No Kidding: The Most Incoherent Tom Friedman Column Ever (Matt Taibbi)

[swag]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kidding-the-most-incoherent-tom-friedman-column-ever-20120725

I realize this is not a statement anyone can make lightly, but: this morning’s column by Thomas Friedman, "Syria is Iraq," is the single most incoherent thing he has ever written. It’s… well, breathtaking is the only word.

Others, like Glenn Greenwald, have already pointed out the column's most obvious contradictions. But for those who missed it, here are two passages that were written, not as a joke, by the same human being in the same opinion column. Start with passage #1:

And, for me, the lesson of Iraq is quite simple: You can’t go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts to manage the transition. In Iraq, that was America.

Got that? Here’s the second passage:

Because of both U.S. incompetence and the nature of Iraq, this U.S. intervention triggered a civil war in which all the parties in Iraq – Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds – tested the new balance of power, inflicting enormous casualties on each other and leading, tragically, to ethnic cleansing that rearranged the country into more homogeneous blocks of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kidding-the-most-incoherent-tom-friedman-column-ever-20120725#ixzz21fqgJ0MT

[patrice]

1. K&R

[DinahMoeHum]

2. Oh wow. Obviously the words of a deep thinker.

[rurallib]

3. he must have some access to weed that no one else does.

I can't believe he proof read that and pronounced it understandable.

[pa28]

4. He's either having a stroke or smoking something.

Does he have an editor? Did his editor get anything useful out of that bowl of word soup? Anything at all?

[part man all 86]

5. Tom put down the jimson weed TEAcup.

[bemildred]

6. At least he didn't say: " the fires of conflict could drown Syria in blood."

A rare quadruple-mixed metaphor.

That analogy between occupying troops and a good midwife is passing strange.

[limpyhobbler]

7. Friedman has blood on his hands for cheerleading the 2003 Iraq invasion

He is an irrelavant discredited hack.

His status among American elites is the single most potent fact for understanding the nation's imperial decline.

- Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/

[Fumesucker]

8. It is not mere coincidence that the acronym for Friedman Unit is FU..

[nxylas]

9. Tom Tomorrow once asked rhetorically whether Friedman actually has an editor

He was astonished to discover that the answer is no, other than a quick copy edit to check for typos etc.

[Crunchy Frog]

10. The "Moustache of Understanding" strikes again.

He who wears it, understands.

[VWolf]

11. I think I understand what he's saying!

The US, as the world's well-armed midwife, tried to go to Switzerland but ended up in Iraq. There, we did the best we could - we really did - but it just wasn't good enough.

Now we've learned how to do it right. THIS time, we won't fail. Trust us.

Ummmmm, yeah. Fool me once ..... don't get fooled again.

[linux80386]

14. indeed.

[WCGreen]

12. Deep thoughts by Tommy Friedman....

[Douglas Carpenter]

13. as the late Edward W. Said once described Tom Friedman

"The very vulgar, the very ignorant, the very arrogant - Thomas Friedman."

[Locrian]

15. Friedman

Friedman only exists because he's willing to leg hump any issue that pumps sunshine up the ass of the powers that be. Otherwise, intellectually, he's a toad.