It must really suck to be Tom Friedman.

[BurtWorm]

(Setting aside the money, Pulitzers and undeserved "respect" from one's peers--who wouldn't know respect worthiness if it came up and pissed on their shoes.)

In his latest columns, the poor guy is always moaning about how the Bushists have let down a mythical "silent majority" of Iraqis by failing to plan, plan, plan for making Saddam's fiefdom into the fifty-first state. In the good old days before the war, Friedman could probably fool himself into believing someone among the neo-cons was reading his golden words and actually planning to heed them. But now all he can do is moan that no one listened to him. I don't think he took into account that the neo-cons were reading him and thanking their stars that someone "respected" like Friedman was giving them the greenlight to have their war.

Here's his latest whine. How pathetic!:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/opinion/08FRIE.html?hp

From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party ? let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do."

From the day the looting started in Baghdad, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops to create a secure framework and to control Iraq's borders. As a result, local militias began to spring up everywhere. If you turn on your TV, you can see how well armed they became while Donald Rumsfeld was insisting we had enough troops there to control Iraq.

I know the right thing to do now is to stay the course, defeat the bad guys, disarm the militias and try to build a political framework that will hold the now wavering Shiite majority on our side ? because if we lose them, the game is over. But this will take time and sacrifice, and the only way to generate enough of that is by enlisting the U.N., NATO and all of our allies to make the development of a decent state in Iraq a global priority.

Without more allies, without more global legitimacy ? and without an Iraqi center ready to stand up against their Khmer Rouge now posing as their Viet Cong ? we cannot win in Iraq. We will be building a house with bricks and no cement. In that case, we will have to move to Plan B. Too bad we never really had Plan A.

[thebigidea]

1. Tom Friedman: as penetrating as a used condom.

http://www.terminalproduct.com/mrpragmatic.mp3

[Fenris]

2. Is Richard Perle coming on to Freddy Mercury?

:7

[thebigidea]

3. Thomas Friedman: redefining the Walrus moustache since 1971

[Fenris]

4. He looks like the leather guy from the Village People

[thebigidea]

6. Eek!

[Fenris]

7. My eyes!

Verrrry nice!

[BurtWorm]

8. Is that Friedman or the Village People guy?

I honestly can't tell. (I know who the shrunken head is.)

[thebigidea]

9. Friedman... so I guess he really IS the Village People guy.

[bpilgrim]

5. Johny come lately

"...the only way to generate enough of that is by enlisting the U.N., NATO and all of our allies to make the development of a decent state in Iraq a global priority."

he's been PUNKED and don't KNOW it

peace

[legin]

10. I seem to remember

he penned that very virulent attack on the French.

[thebigidea]

11. who can forget his blockbuster hit, "Give War a Chance"?

He's just as guilty as the rest of them for relentlessly warmongering.

Thanks, NYTimes.

[DeepModem Mom]

16. Please don't forget that the NYT also prints Krugman...

on its op-ed page, and writes editorial pieces often lauded here at DU. The print press could do much, much better, but I'm grateful for it, compared to television news -- from which most Americans unfortunately get news, if they get any.

[thebigidea]

18. and never forget they publish Brooks & Miller

[DeepModem Mom]

20. I sort the wheat from the considerable chaff --

and am grateful to be able to read excellent articles daily in LBN from the NYT, WP, and LAT. (I've heard Brooks is a laughing-stock in the halls of the Times -- and Miller, I hope, will someday have to answer for the ramifications of her dishonest work.)

[thebigidea]

21. more like Miller seems to be completely absolved of her lies and is back

[DeepModem Mom]

22. Was she out for a while, tbi?

[thebigidea]

23. backbenched for a couple of months, coauthoring stuff

but now back in front without nary a comment from the Times.

Maybe a "sorry" would've been nice...

[DeepModem Mom]

24. Agreed -- thanks!

[Sagan]

12. this is what I posted on the NYT Friedman message board..

Don't give all the credit to Rove, Mr. Friedman..

This is also YOUR war. And FOX News' and CNN's and MSNBC's, ad nauseum.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of casualties, too.

Mr. Friedman, I figure you can probably claim 2 or 3 out of the 600+ American casualties as truly being your own. Your spoils of this war that you pushed, along with most of the other American mainstream media.

Would you like to pick a couple of dead soldiers to adopt? Maybe I can forward you some names to choose from.

Of course, if you want to start counting Iraqi civilians, you get a lot more choices.

This is YOUR war, as much as Rove's, Mr. Friedman. And I hope you are enjoying it, even if it hasn't turned out quite like you would have liked. Wars frequently go squirrelly on their cheerleaders.

[BurtWorm]

13. Well said!

:toast:

[Paul Hood]

14. Great. n/t

[Lexingtonian]

15. oh, no!

Next thing Tom will figure out is that he and all the Neoconsymps in general and even the chief neocons themselves were being used by people even more deluded- and cynical- than themselves!

The one thing that Doesn't Suck about Being TF is that he gets paid lots and lots of money for the vacuous pretense of cosmopolitanism and savvy he claims. The funny thing is how many people buy into it.

[Cat Atomic]

17. The arrogance around this war is astounding.

You weren't ignored, Mr. Friedman. You were wrong.

[Guaranteed]

19. LOL "they didn't have a plan"

I'm getting really sick of hearing this.

It's the GOAL that they were missing, folks. The GOAL.