http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/opini...riedman.html?hp


Op-Ed Columnist
Thou Shalt Not Destroy the Center


By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: November 11, 2005
Dear God in Heaven: Forgive me my sins, for I have been to China and I have had bad thoughts. Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for I have cast an envious eye on the authoritarian Chinese political system, where leaders can, and do, just order that problems be solved. For instance, Shanghai's deputy mayor told me that as his city became more polluted, the government simply moved thousands of small manufacturers out of Shanghai to clean up the air.


Forgive me, Heavenly Father, because I know that China's political system is hardly ideal - not even close - and is not one that I would ever want to emulate in my own country. But at this time, when democracies, like India and America, seem incapable of making hard decisions, I cannot help but feel a tinge of jealousy at China's ability to be serious about its problems and actually do things that are tough and require taking things away from people. Dear Lord, please accept my expression of remorse for harboring such feelings. Amen.

Well, you get the point. At a time when we are busy lecturing others about the need to adopt democratic systems, ours and many others seem to be hopelessly gridlocked - with neither the left nor the right able to generate a mandate to tackle hard problems. And it is the yawning gap between the huge problems our country faces today - Social Security reform, health care, education, climate change, energy - and the tiny, fragile mandates that our democracy seems able to generate to address these problems that is really worrying.

Why is this happening? Clearly, the way voting districts have been gerrymandered in America, thanks to the Voting Rights Act and Tom DeLay-like political manipulations, is a big part of the problem. As a result of this gerrymandering, only a small fraction of the seats in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures are really contested anymore. Therefore, few candidates have to build cross-party coalitions around the middle.

Most seats are now reserved for one party or the other. And when that happens, it means that in each of these districts the real election is the primary, where Democrats run against Democrats and Republicans against Republicans. And when that happens, it produces candidates who appeal only to their party's base - so we end up with a Congress paralyzed between the far left and far right.

Add to this the fragmentation of the media, with the rising power of bloggers and podcasters, and the decline in authority of traditional centrist institutions - including this newspaper - and you have what the Foreign Policy magazine editor Moisés Naím rightly calls "the age of diffusion."

"Show me a democratically elected government today anywhere in the world with a popular mandate rooted in a landslide victory - there aren't many," said Mr. Naím, whose smart new book, "Illicit," is an absolute must-read about how small illicit players, using the tools of globalization, are now able to act very big on the world stage, weakening nations and the power of executives across the globe. "Everywhere you look in this age of diffusion, you see these veto centers emerging, which can derail, contain or stop any initiative. That is why so few governments today are able to generate a strong unifying mandate."

This is a real dilemma because a vast majority of Americans are just center-left or center-right. Many surely feel disenfranchised by today's far-left, far-right Congress. Moreover, the solutions to our biggest problems - especially Social Security and health care - can be found only in compromises between the center-left and center-right. This is doubly true today, when the real solutions require Washington to take stuff away from people, not give them more.

But our politics no longer rewards good behavior. Ronald Reagan, the most overrated president in U.S. history, lowered taxes and raised government spending, triggering a huge spike in the deficit. But because he did it with a sunny smile and it happened to coincide with the decline of the Soviet Union, he is remembered as a Great Man. The senior George Bush raised taxes and helped pave the way for the prosperity of the 1990's. He also managed the actual collapse of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired, using unsmiling but deft diplomacy. Yet the elder Bush is somehow remembered - including, it seems, by his own son - as a failed president.

Add it all up and you can see that we have put ourselves in a position where only a total blow-out crisis in our system will generate enough authority for a democratic government to do the right things.

Let us pray.

Wow! Interesting article coming from Friedman.

I envy China too if they're able to do what Friedman says they do.

I do not see the Congress as far left at all. I see them as center left, center right and far right.

I think this is the central dilemma in American Politics: THE SAFE SEAT.

There should be no such thing - - - ALL SEATS SHOULD BE UP FOR GRABS.

Sorry. pols; you want a safe seat, work for your father.

I propose:

a: the "splenda" solution. No district can be more "unsquare" in shape than a packet of splenda.

b: no district can have more than (fill in a number) times as many registered R's as D's.

Yeah- a wow from Friedman for sure !

Jeff, I like your "a" and your "b" but, in most cases "a cannot equal "b."

I'd settle for "a"

Good point. Or perhaps the whole "Left-Center-Right" measurement stick is itself a way of maintaining the status quo, preventing creative thinking that would lead to a new progressive populist alliance that could challenge the bi-Partisan neo-Liberal/neo-Con consensus.

Friedman is a "liberal Hawk" --- a grand "neo-Liberal" Ideologue rationalizer for corporate/militarism, the globalization of corporate-market-Fundamentalism, the Bush-Biden-Sharon doctrines, the bi-Partisan consensus of America's "strategic class".

No doubt he feels a need to lash out at the so-called "far left" -- ie. anyone opposed to the neo-con/neo-liberal consensus-- now that the Iraq Invasion and neo-Liberal "Shock Therapy"-style Occupation has produced far more social chaos, violent opposition, ethnic disintegration, and resurgent Islamic Fundamentalism than expected -- and far more widespread, vocal opposition at home.

He gets angrier and more self-righteous every day, even as he pretends to confess errors. He is not so unlike another like-minded Jewish liberal Hawk, Judith Miller in this respect.

Beneath the apparent peacefulness and progressiveness of Friedman's Utopian neo-liberal world of "free markets, free trade, and Democracy" always lurks an angry MERCILESS aggressiveness toward anyone or anything standing in the way of his now crumbling Utopian Dream , just as a bloody aggressiveness always lurked beneath the most progressive rationalizers of European colonialism.

His recent fulminations, throwing up his hands in self-righteous exasperration, virtually calling for bloody civil War in Iraq should disgust any reasonable, compassionate person. He absurdly places almost all the blame for the Iraq disaster on to the Sunni Arab community in what amounts to a demonization of-- and destruction-wish for-- an entire ethnic group. He hardly mentions the fact that the Shiite majority is rapidly succumbing to resurgent Iran-linked-Islamic Fundamentalism which is supposedly our great Enemy in the "Global War on Terror". (The astute observer will see strong parallels between with the Israel/Palestine conflict and Likudist ideology).

From Liberal Oasis (see link and more complete text below):






Tom Friedman: Pro-Civil War (Sept. 2005)

http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/092505.htm

EXCERPT:

In Friedman’s world, the Sunnis are now the bad guys and the Shiites are the good guys, because it’s the Sunnis practicing ethnic cleansing.

But that’s factually inaccurate. Both camps are practicing ethnic cleansing.
Knight-Ridder’s Sept. 21 report on ethnic cleansing explains:



And CBS Evening News ran a Sept. 26 report on ethnic cleansing in Baghdad that pointed the finger at both camps, but focused on an incident where Sunnis were the victims of ethnic cleansing:



Friedman's column also accuses the Sunnis of not putting Iraq first, unlike the Shiites:
I know the Sunnis are terrified by Iran's influence in this southern region, but, as the Brits who run the Basra area, which includes Umm Qasr, will tell you, the Iraqi Arab Shiites here are obsessed with not being dominated by Iran.

Despite growing cultural and commercial ties with Iran, they are Iraqis first.

That attitude would only be enhanced if Iraqi Sunnis, rather than allowing or abetting the murders of Shiites, would instead embrace the new constitution and let the U.S. cut the Sunnis an even fairer slice of the pie.

Is that what would the Brits would say? Newsday had a different take on what’s going on in Basra:


Apparently, Friedman ain’t in on the secret.

Back in 2003, Friedman got it wrong on the war, selling it to NY Times’ left-leaning audience as a glorious democracy-building project for the Middle East.

Now, instead of admitting his flawed arguments, exploring how to defuse the growing ethnic strife, and fixing the problem he helped create, he is trying to compound his errors by drumming up support for a second layer of carnage – based on gross generalizations and false notions of good guys and bad.


Friedman has become about as credible as the Flat Earth Society.

And his newfound cynicism should not prevail in the Democratic Party.

Just because his solution involves troop withdrawal does not make it palatable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We need to change course in order to end the simmering civil war, not to fuel it.
ethnic cleansing.

More on the immorality and hypocrisy behind Friedman's mask of moral righteousness:

-------------------------------------------------------

Columnist Has the Glass-House Problem
by Drew Hamre

October 22, 2005 by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Minnesota)

It's tempting to make excuses for Thomas L. Friedman. After all, his old high school is just down the street, he writes with verve, and he is the reigning king-of-all-media for foreign affairs.

But the atrocities that Friedman ascribes to the Sunni (Star Tribune, Oct. 14) are tactics he himself has advocated in the New York Times.

Friedman has urged terror bombing to force regime change in Serbia ("Let's see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does," April 6, 1999) and arguably in prewar Iraq ("bombing Iraq, over and over and over again," Jan. 31, 1998).

Friedman has advocated bombing electrical grids, knowing full well the mortal damage that results when refrigerators and filtration pumps die ("It should be lights out in Belgrade," April 23, 1999; "Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week," Jan. 19, 1999).

In Friedman's latest, he cries "genocide" in the context of a mosque bombing; he conflates a group of female war critics with mass murderers. All in all, this is a particularly nasty work.

Friedman simplifies the violence in Iraq to toe the "Sunni-Shiite" line, though he must know this is shorthand for Iraq's stew of clan loyalties, class differences, rising criminality, and the desperation of a wartime population.

He appears intent on caricaturing a people, and then demonizing them.


This is worrisome, given Friedman's track record. Friedman has previously argued for war on a people, not just its government ("Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation").

On Sept. 28, he advocated what critics call the "Rwanda option" for Iraq: "If [the Sunni] come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind."

Perhaps a few of Friedman's excesses might be laid to the deadline pressures of his craft. But the larger charge Friedman makes (Sunni leadership tolerates genocide) is not only false, it's one to which Friedman and his paper are vulnerable.

As one example, in May 2000 following a conference in Seattle, Friedman was approached and asked to write more often about United Nations sanctions on Iraq. The hope, I suppose, was for Friedman to become a champion of Iraqi civilians, much like colleague Nicholas Kristof would later become a champion of the people of Darfur.

For Iraq and Darfur, the severity of the crisis is expressed in an "excess death" estimate. Currently, the State Department estimates that 98,000 to 181,000 people have died since March 2003 in Darfur and the camps of Chad.

For Iraq at the time Friedman was approached, the U.N. itself estimated excess deaths during the sanctions decade at 500,000 children younger than 5. (Last month's final Volcker report reduces and undercuts the precision of this estimate, while underscoring the severity of the deprivations.)

That day in Seattle, Friedman took a packet of epidemiological information on Iraq, saying, "Perhaps you've planted a seed."

Well, perhaps not.

Finally on Oct. 7, Friedman wrote that America's biggest intelligence failure: "was the failure to understand just how devastated Iraq's society, economy and institutions had become -- after [two wars] and then a decade of U.N. sanctions."

Friedman's employer almost always includes the Darfur excess death estimate in its coverage. The comparable figure for Iraq has rarely, perhaps never, appeared. When pressed to clarify, one of the Times editors said in an e-mail: "the absence of one particular statistic (500,000 excess deaths) does not require a 'clarification' " by the Times.

Simply put, the Times is not the podium for a lecture on silence and genocide, nor is Friedman the speaker.

Civilians are civilians, and state-sponsored terror is still terror. For a reminder, read "Night Draws Near" by Pulitzer-winner Anthony Shadid, or browse the sanctions archive at Cambridge (www.casi.org.uk).

But no more excuses for Thomas Friedman.

Drew Hamre lives in Golden Valley, Minnesota.

Below is a post of mine from almost two years ago. It's no longer up to date regarding the facts of the situation --things have gotten worse since then, and the rise of Shiite Islamic Fundamentalism has become much more obvious-- nevertheless, it shows the consistency in Friedman's thinking on Iraq. (Also: links may be out of date, I have not checked them).
-------------------------------------------------

A Full Cup Of Wine For Tom The Optimist
By Thomas Friedman - 9/21/2003 Excerpts
http://www.getinspiredclub.com/Thomas%20Friedman.htm



The above is a classic example of Friedman's mix of seemingly clear-headed "realism" combined with the most unrealistic factual basis and confused logic.

He clearly sees that the US is floundering in an urban war with the Iraqi insurgents. That *realism* contrasts sharply with the Bush Administration's relentless false optimism which borders on a complete denial of reality at times.

However, the rest of his argument is a compilation of falsehoods, dangerous oversimplifications and borderline racist immorality.

1) It is utterly untrue to say that the interests and goals of the Bush Administration correspond "100%" with the vast majority of Iraqi's (Friedman's "silent majority").


From the beginning of the occupation, the Bush Administration has pursued a radical neo-conservative agenda REJECTED by the vast majority of Iraqis:


The Neo-Conservative Agenda for Iraq


Show the world the US is serious in its doctrine of unilateral militarism, and set the stage for further US domination of the region.


Impose a pro-US-business, pro-Likudist Israel, pro-"market-fundamentalism" government.


Remove a threat to Sharon's expansionist Eretz Israel, allowing him to consolidate his annexation of land in the West Bank and rejection of the Oslo Accords and any two state solution for the Palestinian conflict.


Privatize Iraqi oil and open it up for foriegn exploitation--- and in general, gain greater control of Middle East oil resources so as to have strategic leverage against growing military rivals, especially China.


Impose radical right-wing [neo-liberal "shock therapy"] "market fundamentalist" doctrines.


Impose disastrous profit-oriented privatization program.


Administer a corrupt Halliburton-style reconstruction process


Reject any program to get Iraqis back to work, get money in THEIR hands (since
that might involve a Roosevelt public works type approach---anathema to these privatiaztion fundamentalists!)


Resist UN participation


Resist, delay, Free elections; consider martial law instead [until acceptable results can be assured]


Resist Iraqi self-determination


Use Israeli-style aggressive military tactics (closely consult with Israeli military advisors)


Build military bases throughout the country---and a huge
3,000 man embassy to house the US shadow government.



Many of these policies have been abject failures resulting in turning a large portion of the Iraqi population ---originally happy to see Saddam gone---against the U.S. role in the country.

It is simply false, as Friedman asserts-- echoing the Bush Administration propaganda-- that the Bush Administration agenda in Iraq was "solely the liberation of the Iraqi people" .


Friedman, of course, is hardly in a position to repudiate radical market-fundamentalist destruction of the Iraqi state, since those are policies he has promoted around the world.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The disaster in Iraq and constructive criticism
Gabriel Ash, 23 April 2004

"The overarching goal of the U.S. in Iraq was not to establish a pluralistic, independent and stable state. These were perhaps considered good things in Washington, and especially useful for domestic consumption but they were secondary to the more important goal of keeping Iraq subservient to the U.S. The White House's vision of Iraq was of a weak state, one that would follow U.S. orders on foreign policy, help the U.S. militarily, and leave oil under control of U.S. companies.

The Pentagon wanted permanent bases in Iraq to replace the bases evacuated in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. occupation position is that no Iraqi government would have the right to request the withdrawal of the army. Nevertheless, the occupation didn't want the issue of U.S. control to be debated at all. To achieve that, the neo-cons had to bolster the power of legitimacy-challenged Pentagon favorites such as Ahmad Chalabi. That necessitated marginalizing and weakening groups that might refuse to accept his leadership, especially legitimate Shi'a leaders such as Sistani. Hence, the unbelievable display of hypocrisy of the U.S. occupation resisting calls for elections and reacting with hostility to democratic processes.

In helping to consolidate Chalabi's position, the U.S. occupation was also busy promoting corrupt privatization schemes. According to Bremer's edicts, the privatization of Iraq is not subject to revision by a future legitimate Iraqi government. This permanent change to the ownership of national assets is a serious breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The result of this corruption is that very little of the reconstruction money approved by Congress ended up in Iraqi pockets. Most of it went back to ENRICH FOREIGN CORPORATIONS. The failure of economic improvement and the stubborn above 50% unemployment rate is a leading cause of the general disenchantment with the occupation.

Part of the problem is that Iraq is ruled today by fanatic MARKET FUNDAMENTALISTS who believe in counterfactual, "trickle down," economic theories. A little Keynesian-paying people to drill holes and others to fill them would have improved things a lot more than billions in reconstruction extravaganza. But public work is anathema to the neo-con religion.

PRIVATIZATION, of course, was supposed to be a boon to many U.S. corporations, including good friends of the President and Vice-President such as Halliburton. But that, too, was only a fringe benefit. There is strategic logic behind U.S. desire to put the new Iraqi economy beyond democratic control.

The goal is a weak state, which can be remote controlled by U.S.-led institutions such as the IMF and through the strings attached to U.S. aid. Privatization also creates a system of corrupt patronage centered on U.S. stooges .

This is the policy that Clinton used with such brutal success in Russia, a policy that is only now beginning to unravel with Putin's assault on the "oligarchs."

The primary reason for the current level of resistance is that the U.S. project of "exporting democracy" was conceived and administered in bad faith. The mess in Iraq may be a matter of excess optimism. But it wasn't optimism about Iraqi readiness for democracy. The neo-cons were perhaps too optimistic in believing they could pull the wool over the eyes of Iraqis the way they did it at home. Unfortunately for them, the docility and media-induced stupor of the American electorate is rather unique. Exporting that stupor to the Middle East was perhaps the biggest neo-con pipe dream.
-------------------------
Cf.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0423-01.htm
What Went Wrong?
by Paul Krugman

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cf...=15&ItemID=4568
The War on Iraq's Workers
===================================

2) Friedman then asserts that Iraqi's do not want to return to Saddam nor create a theocratic state along the lines of Iran.

Then he goes on to completely ignore all the complexity of the situation, the conflicting aspirations of Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, and blames the entire insurgency on "Saddamists".

He doesn't even mention al Sadr or al Sistani! Not even a word on the SHIA resistance to the US led neo-conservative driven occupation.

This is a completely oversimplified, and basically FALSE, understanding of the situation.


As a starting point for understanding the true complexity of the insurgency, I suggest the following articles:

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=7164#FNR4
Iraq’s Chaos by Ahmed S. Hashim, Boston Review
October 1st, 2004

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17406
Iraq: The Bungled Transition
By Peter W. Galbraith

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/18B...C717E6BEAD0.htm
Shia demands may lead to Iraq break-up
By Ahmed Janabi

http://www.idao.org/shiristani.html
Democracy Delayed Is Democracy Denied
BY HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI

http://www.idao.org/crippled-democracy.html
Crippled Democracy
Sabah Jawad
====================================

3) Having identified the problem as simply one of Saddamists who must be crushed, but cannot be by the US military because of the nature of urban warfare, what does he suggest? Brutal repression




Read that closely. He's calling for Saddam Hussein-style murderous suppression of the insurgents (falsely identified as only "Saddamists"). "Robust internal security" is a code word for secret police, death squads (Negroponte-style), torture, dissappearances and so on.

Several points on this suggestion:

1) It won't work. Brutal repression will not solve the root problems leading to the insurgency.

2) Creating a repressive Iraqi police apparatus to crush "Saddamists" does not address the problems of the Shia insurgency or the whole complex questions of Kurdish autonomy and so on. [nor the problem of resurgent Shia Islamic Fundamentalism]


3) A reborn Hussein-style repressive police state would hardly dissappear after crushing the "Saddamists", assuming that was possible, and would hardly provide the foundation for a "decent, modern-looking" Iraqi state.


4) The suggestion that Arabs must be treated "by the local rules" --meaning their human rights must be violated, norms of civilized goverment ignored and so on-- verges on a racist view of Arabs/Muslims. Would Friedman suggest such a approach be used on Israeli occupiers?

Wow! What a collection! You obviously have some strong feelings about Friedman.



We have discussed this. It just makes sense



I am happy that the Iraqis are not as docile as the American electorate. Thank God!



Despicable.

People who stay in elective offices, highly appointed positions or highly placed civil servants the longest are those who protect the status-quo and manage essential change in small segments. The real power rest with the moderate Right and the moderate Left bi-partisan compromise with the intrenched bureauracy and the
richest most powerful multi-national Corporate Heads. The rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer, but the change is gradual. When a group like the neocons get more control, things get worse for the majority at
a quicker pace and an opportunity for reform opens up. If we allow the present leadership of the democratic party to guide the reform, we'll go back to where
we were but we will have missed the opportunity to make structural changes
needed to sustain Peace and Prosperty for everyone.

Great point, rla! All this talk from Kerry and others about unifying seems very self-serving to me. Like we're supposed to unify behind the present Democratic leadership??!! Not my idea of reform.

That's just a portion of my gigantic collection!

You know, you may be right that from a purely emotional standpoint, I feel more anger at the so-called "liberals" that backed the Iraq War and the whole project of globalizing big-corporate greed. But there should be no shock at this, since it was great Democratic Party Liberals like Johnson that brought us the Vietnam War, to mention just one example.

And, as I hint at in the "italian" thread, the greatest human calamities resulting from the neo-liberal/neo-con consensus hardly ever even make it into the news!! (Likewise, Americans know a great deal about the "Evil Empire" of communisn, but very little about the horrors of 500 years of European colonialism; Churchill is revered for his resolute stand against Stalin, yet his unflagging defense of the British (Evil) Empire which includes his eloquent justification for the gassing and bombing of civilians in Iraqi villages--- no different than Saddam's great crime of gassing Kurds-- goes without notice)

I share with Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy a deep disgust for the vast mendacity of it all:

When I hear Bush spouting this kind of BS, I want to puke. I'm sorry, but what we stand for as a nation has been utterly corrupted. The noble principles upon which this country was founded have become sullied by the way we act in the world, the way our political system is run and the apathy of the American people.

The true extent of the profiteering, the venality, the corruption is little known to the American people.

However for the daily reader of the news there are a lots of little tidbits fwhich when collected pile up into one gigantic mountain of ****.

The biggest boondogles involve Halliburton, Bechtel, and various US contractors --- but everyone gets into the act, as, for example, in the case of the Missing Polish Helicopters which I found amusing (Bush: "What about Poland??")


First, a bit of context:
-------------------------
September 19, 2005 by The Independent / UK
What has Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion?
by Patrick Cockburn

EXCERPTS:


-----------------------------------
Now, a few more details:

Iraq Investigates Widespread Corruption
Source: Newsday.com

EXCERPT:

We need to get people to pay more attention to competency It is the lack of competency which allows for corruption--then everyone covers up so as not to
reveal their lack of competence--which unfortunately prevents the development
of systems to build competency. Reform initiatives allow for building systems
for assessment, training, facilitative over-sight and for rewarding Excellence. This
requires open societies and open goverments.

I agree completely. A good example would be the way the British Empire at its best was run by a highly competent, merit based, administrative system, backed by a competence-based military structure. Compare that fine imperial system, for example, to the out-of-control Belgium imperial pillaging of the Congo, which although highly profitable and successfully genocidal, could not sustain itself in the long run.