{"id":6900,"date":"2010-04-01T13:21:32","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T21:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=6900"},"modified":"2010-04-01T13:21:32","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T21:21:32","slug":"the-incredible-lightness-of-being-thomas-friedman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/01\/the-incredible-lightness-of-being-thomas-friedman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Incredible Lightness of Being Thomas Friedman"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want this blog to get obsessed with any one individual, and I fear that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re moving in that direction with Tom Friedman, the main foreign-policy columnist at the New York Times and named by an insiders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 poll<\/a> at the National Journal<\/em> last year as Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most influential media personality.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that, for someone who exercises such influence, he so often seems to be so completely at sea \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no rudder, no anchor, no compass even \u00e2\u20ac\u201d just kind of drifting from wave to wave (or, in the case of globalization, from CEO to CEO). Apart from a generally liberal (with some important exceptions<\/a>) and interventionist orientation, Friedman is erratic, to say the least, and often incoherent, as many more diligent critics, notably Matt Taibi<\/a>, have long observed.<\/p>\n

But the erratic and incoherent nature of his thinking struck me hard this week while reading his column, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hobby or Necessity?<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d published in the Sunday Times, Mar 28. His basic argument is that Palestinian-Israeli peace was a mere \u00e2\u20ac\u0153post-cold-war hobby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the U.S. while it was a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153necessity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Israel in the 1990\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, but that recent events, especially since U.S. troops began fighting wars in the region after 9\/11, have resulted in a 180-degree shift for both countries. While Israel now sees peace as a hobby, it has become a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153necessity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Washington. Citing Biden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Gen. Petraeus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 recent statements<\/a> about the link between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own security issues throughout the Arab world and beyond \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a link that, of course, is anathema to Netanyahu, AIPAC, Abe Foxman<\/a>, etc. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Friedman writes:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now, in the same time period, America went from having only a small symbolic number of soldiers in the Middle East to running two wars there \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in Iraq and Afghanistan \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as well as a global struggle against violent Muslim extremists. With U.S. soldiers literally walking the Arab street \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and, therefore, more in need than ever of Muslim good will to protect themselves and defeat Muslim extremists \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Israeli-Palestinian peace has gone from being a post-cold-war hobby of U.S. diplomats to being a necessity. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He goes on:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153At a time when the U.S. is trying to galvanize a global coalition to confront Iran, at a time when Iran uses the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict to embarrass pro-U.S. Arabs and extend its influence across the Muslim world, peace would be a strategic asset for America and Israel.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, as readers of this blog know, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t disagree with any of this and think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s highly useful that a columnist as influential as Tom Friedman is putting this message out to his readers. Rather, my problem is simply this: if Israeli-Palestinian peace is a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153necessity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Washington now, why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he consider it a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153necessity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d back last November when he was arguing for essentially abandoning mediation efforts and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tak[ing] down our \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPeace-Processing-Is-Us\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sign and just go home.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What precisely has changed about the fundamental situation in the last six months?<\/p>\n

This is what Friedman wrote Nov 8 in a column entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Call White House, Ask for Barack<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMy fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just you and me and the problem we own.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Indeed, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for us to dust off James Baker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s line: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWhen you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, the question arises: what has changed between the publication of that column when Friedman clearly did not think an Israeli-Palestinian peace a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153necessity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and today? And if the underlying situation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a global struggle against violent Muslim extremists,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153more in need than ever of Muslim good will to protect ourselves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is the same as six months ago, why wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Friedman calling for a more aggressive U.S. stance back then?<\/p>\n

As I said, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like he drifts from wave to wave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want this blog to get obsessed with any one individual, and I fear that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re moving in that direction with Tom Friedman, the main foreign-policy columnist at the New York Times and named by an insiders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 poll at the National Journal last year as Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most influential media personality. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6901,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6900\/revisions\/6901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6900"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}