Reading Tom Friedman

Welcome back, Tom. I missed you. No, really I did. Really.

Tom Friedman is one of the smartest guys out there who has been wrong consistently over the past two years. He is not, like David Brooks, a disingenuous hack. He is, in fact, earnest, intelligent, insightful and knowledgeable. During the 1990s he was a major booster for corporate globalization, and I often cursed his willingness to overlook the darker edges, but he made the most persuasive case.

Since 9/11 he has continued to offer advice to a Bush Administration that has no interest in what he has to say. He is a true-believer in democracy, and was perhaps too willing to believe that there were at least a few grown-ups in the Bush Administration who would try to do things right. How wrong he has been.

In fact, the last book I read before the Iraq War, and the one that convinced me that we would not go into Iraq with our white hats and save the day, was Friedman's From Beirut To Jerusalem, an account of our attempt to do just that in Lebanon. Tom, don't you read your own stuff? During the Iraq War I cursed him because he made the best case for why we should be in the war and how to do it right. But, of course, no one was listening.

Well, Tom has been away. Now he is back. Has he learned anything? Read along with me and we will see:

Iraq: Politics or Policy?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: October 3, 2004

Sorry, I've been away writing a book. I'm back, so let's get right down to business: We're in trouble in Iraq.

Awright, so far so good!!!

I don't know what is salvageable there anymore. I hope it is something decent and I am certain we have to try our best to bring about elections and rebuild the Iraqi Army to give every chance for decency to emerge there. But here is the cold, hard truth: This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever.

Going strong, Tom!

What happened? The Bush team got its doctrines mixed up: it applied the Powell Doctrine to the campaign against John Kerry - "overwhelming force" without mercy, based on a strategy of shock and awe at the Republican convention, followed by a propaganda blitz that got its message across in every possible way, including through distortion. If only the Bush team had gone after the remnants of Saddam's army in the Sunni Triangle with the brutal efficiency it has gone after Senator Kerry in the Iowa-Ohio-Michigan triangle. If only the Bush team had spoken to Iraqis and Arabs with as clear a message as it did to the Republican base. No, alas, while the Bush people applied the Powell Doctrine in the Midwest, they applied the Rumsfeld Doctrine in the Middle East. And the Rumsfeld Doctrine is: "Just enough troops to lose." Donald Rumsfeld tried to prove that a small, mobile army was all that was needed to topple Saddam, without realizing that such a limited force could never stabilize Iraq. He never thought it would have to. He thought his Iraqi pals would do it. He was wrong.

As the kids say, You go girl!

For all of President Bush's vaunted talk about being consistent and resolute, the fact is he never established U.S. authority in Iraq. Never. This has been the source of all our troubles. We have never controlled all the borders, we have never even consistently controlled the road from Baghdad airport into town, because we never had enough troops to do it.

And why is that Tom? Stop for a second. Think about it. Why didn't the Bush Administration commit enough troops? Could it be maybe that, just as in Afghanistan, they were never committed to bringing Democracy to the Middle East? We are four paragraphs into your article here, and you haven't mentioned bringing Democracy to the Middle East yet. I can smell it coming.

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism.

Uh, oh, here it comes. Yes, yes, I agree with you. But now you are going to tell us how "we" can do it.

But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can. Why? Because each time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the Christian right? Don't fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don't apologize - for anything - because Karl Rove says the "base" won't like it. Impose a "Patriot Tax" of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war, shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to show the world how seriously we take this outrage - or do nothing? Do nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees - impugn it or ignore it.

Oh, my bad. You really did learn something in your time in the sanitorium, I mean writing that book.

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq.

Dumbass. What, were you paying so much attention to Iraq that you couldn't see what was going on in Washington?

This administration never did.

And that was clear enough to many of us at the time. Not because we are "Bush-haters" (though some of us may be), but because we saw the secrecy, lies and incompetence of this administration before the Iraq War.

Mr. Kerry's own views on Iraq have been intensely political and for a long time not well thought through.

Okay, here we go. Drag Kerry into it. Become "objective" and "non-partisan."

But Mr. Kerry is a politician running for office. Mr. Bush is president, charged with protecting the national interest, and yet from the beginning he has run Iraq policy as an extension of his political campaign.

Yes, don't let that last point slide by. That is the way every decision has been made by this administration since they took office. Remember the "Mayberry Machiavellis," Tom?

Friends, I return to where I started: We're in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.

Excuse me, and excuse my French, but who the f*ck do you mean when you say "we"? We, the People? We, American citizens and voters? Look at how many times you use the word "we" in that last paragraph. I am sorry, Tom, but you appear not to have learned enough in your time away. The only "We" you are talking to is the Bush Administration. "We" didn't get ourselves into this mess; THEY did it. Get real -- "immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy" -- jeezzuz, haven't you read your own article, did you not just read your previous paragraph? You know, the one where you said that the Bush Administration makes its decisions based upon politics not policy? The only way to "start honestly reassessing" the Iraq situation is to get a new President. And even he is going to have a damn tough time.

Tom, if you returned to simply lob elegant and wise and ineffectual advice at our dear leaders, without getting to the core of the issue, then go back to your book and give your precious space in the Times op-ed page to someone like Digby.