Tom Friedman: On the Case!

The text for today's sermon is derived from Thomas Friedman's most recent column. As you probably know, Mr. Friedman is the award-bejeweled star pundit of the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. Pulitzers drip from his masthead like bling. He is the Voice of Authority. And he's figured out something very important which you would be wise to heed. To wit:

"I do not believe nation-building in Iraq is going to be the issue come November — whether things get better there or worse. If they get better, we’ll ignore Iraq more; if they get worse, the next president will be under pressure to get out quicker. I think nation-building in America is going to be the issue.

"It’s the state of America now that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans, not Al Qaeda or Iraq. Anyone who thinks they are going to win this election playing the Iraq or the terrorism card — one way or another — is, in my view, seriously deluded. Things have changed."

Wow. Now that's chutzpah. You see, among Mr. Friedman's other titles is Chief Neocon Cheerleader for the Invasion of Iraq (sorry that doesn't work out as a cute acronym, but it's Monday morning). He is the inventor (perhaps discoverer, depending on whether you believe it existed in nature before his description) of the Friedman Unit. The Friedman Unit is six months. Mr. Friedman, at any point in the ongoing train wreck which is the U.S. occupation of Iraq, has counseled that six months are needed to determine whether a "decent outcome" is possible in Iraq. Unkind kibbitzers have pointed out that Friedman, in fact, has advised waiting a Friedman Unit about 13 times, which if linked together actually exceed the length of the U.S. occupation to date.

I think his tune has changed along with "things." Tom believes that anyone who now thinks that Iraq is the key issue for current America is "seriously deluded." Not just "deluded." "Seriously deluded." Let's look up "delusion" in the American Heritage Dictionary and figure out what Tom is calling people. "Delusion: a false belief held in spite of invalidating evidence, esp. as a condition of certain forms of mental illness." I cheated a little by leaping to the third definition, the one I liked best. But Tom Friedman cheats all the time. The way he's cheating you now is by jumping to a place in front of his new parade and pretending that Iraq-as-a-bad-idea is a brand new issue for Mr. Friedman to instruct you about. Instead of, say, devoting his next twenty columns to a detailed apology for the horrendous course of action he and a lot of other Makers of Fashionable Opinion enabled back in 2002-03.

Iraq was a tremendously bad idea in 2003, too. For exactly the same reasons, those "things" Friedman refers to. Those things include (a) America's bankruptcy and (b) economic destruction. In 2003 the United States was in no shape to invade Iraq. It doesn't matter if toppling Saddam Hussein was "the right thing to do." It doesn't matter if one hundred years of war in the Middle East, against one country after another, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, might finally produce stable democracies so we could finally quit worrying about losing another couple of skyscrapers to our own commercial jets. We never had the wherewithal to mount a big invasion and a long occupation in a distant Third World desert, spending $12 billion a month and breaking down the military, and allowing this one foreign policy project to dominate all national discourse and the attentions of Congress.

Because now look where we are. We have run deficits (as measured by growth in the National Debt) of a half trillion dollars per year, and the debt will be $10 trillion when Bush leaves office. The Dow Jones is now lower than during the Clinton Administration. The dollar has lost 40% of its value against the euro. Unemployment is on the way up. Consumer spending is on the way down (masked briefly by Federal Bribes financed by borrowing more money from foreign creditors, but that won't last). The banking system is teetering on the brink of insolvency. Unaffordable gasoline. A cratering real estate market. Mr. Friedman and many others like him who were so gung-ho for this war because it gave them something glamorous and adventurous to write about would have you believe that these developments fit into the neat confines of their perceived "news cycle," which is perhaps even shorter than a Friedman Unit. That America woke up one morning and said to itself, hey, we've got problems here at home, too. Maybe a constant fixation on violence in Iraq as a spectator sport is a diversion we can't afford any longer. We don't make our livings writing about the Iraq War. We have to participate in what you might call the "general economy," and the general economy sucks.

So yeah, Thomas Friedman, you might be right. Anyone who thinks Iraq is the major issue facing America is seriously deluded. And has been for at least five years.