Friedman's tin ear
Tom Friedman:
..."Just a few hours earlier, terrorists in Istanbul had blown up a British-owned bank and the British consulate, killing or wounding scores of British and Turkish civilians. Yet nowhere could I find a single sign in London reading, 'Osama, How Many Innocents Did You Kill Today?' or 'Baathists — Hands Off the U.N. and the Red Cross in Iraq.' Hey, I would have settled for 'Bush and Blair Equal Bin Laden and Saddam' — something, anything, that acknowledged that the threats to global peace today weren't just coming from the White House and Downing Street.
"Sorry, but there is something morally obtuse about holding an antiwar rally on a day when your own people have been murdered — and not even mentioning it or those who perpetrated it. Watching this scene, I couldn't help but wonder whether George Bush had made the liberal left crazy. It can't see anything else in the world today, other than the Bush-Blair original sin of launching the Iraq war, without U.N. approval or proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
..."It would be a lot easier for the left to engage in a little postwar reconsideration if it saw even an ounce of reflection, contrition or self-criticism coming from the conservatives, such as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, who drove this war, yet so bungled its aftermath and so misjudged the complexity of postwar Iraq. Moreover, the Bush team is such a partisan, ideological, nonhealing administration that many liberals just want to punch its lights out — which is what the Howard Dean phenomenon is all about."
OK Tom, the aftermath of the war has not been bungled. Just becuase the Saddamites are acting like Saddamites does not mean it was wrong to liberate the Iraqi people, or that the US had a bad plan for handling the victory. Actually postwar Iraq is not that complex. The real complex prblems have not materialised. The Kurds and Shias that worried everyone in the prewar planning are relatively saane so far and are trying to deal postively with US "occupation."
That approximately 5,000 Saddamites are acting like a 21st century Ku Klux Klan is not complex. They are an irritant, but they are not a threat in any military sense. The only way for them to win is for the wrong Democrats to be elected in the US. No one in the Bush administration has any reason to be contrite. Democrats like Howard Dean have reason to be contrite since they were totally wrong in opposing the liberation of Iraq, but no one will hold their breath waiting for any Democrat to ever apoligize for any foreign policy positions they ever take. Liberal Democrats have yet to apoligize for the mess they made in Vietnam or for their boneheaded opposition to Reagan while he was winning the cold war, or their boneheaded opposition to the liberation of Kuwait.
Tom Friedman:
..."Just a few hours earlier, terrorists in Istanbul had blown up a British-owned bank and the British consulate, killing or wounding scores of British and Turkish civilians. Yet nowhere could I find a single sign in London reading, 'Osama, How Many Innocents Did You Kill Today?' or 'Baathists — Hands Off the U.N. and the Red Cross in Iraq.' Hey, I would have settled for 'Bush and Blair Equal Bin Laden and Saddam' — something, anything, that acknowledged that the threats to global peace today weren't just coming from the White House and Downing Street.
"Sorry, but there is something morally obtuse about holding an antiwar rally on a day when your own people have been murdered — and not even mentioning it or those who perpetrated it. Watching this scene, I couldn't help but wonder whether George Bush had made the liberal left crazy. It can't see anything else in the world today, other than the Bush-Blair original sin of launching the Iraq war, without U.N. approval or proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
..."It would be a lot easier for the left to engage in a little postwar reconsideration if it saw even an ounce of reflection, contrition or self-criticism coming from the conservatives, such as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, who drove this war, yet so bungled its aftermath and so misjudged the complexity of postwar Iraq. Moreover, the Bush team is such a partisan, ideological, nonhealing administration that many liberals just want to punch its lights out — which is what the Howard Dean phenomenon is all about."
OK Tom, the aftermath of the war has not been bungled. Just becuase the Saddamites are acting like Saddamites does not mean it was wrong to liberate the Iraqi people, or that the US had a bad plan for handling the victory. Actually postwar Iraq is not that complex. The real complex prblems have not materialised. The Kurds and Shias that worried everyone in the prewar planning are relatively saane so far and are trying to deal postively with US "occupation."
That approximately 5,000 Saddamites are acting like a 21st century Ku Klux Klan is not complex. They are an irritant, but they are not a threat in any military sense. The only way for them to win is for the wrong Democrats to be elected in the US. No one in the Bush administration has any reason to be contrite. Democrats like Howard Dean have reason to be contrite since they were totally wrong in opposing the liberation of Iraq, but no one will hold their breath waiting for any Democrat to ever apoligize for any foreign policy positions they ever take. Liberal Democrats have yet to apoligize for the mess they made in Vietnam or for their boneheaded opposition to Reagan while he was winning the cold war, or their boneheaded opposition to the liberation of Kuwait.
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