"Consider what happened in Basra on Wednesday: Some residents spontaneously stoned British troops coming to rescue Iraqi schoolgirls who were caught up in the suicide bombings of Basra police stations. These were our best friends in Iraq — the Shiites — stoning the British, while they were trying to rescue Iraqi children attacked by Islamist terrorists."

TF says that The Shiites, collectively, did this. How would you describe his sentiment?

A less idiotic view is that the people who want to attack British soldiers are the deviants who don't want Iraqi schoolgirls to be rescued.

Not to mention that when one is assassinated, one tends to get a lot of things named after one.

There is a neighborhood in Bogota, Colombia named after Kennedy as well, for what it's wrorth.

Yo, Tommy.

I've got sixteen words for you, 'cuz:

Saddam City - Shi'ites murdered by the tens of thousands and forced to live in rancid slums.

Ah, yeah, the "good old days."

Actually, I suspect there's a George HW Bush street somewhere in Kuwait.

i bet it's the access drive of an oil refinery.

"Eventually, Lebanon resolved its internal contradiction and became a much more typical Arab state. In other words: they've gone through a long civil war, foreign occupation, suffered continued sectarian violence, enagaged in a proxy war against Israel, and they've fed, clothed, armed, and paid terrorists."

Yep, but Beirut's still a pretty cool place. They don't call it the Paris of the Middle East without reason. You can still gamble and drink there, there are plenty of nightclubs to be found, and the dress code on the beaches is a lot different than in much of the region. Though Lebanon's proximity to Europe, and the fact that 30% of the population is still Christian, might have something to do with this.

We could rename Iraq "W-Land" and build the new palace on "Blood-For-Oil Boulevard" if we wanted to. The fact that we're not seperates us from the real live colonial powers that had an interest in sticking around and exploiting the locals.

Good one Tom...maybe you can write you next article on why our 51st state won't be called "Elizabethia" to go with "Georgia". Moron.

I'm sorry to contradict "David", but our "best friends" in Iraq were, and probably still are, the Kurds. They were the only ones to actively participate on our side in the war and help fight to remove Saddam, and the Kurdish areas have always been the least troublesome.

Ah, sorry. I see that it was Friedman's error, not David's.

"Blood-for-oil"? Mike M? Why didn't we just keep Kuwait? At least you got the "Moron" word out of your system for a few minutes. It'll be back, I'm certain. We're at war, Mike. Most folks saw 9/11 as the evidence. If that is "simplistic" to you, maybe it's because you stopped thinking too soon.

Hey Buddy, relax. That was sarcasm from Mike. He knows the score, Buddy.

Rico:

How old are you, son?

I'm going to go waaay out on a limb here, and surmise that, at the end of the first Gulf War, in Feb. 1991, you were between 6 and 10 years old.

Why do I say that?

Well, if you were an adult back in Feb. 1991, Rico, you would be able to remember the scenes of those jubilent denizens of Kuwait City, literally knocking each other over for a chance to kiss or hug the U.S. Marines who followed the Arab force core into that city, and liberated them from unspeakable atrocities at the hands of Saddam. There's simply no way -- in that event -- that you could have the degree of intellectual dishonesty to have written your glib and facile post.

The only other option, I guess, is that you are not an angry college student right now, and that you, in fact, were cognizant of your surroundings back then. Unfortunately, for you, Rico, in that event, the only conclusion is that you're a lunatic-fringe liberal. And that would be a shame, Rico. You see, there's always going to be war, and ethnic strife and poverty, and rank misery, in this cold, hard World of ours. That was the case 5,000 years ago. It is the case today. It was the case, believe or not, even when Bill Clinton was President. And it will be the case 5,000 years from now (assuming the planet still is around). So, if you're a lunatic-fringe liberal, Rico, you're going to be angry about the injustices of the World for a very, very, very long time.

Have a nice day.

Jay.

This weekend the Times was trying to get as much shill going as possible before they are forced by events to dedicate a couple of column inches to UNSCAM next weekend.

In addition to icky Friedman and the feel-bad-for-the-Pals piece in the magazine, there was a piece in the "Week in Review" section by Ed Wong about how Iraqis are finding nationalism is the "unity" between Sadr's militia and the small pack of Fallujah thugs (many of whom now appear to be Syrian and/or Al Qaeda). I think it was supposed to be snarky, or something.

Sergio:

Indeed.

Also, some of the "news" agencies directly connected with the Kerry campaign (e.g., Associated Press; ABC) apparently have decided to try to preempt some of the more rancid aspects of Kerry's personal and political history. For example, it appears that ABC, tomorrow morning (4/26), will start tip toeing into the disgraceful photo-op, where Kerry threw someone else's medals away. And late last week, I'm sure you noticed, there was some gentle coverage of Kerry's slanderous testimony before Congress after he rotated back and began VVAW. The bias dump over the weekend probably was designed to try to drown all that out.

And, like you say, there's potentially positive news for the Administration coming up on the UNron issue. Also, GDP comes out this Friday, April 29 (and it will be stellar), and the jobs report for April comes out the first Friday in May (and it might be a mega-blowout - perhaps as many as 350,000 new jobs indicated).

So, I suspect that Kerry's allied media forces are in a mode where they will "flood the zone" with loud and fast pro-Kerry, anti-Bush propaganda from now until after the job report has been released. Then, they'll settle back into their *normal* cycle of biased coverage. I presume that will be the pattern all the way up to the election.

Best,

J.

Aaron, thanks for the heads-up, and my apologies to MiKe M. I missed the satire, Mike, maybe because your name/initial (near the the"B-for-O" phrase) set off a vision of getting a word in at a certain multimillionaire "I Hope The Terrorists Win" entertainment mogul/marxist-poseur. When this drooling ingrate came to mind, sudden exasperation tuned out your text clues.

Exasperation comes when so many so blatantly ignore Daniel Patrick Moynihan (RIP, an excellent Democrat from back when we had some), whom I paraphrase: "We each have rights to our own opinions, but we do not have rights to our own facts."

I wouldn't be suprised if new jobs grow is more than 400,000. Don't underestimate the psycological effects of last months good numbers, the flood gates might have been opened. It was the first big gain in an indicator that has been cause for much concern for a long time. People will hire just because it seems like the thing to do.

Observation: I went clothes shopping this weekend and prices seemed way up. I guess inventories must be down. How are department store stocks priced now? Might be a good buy.

For what it's worth, I read recently that the Kuwaitis are generally speaking not particularly pro-American. This despite the fact that they owe their "freedom" to us. Of course, Kuwaitis have never been particularly groovy.. they expelled as many Palestinians after 1991 as left Israel after 1948.

=darwin

Don't forget our-friends-the-French:
Underground Society Newsletter
c/o Duarte Philippe
13 Rue John Kennedy
Lotissement Du Lac
40990 Saint Paul Les Dax
France

"Of course, Kuwaitis have never been particularly groovy.. they expelled as many Palestinians after 1991 as left Israel after 1948."

Reason for that of course was that the Pallies were cheering on Saddam during the war, as he vowed to destroy Israel. This didn't go down too well with the Kuwaitis (backing Saddam that is!)

If I remember correctly, Friedman was stationed in Beruit twenty years ago and wrote his first book about that country before they started taking journalists hostages...

The only thing I remember about his book is a paragraph where he comes home to find his apartment blown up, and alas two neighbor's girls who were watching TV in his apartment were killed...

Americans should know that many "Arabs" in this country are Christian because they fled sectarian violence in Lebanon or Arafat's Palestine...

And of course, today's Reuters reports "clashes between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia"...want to bet that the "clash" was a one sided massacre between men with guns and machetes who killed a bunch of people who dared to worship quietly in a church?

I was listening to a public radio broadcast last night, the guest speaker at the JFK school of Government was writer David Halberstam who was speaking on Iraq. For some of his inspiration and sources he quoted several others', namely Tom Friedman, whose Op/Ed you so roundly fisked today. As I read Friedmans' Op/Ed I was suspicious of his claims and was happy to run across someone else who had taken to upeneding his notions.

You may find it interesting that everyone on the left is quoting Hoffstadters' "the Paranoid Style in American Politics" to describe the current administration. Halberstam, a fan of Tom Friedmans', referenced this work in his talk on Iraq.

Halberstams' recommendations for the "solution" to the Iraq quagmire......

1, end traditional support of Israel
2, something about population control in the states ( I have no idea what he meant by this)
3, getting out of Iraq, because, you know, Islam is "on fire"

Had anyone else caught this broadcast?

I used to call it Friedman disease: understanding the Arab world, not getting the United States.

Now I don't think that he gets the Arab world anymore, or maybe its just his pious poisonous liberalism bleeding over.

Can he name a street in the Arab world named after Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, or Clinton?

No, his enmity for W pours out, here.

But I think he's wrong. There will be plenty of streets throughout the Arab world named for George W. Bush. It will just take a while for the freedom to settle in.

Superb job on Friedman! His pathological hatred of Sharon and Bush yielded in this one instance to his need to let us know about his elevated cultural sensibilities.

The real question is are there any streets in the United States named after an Arab? Will there ever be? I doubt it and the reason is obvious.

Nancy, Ditto for the Egyptian copts and Christians from other middle eastern countries. The balance of middle eastern immigrants in the USA are not surprisingly disproportionantly religous minorities. Althought that doesn't stop lobby groups like CIAR (Counsil on American Islamic Relations) from lumping the American Arab and Muslim poplulations together.

The main street in Cairo, right along the NIle, is called the Corniche. That's French.

Buddy and aaron,

There was absolutely no sarcasm in my post. My point was that we could name anything in Iraq whatever we wanted, IF we were a colonial power that was going to stay, administer the country, and exploit its resources like France and England had a habit of doing in the Middle East and Africa.

There aren't going to be any W Streets in Iraq or Afghanistan because we're out of there as soon as the country is stable. Iraq can name its own streets and buildings. Friedman doesn't seem to understand that, and that's why he's a moron.

And of course, today's Reuters reports "clashes between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia"...want to bet that the "clash" was a one sided massacre between men with guns and machetes who killed a bunch of people who dared to worship quietly in a church?

Nancy, I don't know about Indonesia, but if you're trying to suggest that this is always the direction of conflict between Christians and Arabs, then you've obviously forgotten a lot of Friedman's book, and you don't know much if anything about the Lebanese civil war. It was hardly a one-sided attack on Christians by Muslims. Read up.

Stephen, I laud your comments elsewhere against hatred of Arabs, and I understand that your comment about naming of streets was in a specific context, but I feel I should point out that many, many Arabs--especially in this country--have nothing against Jewish people and in fact have deep friendships with them, whether or not they agree with all policies of Israel. I cannot speak for all of them, and not at all for Arabs in the Middle East, but as Friedman's book, numerous stories about intermarriage, and numerous anecdotal stories show, they are not by any means all bloodthirsty haters and killers of Jews, any more than Israelis are all supporters of Sharon. I assume you know this, but some of your readers obviously do not. They may ask, then why don't the "good ones" stop these maniacs, which is akin to asking why don't the "good blacks" stop the bad ones from smoking crack and mugging people. Arab and black individuals do not bear a collective responsibility for the actions of others any more than do white European Americans.

Tom Friedman has an undeserved reputation as a Middle East expert.

OT, but Kerry was on ABC this morning and they did not soft pedal his throwing away of his medals. Kerry ended up shouting down the reporter interviewing him, stated it was a right wing lie (or Republican lie), lied himself, and then started in on Bush being AWOL from the Guard.

It was his Yeargh! moment.

Friedman mentions neither Kerry or Jews but you feel the need to complain about his piece based on those subjects. Your reaction isn’t valid criticism, it’s biased hackery.

None,

My snarky little comments regarding Kerry at the end were just that.

The meat of Friedman's piece was to treat Lebanon as if it had been a typical Arab country, when -- as I demonstrated -- it was anything but.

The meat of Friedman's piece was to treat Lebanon as if it had been a typical Arab country, when -- as I demonstrated -- it was anything but

Look here, Friedman is an idiot but it still requires some intelligence to argue with him and win. If your anecdote demonstrates that Lebanon is atypically liberal we can conclude that even the most liberal “Arab country” is not going to name streets after American presidents. There is no conflict between that position and Friedman’s.

None,

Friedman's point was that it's somehow the fault of recent American policy that such streets will no longer be named. When, in fact, the naming of a Rue John Kennedy 40 years ago, was the aberration, not Arab attitudes.

Friedman can't have it both ways. Either: Lebanon was a typical Arab country, and we've somehow offended them so much that they'll never name streets after our presidents again. Or: Lebanon was completely atypical, but is far less so now.

The latter is obviously the case.

Makes sense, doesn't it, that Beirut, home of fine casinos frequented by Americans, might choose to play to the tourists with American street names. So why did Friedman leave that out? Why the sleight of hand? In other to prove a point which is otherwise fatuous.

Arab mistrust of America, and the West in general, long predates the current occupant of the White House.

Arab mistrust of America, and the West in general, long predates the current occupant of the White House.

Now there’s some sleight of hand, the fact that it’s been bad for a long time hardly disproves the rather obvious recent precipitous decline.

Friedman has done more than enough cheerleading for the policy of this White House. To portray him as blinded by partisan loyalty says more about you than him.

None,

Your constant refusal to stand up for Friedman's silly supposition speaks volumes -- you swipe at me (and at Friedman), yet never explain how his formula is correct. Point taken.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner to attend.

Now there’s some sleight of hand, the fact that it’s been bad for a long time hardly disproves the rather obvious recent precipitous decline.

Your ignorance of middle eastern history is noted. Suffice it to say that the US's relations with countries in the region have rarely had much to do with public opinion in the middle east, and that in terms of real cooperation- from Pakistan's sending their army after Al Qaeda in their tribal areas to Libya coming clean on WMDs to Saudi Arabia clamping down on terrorist fundraising and their security forces getting into shootouts with the bad guys, the US is getting more substantiative cooperation from more middle eastern governments today than it has in decades.

the US is getting more substantiative cooperation from more middle eastern governments today than it has in decades.

If by this you mean cooperation with a certain royal family to rig oil prices to influence the 2004 election I suppose you’re correct. However, public opinion in the middle east is of the utmost importance in the context of democratization. You can’t pretend that a continuation of business as usual is compatible with advancing democratic values. If you want to have the same corrupt, totalitarian regimes exercise even harsher repression and describe it as progress then forget about all talk of democratization. If you endorse this view you’re on the wrong side of history along with the Saudi royal family and all totalitarians.