This morning, Tom Friedman cribs my material by saying:
What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.
I don’t really mind the lack of attribution, even though I’ve said this repeatedly. I do mind Friedman’s next point because it violates common decency and basic logic.
I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.
It’s precisely this notion that America has a necessary foreign policy need which is simultaneously impossible to accomplish that set us on the disastrous course.
It was Friedman that famously told Charlie Rose that America needed to respond to 9/11 by going into an Arab country, knocking down doors, and telling the residents that if they thought we would tolerate total strangers (to them) flying airplanes into our buildings, they could ‘suck on this’.
Four years later, Friedman admits that 9/11 made him stupid. It made a lot of people stupid. But Friedman does not appear to be cured. He is slowly awakening…he recently said there should be no more Friedman Units in this war. But anyone that can say that it is necessary for us to attempt the impossible is an idiot.
And when the impossible involves getting over half a million people killed, trashing America’s brand, and bankrupting our country?
Idiots should lose their jobs.