the deaths and maiming of so many people would seem to justify.

Under principles of international law applied from Nuremberg to Rwanda, propagandists who contribute to war crimes or encourage crimes against humanity can be put in the dock alongside the actual killers.

Though such a fate may not await America's pro-war pundits, Friedman and other commentators who helped ease the way to Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq and thus contributed to the ongoing slaughters in the Middle East might at least have the decency to admit their incompetence and resign.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Thomas Friedman

New Internationalist magazine, August 2005

Status: Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and columnist; US TV pundit
Reputation: Media superstar; tough approach to international affairs; glib advocate of US imperial power.

Thomas Friedman is a big noise in US journalism. His columns in the New York Times have launched him into the stratosphere of 'court journalists' who today ensure that a tradition of imperial boosterism holds sway in the US media. Friedman is considered a (if not the) leading commentator on international relations in the US. His columns are reprinted all over the English-speaking world. He is widely sought after as an 'expert' by the TV networks from the rabidly conservative Fox to the liberal(ish) Public Broadcasting Service. He is a best-selling author of several books including the oft-reprinted and oft-updated From Beirut to Jerusalem, which first hit the stands in 1989. He has won three Pulitzer Prizes in all, the most recent in 2002 for 'clarity of vision' when commenting on the 'worldwide impact of the terrorist threat'. He is a man widely regarded as having the ear of those in power.

Friedman is a real enthusiast when it comes to corporate globalization. His most recent books - The World is Flat and The Lexus and the Olive Tree - are serenades to the power and possibilities of this brave new world. In The World is Flat the ever-creative Friedman coined the phrase 'zippies' to describe his latest heroes of the age of globalization - the children of burgeoning Indian and Chinese capitalism. His euphoria reaches incredible heights, as in 'soon everyone will have a virtual seat on the New York Stock Exchange'- which will for sure be welcome news to those Haitians surviving on less than a dollar a day in Port-au-Prince's Cite de Soleil slums.

Not that Friedman doesn't see the problems. He lays out the disruption and despair but then shrugs and says there is no choice but to get with the programme. This is his strength as a booster. He has understood your doubts but assures you there is no real need to worry. Friedman admits problems (marginalization of the poor, destruction of traditional security protections, despoiling the environment) but then goes on to discount them. It's a kind of 'bait and switch' strategy - talk about the problems but then propose more of the neoliberal same as the only possible solution. And for those who persist in their foolhardy opposition he has no time. He characterizes the anti-globalization movement as 'a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix'. He repeddles a lot of free trade nostrums from the British-based business weekly The Economist portraying these new social movements as 'The Coalition to Keep the World's Poor People Poor'.

Friedman's enthusiasm for globalization leads quite naturally to a worry about the security needed to keep markets free - for without these no real democracy is, after all, even thinkable. To achieve this he has stepped up to the plate as a champion of a muscular US military presence in the world and a champion of the occupation of Iraq. He happily throws away his liberal credentials and embraces the hawkish US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: 'He is just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I'm glad that we've got some guy on our bench - who's just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what the guy is going to do, and I say that's my guy.' Great - our own Al-Zaqawi with real weapons of mass destruction this time.

But Friedman is, after all, an expert on the 'Arab mind'. It is on the Middle East beat that he earned his spurs. His previous two Pulitzer Prizes were for his coverage of the region: the first in 1983 for his reporting on the Israeli invasion of Beirut and the second for overall regional coverage in From Beirut to Jerusalem. His coverage of the Middle East can be insightful and balanced. He obviously knows more about this than he does about the slippery economics of globalization. He recognizes the grievances of the region's poor and alienated, particularly those of the Palestinians. His recent warning that Sharon's policy (the Wall institutionalizing a West Bank land-grab) is backing Israel into a de facto one-state solution and a demographic squeeze that will end up endangering the Jewish character of the state, is a good example. For Friedman any resistance from below is futile, the Palestinian intifada is a 'reckless, pointless, foolish adventure'. When he shifts to Arab society and politics you can almost see him shrug his shoulders in 'knowing despair'. He wrings his 09 hands over the sad difficulty in 'producing a self-sustaining, multiethnic democracy in the region'. He has no doubt that this is the work the Pentagon has set itself and strongly urges 13.1 'staying the course' in Iraq whatever the faint-of-heart may say. Friedman is obviously a man of the greatest self-regard. His personal website claims that The World is Flat is a 'brilliant new 09 book' and The Lexus and the Olive Tree a 'brilliant investigation of globalization.' But it must be said that others go to great lengths to pump up his ego. When he appeared a couple of years ago on the national TV show Hardball, host Chris Matthews closed the interview with: 'You are the future, my man. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.' Friedman: 'Thanks, Bro.' Matthews: 'The smartest columnist in the world!' Smart, maybe. But intelligent?

SENSE OF Friedman is the champion of the glib one-liner: 'Give War a Chance'; 'Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could - period'; 'The wretched of the earth want to go to Disneyland not to the barricades'.

Recognize the problem but turn it to your advantage with tough realpolitik - 'Is the war that the Bush team is preparing to launch in Iraq really a war for oil? My short answer is yes. Any war we launch in Iraq will certainly be in part about oil. To deny that is laughable.' Translation: it's okay to trade blood for oil.

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