What's Wrong with Tom Friedman.

Playback Editor - 12/23/06

Like so many Americans after 9-11, my eyes were opened to the outside world. Before that terrible event, I was self-absorbed, concerned with my business career and social life. While I am a Jew of American decent, I hardly ever paid attention to anything on the news. During the 1990's with the first Trade Center bombing, Somalia, the African Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, or the 2000 Peace Process really never crossed my personal radar screen. It just did not register. I was an immature, self-absorbed American male caught up in an American lifestyle of money and fun.

9-11 changed me forever. I say this quite seriously as the impact on me remains as a wake up call from hell. I grew up in New York city and love it as only someone who was born here does. There is really no other place for me to ever call home; everywhere else just seems so incomplete. As the reality of what transpired set in over stages and the events' enormity evolved from shock to personal terror, I immersed myself into studying as much as I could about the world events that lead to that horrible event.

Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, was one of my great educators. I feverishly waited to read each of his columns with a burning thirst. His "twenty years " of living and traveling through and studying the Middle East made him someone I could count on to teach me. He had been there. He had spent tremendous time studying both sides of every conflict. He knew these people. He was a bridge to myself and so many others . . . we all loved reading Thomas and did so to our tremendous profit.

Over the years a funny thing happened along the way. The more I studied Friedman along with so many others two personal paths developed. The first was that in addition to Friedman I read other highly intelligent, well traveled and evolved thinkers, Hanson, Kagan, Horovitz, Harris, Goris (the list goes on and on) and developed a more rounded perspective. The second was that as the years went by I began to have my own perspective. I began to track the positions and claims made by each writer and to see how their opinions and thoughts held up as time passed and future events unfolded. It's been very interesting to say the least.

"Longitudes and Attitudes," Tom Friedman's hardcover, best selling, New York Times promoted and praised collection of editorial articles discussing the post 9-11 world extensively covered the Israel, Arab and Amercian triangle of problems facing us. Additionally, Iraq and the American invasion were a significant part of Friedman's writings. He was tremendously optimistic about Bush's drive for democracy. He felt it would have a huge, area saving impact if the US won. Friedman was a tremendous supporter. I was very encouraged as I believed Friedman knew what he was talking about. Again, he was our most vocal link to that world. An odd thing as happened along the way and it tells me a great deal about the inner workings of Tom Friedman.

In all his writings, with all his experience, did Friedman ever tell us ahead of time that the fractions making up Iraq, the Sunni, Shiites and Kurds may simply be ununitable? Never did Friedman write in a proactive manner, prior to the body counts, that despite the great thrill it brought him that Bush was taking on an insurmountable project. Never did Friedman write what we are now learning to be the truth, that perhaps only a Saddam could lead a divided tribal society like Iraq. In addition, perhaps most of the Middle East falls under the same dilemma. I never read this from Friedman despite Friedman's expertise and his vast experience to call upon.

Today, as I watch Tom Friedman, he is an extremely angry man and his anger is 100% focused on the Bush Administration. With a venomous eye and fury in his voice, he blames the ongoing war in Iraq squarely on the Bush Team's shoulders saying flat out that they wanted to win the war on the cheap, they did not want to commit the necessary bodies and the mess is all their screw up. His exact words on Chris Mathews Sunday talk show was that history would "damn this administration for their lack of courage and the loss of lives based on their decision to go it on the cheap." Pretty nasty stuff. Pretty serious statements.

Perhaps Freidman is right, but there are two rubs here that bother me and I question his overall honesty, especially to himself. As a member of the media, Tom should know better above all others that these decisions are not made in a vacuum. They are calculated based on many factors; some of which he is not privileged to know. In addition, we live in a democracy where the president's decisions are pumped into a billion homes all day long. Never in history has anyone had to make bigger decisions to a larger, ongoing, second-guessing, independent agenda driven audience. Image if we had more troops and a catastrophe occurred and we lost 100,000 men due to a small hidden nuke. What would Friedman say then? I'd bet it would be along the line of "why were so many tropps there in the first place!"

The second rub is that Friedman has become a frustrated man no longer honest with himself. We all understand now that it does not matter if we had additional troops or not. Iraq and for that matter the entire region excluding Israel really operates as if from another planet. Let's be honest. They are tribal first and without question want to remedy old hatreds long before they will take stands as any form of united country. To the Middle East, the map we see is what it is, lines in the sand drawn by imperial powers after WWI and really irrelevant to tribal existence. What Friedman is seeing is that he has spent his life bring the case of that society to our society and ultimately he had the Middle East all wrong. The fact is that when given the golden opportunity the tribes are making a tremendous mess of it and appear to be really undeserving. This has stunned Friedman terribly. Deep down he must be tremendously disappointed over the sobering reality and rather than direct his fury where it is deserved, he acts like a teenager blaming the parent. Would more troops really have made any difference against such ancient tribal hatreds stirred over and over by far more knowledgeable neighbors.

Iraq has joined the Palestinians and Beirut as a pawn in a game and Friedman furiously blames our government who made mistakes but at least stood up and took a shot in a post 9-11 universe. Friedman should be on television and writing his articles telling the world what we are really up against. Shame on him for not growing up.