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King Al the Green

Tom Friedman is rapidly becoming one of my favorite Sunday morning reads. 

Today, Friedman is worried about the succession of Nobel Al Gore the UNcrowned, though I haven’t noticed any shortage of mountebanks, charlatans and jackanapes in the field. Friedman frets that none may pick up the Green Mantle that will allow us to best all foes.

Friedman ventures deep into myth and legend in his latest, suggesting Gore was deprived of his crown by a Republican Supreme Court, failing to note that charitably objective, arguably hostile media and academic counts have in fact conceded that, under  the rules that govern our elections, Bush won.  That’s followed by plaudits for Gore’s alarmist, scientifically distorted and grossly hypocritical campaign against the forces of man and nature.

He slams Bush for wasting an entire year in the first 9 months of his term, and condemns him for failing to advance a social agenda in the midst of war, then attacks him for failing to sufficiently alarm people about our enemies, and for failing to make it about oil.  

Yes, Iraq was always going to be hugely difficult, but the potential payoff of erecting a decent, democratizing government in the heart of the Arab world was also enormous. Yet Mr. Bush, in his signature issue, never mobilized the country, never punished incompetence, never made the bad guys “fight all of us,” as Bill Maher put it, by at least pushing through a real energy policy to reduce the resources of the very people we were fighting. He thought he could change the world with 50.1 percent of the country, and he couldn’t.

Glad to see the shout out for Iraq. Iraq needs all the friends it can get. Where Bush went wrong with it is another matter, and here is where Friedman veers sharply back into fantasy. 

Someone needs to tell Tom: It’s not that Americans haven’t been amply demonstrated that there is a mortal peril from determined fanatics who want to kill them, and seek apocalyptic means with which to accomplish their goals. It’s that they don’t care to believe it, or think it can be wished away, or think it the end, it isn’t that big a deal, and anyway, why do they hate us? 

Bush, who sought to unify America for war but encountered rank partisanship and defiant wishful thinking, is faulted for failing to overcome same in the midst of war to advance a social agenda. Rather than use what unity may have briefly existed to advance the agenda of his political adversaries, he basely acted on his own beliefs. The excaliber Bush never pulled out of the rock was going green. Friedman exalts Gore’s mighty sword as the scourge of all foes environmental, economic and geo-political. 

It would be wonderful not to have to buy foreign oil. What none of the advocates of this admirable goal have explained is how that would reduce the strategic importance of oil on the world stage, its ability to finance our enemies and turn tinpot dictators into world-class threats.  Such as Saddam sought to be. Such as Iran and China would like to be. Not clear also that, in answer to the popular 9/11 entreaty, it would make them not hate us.  

There are in fact benefits to sound environmental policy.  Some of them are economic.  Cheaper, cleaner energy sources. Cleaner Earth. The defeat of Islamo-fascism and the end of efforts by authoritarian regimes to dominate their regions and perhaps the world are not among them. Even if we stopped buying Middle Eastern oil tomorrow, its importance as a resource that will fuel extremism, despotism and ongoing war will not end. For that matter, if it all dried up tomorrow, the threat from those quarters would not end.  Also not among them is the likelihood that we will control the forces of nature that have, on a regular basis over the last several hundred million years, made the Earth hotter, colder, made oceans levels higher, lower. 

Extreme measures based on alarmism and distorted philosophies are not going to either save the world or do our economy any good.  The suggestion that we can green our way to national security, economic bliss and salvation from the forces of nature is silly.  I thought that guy was supposed to be smart. Then again, this is the same guy who said that 9/11 made us stupid. Whatever else he is, Friedman is good for a laugh on a Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, here’s Fallows on Gore:  “Gore can be pompous, lecturing, pedantic, and all the rest.” It’s a good start as Gore descriptions go, and if by “all the rest,” Fallows meant alarmist and fabulist, Fallows would be onto something. But he doesn’t, and he isn’t. 

Topics: pols, warmglob

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:36 am on Sunday, October 14, 2007

15 Responses to “King Al the Green”

1. RebeccaH Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 11:42 am

   Mr. Gore lost the presidency, but in the dignity and grace with which he gave up his legal fight, he united America.

   Wha…huh?? “Dignity and grace”? Was Friedman even on the same planet?

2. The Mahablog » Mighty Links Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 11:45 am

   […] — if you have a strong stomach — check out what that verbal pestilence known as “Jules Crittenden” says about it. Keep Pepto Bismol […]

3. corndog Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

   The “verdict full of it” theme is one of the stupidest I’ve seen for weeks. The judge made no determination that An Inconvenient Truth had nine errors. His job was to find the places where there were existing “views to the contrary” of what was presented, and he found nine, and he said the other viewpoints should be presented. That’s a long, long stretch to “verdict full of it,” but nice try.

4. saltydog Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

   Corndog! I’ve wondered where you where. With so many bones laying about to gnaw on, I wondered, why is he silent? Now I understand. There just wasn’t that much to say, was there?

5. corndog Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

   Been busy, cousin.

6. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

   The judge made no determination that An Inconvenient Truth had nine errors.

   Corndog, even the Beeb disagrees with you.

   Sorry, dude, but you can’t spin doctor this one for The Goreacle™ and other watermelons.

7. vercingetorix Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

   His job was to find the places where there were existing “views to the contrary” of what was presented, and he found nine, and he said the other viewpoints should be presented.

   Oh, okay. Kinda blows to hell the whole “consensus” and inarguable proof of manmade global warming dealio, and the judgment does mention the certified errors–sorry viewpoint differences that they describe as ahem, “inaccuracies,” odd that, in his presentation of the “viewpoints”: carbon dioxide levels trail temperature changes, OOOPS!; the Antartic is melting, errr, growing; and the impossibility of the many claims.

   Corndog, you don’t have a leg to stand on.

8. Robert Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

   Dignity and grace would have involved conceding after the official canvas of Florida was concluded. Remember, if algore had been able to carry his home state of Tennessee he would have won. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even close.

9. Purple Avenger Says:
   October 14th, 2007 at 5:01 pm

   uncrowned sounds a lot like beclowned. curious that.

10. Sister Toldjah Says:
    October 14th, 2007 at 5:11 pm

    Tom Friedman gushes: Who will be the next Al Gore?

    When I last blogged about Tom Friedman, he was yearning for a 9/10 president in a post-9/11 world. Today, we find him giddy with excitement over the Goracle’s Nobel Peace prize win last Friday. Friedman opines (emphasis added):
    Seeing Al Gore s…

11. S. Weasel Says:
    October 14th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

    Awww, geez, Crittenden! I read “one of my favorite Sunday morning reads” and went and read the piece on the spot, thinking it was a real endorsement. I kept asking myself, “when do we get to the sarcasm tag?”

    Now I feel all dirty.

12. Missred Says:
    October 14th, 2007 at 6:21 pm

    So: might this award make Gore sound even more righteous? Maybe, but who cares. He has earned it. A lot of other people have the big head on much flimsier grounds.

    oh good grief! he “earned” it. on what grounds i ask? what does his dribble about gorebal worming have to do with peace?

13. tanstaafl Says:
    October 14th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    This is our crucible moment.

    That line brought on the gag reflex .

    How come The Friedperson doesn’t mention Algore’s own personal

    GIANT CARBON FOOTPRINT

    in that thar “piece” ?

14. Vanguard of the Commentariat Says:
    October 15th, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    Now if he could just sing like Al Green, I’m sure he would be well past the beatification process.

15. Mineral Says:
    October 24th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

    Forget Al Gore’s carbon footprint. What about the ridiculously hypocritical lifestyle of Friedman himself?

    The Washintonian Magazine reported in July 2006 that Friedman lives (alone with his wife) in a “palatial” 11000 square foot house in Washington.

    Even a casual reader will notice that Friedman flies with startling regularity to distant locales where he reports on the “Green” lessons we Americans could learn from the natives. Who thinks he flies any of these hundreds of thousands of miles commercial coach class?

    I am so tired of being lectured by people like Gore and Friedman on the “crisis” of global warming by people who behave completely otherwise.

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