In one sentence, Thomas Friedman shows why the US is stuck in an endless Middle East failure loop

[BeyondGeography]

So Tom Freidman thinks we should intervene in Syria. That's right. Having whiffed on the Iraq War, Friedman thinks we should wade into Syria with an international force, "including, if necessary, U.S, troops," that would watch over a "Sunni protected zone." And then, "if Putin and Iran want to keep the butcher Assad in Damascus, they can have him."

What could possibly go wrong?

You'd think people like Friedman would be humbled by the past. But Americans don't really care about the past, do they? You can ignore it, and, if it's problematic, you can lie about it. Like Friedman does in this stunning sentence from Wednesday's column:

ISIS was the deformed creature created by a pincers movement — Russia, Iran, Assad and Hezbollah in Syria on one flank and Iran and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq on the other.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/opinion/president-trumps-real-world-syria-lesson.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthomas-l-friedman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

That's not only wrong, coming from Friedman, it's a lie, and he knows it.

ISIS is our baby, wholesale. Without the invasion of Iraq, there would have been no platform for the hothead Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who fathered the unique brand of sectarian violence that ISIS is known for today, bombing Shia mosques in the context of an American occupation, catching Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri completely off guard and ultimately relegating al Qaeda as a movement to second-tier status.

In Iraq, we took every institutional roadblock to a monster like Zarqawi and dismantled it. We proved every bad thing the Islamic world had ever said about us to be true, decimating a fragile sense of shared citizenship and opening the door to a form of identity politics that could only be expressed through violence.

Upon arriving in Baghdad, we sent our soldiers straight to the Ministry of Oil and let looters run wild in museums and libraries; we eliminated an army of 300,000 soldiers; we banned the Ba'ath party and forced all of its members to start over again, regardless of rank. Once upon a time there was a country where many educated people considered themselves Iraqi first, Sunni and Shia second. We ruined it.

So, where were we again, "a pincers movement — Russia, Iran, Assad and Hezbollah in Syria on one flank and Iran and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq on the other"? What the fuck is that? Where is America in that analysis?

Nowhere. Because people like Friedman persist in thinking we're the good guys, we know better. And if that is demonstrably not true, just lie about it.

You can get away with that type of mendacity in this country, where you have to scream "Merrick Garland!" just to remind our media that the drama surrounding Neil Gorsuch actually has a Republican father. But you can't get away with that in the Middle East, where Sykes-Picot is a routine topic of political conversation. They remember, and that's why we need to stop lying, both to them and to ourselves.

[Wounded Bear]

1. Absolutely anything we do there will piss somebody off...

there are no good answers. Now we have amateurs in charge. Indeed, what could possibly go wrong?