For a guy who goes around talking about globalization and a flat world, Tom Friedman sure seems surprised to discover that America can’t dictate outcomes the way we used to. He appears to have just learned that Arab regimes want us to blast Iran to smithereens. It looks for all the world like he’s mystified that Saudi Arabia cracks down on radical Islam at home while exporting it like crazy. There was a time when Tom Friedman was more informed about the Middle East than the average U.S. citizen. Somewhere along the way he swallowed a whole bunch of misconceptions and became aggressively misinformed about the Middle East. Maybe it was the trauma of 9/11. I don’t know. But the mustache seems to have lost its understanding.
I think it is because he’s incapable of drawing a conclusion that is more than a neural-klick away from what everyone else in Washington is thinking. So, he lays out a great case for ending the forward basing strategy of the U.S. military but then blames everything on American consumers and a lack of support for green policies in Congress. Yes, we should have saved more, borrowed less, and invested in alternative energy. But the real problem is that people are generally opposed to being told what to do by foreigners. We got away with it for a long time because we had a lot of power and some built up good-will.
When we went over to Iraq and told the Arabs there to suck.on.this at Abu Ghraib, we lost the last vestiges of the moral high ground. That whole mess was basically endorsed by Friedman before we even invaded. It had something to do with popping the terrorism bubble…whatever that meant. Didn’t happen.
