Double-Reverse Chickendove
To paraphrase some Marine wag in Ramadi … Tom Friedman isn’t at war, the Marine Corps is at war. The Army is at war. Tom Friedman’s at Neiman Marcus:
Boy, am I glad we finally got out of Iraq. It was so painful waking up every morning and reading the news from there. It’s just such a relief to have it out of mind and behind us.
Huh? Say what? You say we’re still there? But how could that be — nobody in Washington is talking about it anymore?
I don’t know whether it was the sheer agony of the debate over Gen. David Petraeus’s testimony, or the fact that the surge really has dampened casualties, or the failure by Democrats to force an Iraq withdrawal through Congress, or the fact that all the leading Democratic presidential contenders have signaled that they will not precipitously withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, but the air has gone out of the Iraq debate.
That is too bad. Neglect is not benign when it comes to Iraq — because Iraq is not healthy. Iraq is like a cancer patient who was also running a high fever from an infection (Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia). The military surge has brought down the fever, but the patient still has cancer (civil war). And we still don’t know how to treat it. Surgery? Chemotherapy? Natural healers? Euthanasia?
Actually, Iraq is more like a tortured, politically traumatized nation of 25 million people desperate for a chance in life, after decades of being cynically abused by everyone from Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda to the Iranian mullahs, a plague of viruses that have infected the entire region. The cure? Determined, patient counter-insurgency in Iraq. Airstrikes targeting Iran’s capability to project trouble. A long war. Diplomacy with honest partners, when they emerge.
To the extent that the surge has worked militarily, it is largely because of what Iraqis have done by themselves for themselves — Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders rising up against pro-Qaeda Sunni elements, taking back control of their villages and towns, and aligning themselves with U.S. forces to do so. Some Shiites are now doing the same.
Now that’s supporting the troops. Apparently Friedman missed the part about the Iraqis recognizing the Americans aren’t leaving, that Americans can fight and won’t quit, that the Americans, as they have bled, are actually trying to help them, while al-Qaeda was just bleeding them. That the American “strong horse” represents their interests. That the Americans represent order and prosperity, and will leave when Iraq is on that path. That al-Qaeda represents chaos, death and violently enforced Sharia. Clearly the Americans had nothing to do with this uprising.
This is interesting. It dovetails with the line some in Washington and the news media have been pushing: Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a homegrown organization, all Iraqi anti-invader resistance, no links to bin Laden. The same people will tell you that al-Qaeda in Iraq, now that it’s on the ropes, never really was that big a deal. Not the enemy. That’s just Bush trying to hoodwink America with a new version of the old Saddam hearts al-Qaeda thing four years later.
Friedman bemoans the fact that Iraqi politicians have not yet followed their people. In fact, some have made moves in that direction, but they’ve turned out by and large to be every bit as self-interested, gutless, ineffective and divisive as … American politicans. Friedman bemoans that fact that Washington isn’t bickering about Iraq anymore. He observes that after a summer of squawking about it, a year spent doing everything they can to undermine it, the Democrats are spent. They failed, in the face of logic, hope, achievement. They and their candidates have had to recognize that America prefers to win and sees a chance to do that. He neglects to observe that it hasn’t stopped the House speaker from running a cynical campaign to derail supply lines into Iraq with an Armenian genocide resolution … a bid to unsupport the troops and usher in a new Iraqi genocide. And if Friedman is patient, he’ll get all the Iraq bickering he wants soon enough. Bush needs more money for his war.
The politics aside, there is something particularly loathsome about Friedman’s snide screed this morning.
I know that Friedman travels a lot, talks to a lot people. He’s visited war. Thirty years ago he spent some time in Beirut, and he’s been to Baghdad, met with the big players. But I’m not sure he’s travelled enough to make the arguments he’s making and crack wise about it. Correct me if I’m wrong. Has this guy spent any time in combat with American troops? If not, then he hasn’t met enough big players. Hasn’t sweated enough. Hasn’t counted his last hours and minutes enough. Hasn’t come under enough fire. Hasn’t seen enough bits of people lying around afterward.
People who talk up war without going get slapped with chickenhawk slurs. Clearly Friedman’s no chickenhawk, at least not anymore. Chickenhawk slurs are slapped on people who support war and haven’t gone. ”Chickenhawk” gets tossed around by people who don’t feel the need to lift a finger in support of the peace they profess to love. Not a human shield among them.
Friedman presents us with something different. The double-reverse chickendove. War supporter turned surrender enthusiast makes ironic funny about how painful this war has been for him. The terrible barrage of headlines, slogging through all those long, bitter thumbsuckers. News is hell. But apparently, he hasn’t been reading it.
Prior Friedman appreciations: Nation of Stupid, King Al the Green
Welcome Punditeers, RCP, Jawa, etal. So good to see you! Come on in. More NWoeT. Be all you can be … you can do it … as a U.S. detainee! I thought it was about national security. Wrong. It’s about her, herself and she. Guys, impress chicks with your knowledge of Nobel gases. Gals, wow the guys with your knowledge of math and geography: Quick, what’s six of one, half a dozen of the other on the Western Front?
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:02 am Comments (20) on Wednesday, October 24, 2007
20 Responses to “Double-Reverse Chickendove”
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October 24th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Friedman is part of the “dead ender media” that simply can’t get their heads around the notion that an undeniable win is quickly approaching.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I used to like to read Friedman. That was back when I read newspapers.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:36 am
It’s important to remember that no matter the only winners will be the Iraqi people. If the US accomplished out goal in Iraq, the benefits will be reaped by the Iraqi people. If we fail, it is the Iraqi people who will suffer first and foremost.
We can always come home. The Iraqis have to live in the bed they make.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Friedman was CYA artist on the war from the beginniing. If you go back and look at his columns leading up to the Iraq invasion, he was pro-war right up until it was past the point of no return, then he began equivocating and backing up, saying “Yes, but not yet.” Not yet? The troops and material were in transit.
My guess is that when push came to shove, sucking up to Hal Raines took precedence over having a coherent position on U.S. policy for fighting Islamic terrorism and the future of the Mideast. Friedman’s fall-back was to make oracular pronouncements about how everybody involved was culpable and misguided. That sort of thing has since become his specialty. He can make sense for brief periods, but then quickly hedges everything he’s just said. But cutting and pasting from his writing you can quickly construct strong recommendations for any policy, and its opposite. It’s all very cute, but it sums to zero.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:55 am
My favorite line? Glad you asked
As a result, what you have today is more of a spotty truce, with U.S. soldiers still caught in the middle.
Our troops are stuck in the middle of a truce!!!! How horrible.
Well, it surely is horrible for his chosen political party, the one invested in American defeat in Iraq, but I’m surprised he notes it so openly.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
“It’s important to remember that no matter the only winners will be the Iraqi people. If the US accomplished out goal in Iraq, the benefits will be reaped by the Iraqi people. If we fail, it is the Iraqi people who will suffer first and foremost.
We can always come home. The Iraqis have to live in the bed they make.”
Well said.
It also hits on something I picked up from the Friedman peice.
“To the extent that the surge has worked militarily, it is largely because of what Iraqis have done by themselves for themselves — Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders rising up against pro-Qaeda Sunni elements, taking back control of their villages and towns, and aligning themselves with U.S. forces to do so. Some Shiites are now doing the same.”
Yes, but wasn’t that always the plan? Hasn’t GWB been saying since the very beginning that ultimately it would be up to the Iraqi people to determine thier future, and that we were only there as enablers. Hasn’t it always been the plan that we would help them to help themselves? To the extent that the surge has worked, isn’t it working in the way that we’d been trying to achieve all along – to get the Iraqi people to take responcibility for thier future, thier prosperity, and thier security in a positive and constructive manner? Wasn’t that what it was always all about? Wasn’t that what the purple fingers were all about? We weren’t there to do it for them, because we never brought enough resources to do so. We didn’t bring them because we didn’t have them to bring at the time, and still don’t. We aren’t giving birth to a new nation. We are there as midwives to the new nation. Nation building it may be, but ultimately we aren’t and can’t do the work. We were there not to give them a fish, but to teach them to fish.
So, the fact that to the extent that the surge is working that it is due to the work of the Iraqi people themself is actually more promising and hopeful than the idea that the surge only worked because we brought more resources to the table, because it implies that the surge will continue to work after the surge is over.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
It seems to me that the Iraqi people are sick and tired of fighting and dying. It is hard for events to change that. Usually when this occurs less people are killed.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Bloggers Headline of the Day
Go Read It All!
October 24th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden » Double-Reverse Chickendove Comment: [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] takes the piss out of Thomas Friedman: Apparently Friedman missed the part about the Iraqis recognizing the [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I think you’re wrong, yb. The citizens of Free Iraq are still fighting very hard to keep their country.
celebrim: Yes. I love your comment.
I read this with particular interest because Friedman has only recently come onto my radar screen and I find him astonishing. I haven’t read a newspaper in six years, and when I did, it was the Journal, so I’m not familiar with most NYT writers except when they get linked in the blogosphere (or something similar; my Google Alert for “local food” turned up a pretty good NYT article the other day; but I digress).
Last year a colleague of mine recommended Friedman’s The Earth is Flat. So I tried reading it.
What a painful experience! The man cannot think. His prose is a morass of half-baked notions held together with self-absorbed musings. Not only is he apparently incapable of making a cogent argument or even taking a clear position, he cannot string paragraphs together in such a way that the material progresses. The book just meanders along aimlessly until it finally collapses under its own weight. I wondered who the heck this guy was — how did he even published? — and was rather amused when I learned who he is!
This article shows the same kind of astonishingly bad thinking (which can only lead to bad writing) but of course it is much worse since it is SO offensive. Thank you, Jules, for delivering the fisking it deserves.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
This is rich: winning in Iraq is now defined as casualty levels returning to levels last seen 12-18 months ago. The rightwingers understand that this is their war and that as Iraq goes so do their political prospects here at home. This explains why they have been so desperate to salvage something, anything, they can call ‘victory’. Have at it boys. Hold all the ticker tape parades you want – the country has already made up it’s mind about Bush and this stupendous folly. It’s going to be lots of fun watching you all pay the price the next few election cycles.
October 24th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I’ll never understand why so many conservatives go beyond intelligent rebuttals of people they disagree with. They insist on snide personal attacks on those they disagree with.
A clear majority of Americans want our troops home soon because they have no confidence in the Bush administration to achieve anything in Iraq that justifies the deaths of so many good men and women and the ongoing expenditure of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. All the personal vitriol aimed at Tom Friedman or the New York Times isn’t going to change that.
Stay-the-course advocates can’t even define what “victory” in Iraq would actually look like. A peaceful, stable, pro-Amerian democracy in the Middle East? Four million barrels of oil per day? A reduction in casualties to 2004 levels? They love to talk about al Qaeda. Fair enough. But anyone who has served in Iraq will tell you that jihadis account for a small percentage of the death and destruction going on there. Whipping al Qaeda is a worthy goal. But the Sunni and Shiite militias will remain, and they have a lot of land and reources to war over. That’s why Friedman continues to emphasize the obbvious lack of any discernible political progress in the country.
War supporters will continue to personally attack all who disagree with them. Iraq will remain mired in sectarian conflict long after we’re gone. That’s the sad reality. Some of us love our troops too much to let them continue to risk their loves for a goal that our elected leaders cannot define.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Just like Strobe Talbot and his analysis opf the Soviet Union. For years, the line was “they’re too strong; they’ll just keep up with us in defense spending; we’ll never top them”. Them once they fell, it was “see, they were weak all along, no need to have spent all that money”. And that is what passed, and still passes, for serious geo-political knowledge. Friedman and his ilk are the same. “Oh, AQ is too strong, too this too that. What, they’re defeated? Well, they never really were a threat you know.”
October 24th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
OK Democrat president. Great points. No more war. Sounds good to me. We right wing death beasts love our troops too (having been one).
Uh oh, Islamogoons just blew up Atlanta on your watch. 30,000 dead and counting, mostly women and children and black people. Whatcha gonna do? Quick, no reading to school kids or protecting the office by flying around to undisclosed locations. No time for “why do they hate us”. Bush is gone, retired to Texas on oil and Haliburton profits, strangling kittens and chuckling over dead GI’s while he drools on himself in the corner, so no use blaming him. You’re the guy with the job. The place where the Islamogoons came from is a peaceful country full of children flying kites and happy peasants raising poppies and not bothering anyone. C’mon Democrat president, the “little people” you care so much about want answers and they want action.
And I don’t think S-Chip and raising the minimum wage is going to mollify them right now.
October 24th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
[...] Double-Reverse Chickendove [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
[...] 25, 2007 at 2:05 am · Filed under Family & Friends, Politics Jules Crittenden summed up Gulf War II nicely: That the Americans represent order and prosperity, and will leave when Iraq is on that path. That [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
It’s too bad that we can’t see that in most ways this war has been already won! Saddam is gone and the Iraqis have a government that represents what they want. Furthermore, whether there is a “civil war” or not, any future stable government will look very much like the present government. That is, the future government of Iraq will be Shiite dominated with a lot of Kurd input. It will continue to be more of less friendly to the US. Why? Because hostility to the US, Europe, and reckless expansionism have already been tried by the former Baathist government and these policies were disastrous to Iraq. The Iraqis need our money and we need their oil. Any government of Iraq that reflects the Iraqi peoples’ wishes will be pro-Western to the extent that we will not be inclined to boycott their main export commodity. The Iraqis can also look at the economic disaster that is Iran if they want further confirmation of the wisdom of pro-Western policies. I believe that people may be foolish but that they are not crazy. Our present involvement in Iraq is a humanitarian effort to reduce bloodshed but it will not materially affect the outcome of this conflict which will evolve along the lines which I have described.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
To the extent that the surge has worked militarily, it is largely because of what Iraqis have done by themselves for themselves — Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders rising up against pro-Qaeda Sunni elements, taking back control of their villages and towns, and aligning themselves with U.S. forces to do so. Some Shiites are now doing the same.
Pardon me….but isn’t that what was supposed to have happened, Iraqi’s doing the heavy lifting “by themselves for themselves”?
——–
There has been no equivalent surprise, though, in Iraqi politics, yet. If you see that — if you see Iraqi politicians surprising you by doing things they’ve never done before, like forging a self-sustaining political compromise and building the fabric of a unified country, then you can allow yourself some optimism.
So far, though, too many of Iraq’s leaders continue to act their part — looking out for themselves, their clans, their hometowns, their militias and their sects, and using the Iraqi treasury and ministries as looting grounds for personal or sectarian gains.
Checked Washington D.C. lately? American leaders “continue to act their part”— Looking out for themselves, Their constituency, their hometowns, their power base, using the American treasury as looting grounds for personal gain. It’s called PORK, I believe.
——–
As a result, what you have today is more of a spotty truce, with U.S. soldiers still caught in the middle. That is a quiet strategy, not an exit strategy.
You mean like the Korean peninsula truce where 37,000 U.S. soldiers are “still caught in the middle”. Wait, what about the Bosnia/Kosovo?
October 25th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Tom Friedman on the Fall of Rome:
(August 21, 410 A.D.) THE ALPS — I was at a dinner party last night with some friends and was struck by their pessimism. Yes, Alaric and the Visigoths have overrun the entire peninsula, yes, they’ve sacked Rome, and yes, they have flayed and burned most of the relatives of the guests at the dinner, and yes the entire city is on fire, and yes they’re slaughtering and raping the remaining inhabitants. Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I think this might be the best thing to ever happen to Rome.