"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Hey, Friedman! You go first.
Posted by Jill | 6:59 AM

Every time I read some armchair quarterback talking about feeding more American bodies into the meat grinder that is Iraq, I think of that immortal line from Don't Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers: "How you gonna do it, Porge?"

Usually it's younger members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders who do stuff like this, but I think that the 52nd Dancing Propagandists unit could find a place for a guy like Thomas Friedman (emphases mine):

Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point - the point where the key communities begin to invest more energy in preparing their own militias for a scramble for power - when everything falls apart, rather than investing their energies in making the hard compromises within and between their communities to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.

[snip]

Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq, why not actually try to do it right? Double the American boots on the ground and redouble the diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to be part of the process and fight to the death those who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an important new book on the Iraq war, "Squandered Victory," puts it, we need "a bold mobilizing strategy" right now. That means the new Iraqi government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen the political arena in Iraq, energizing the constitution-writing process and developing a communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us.


Aside from talking out of two sides of his mouth, saying both that this war is winnable and that it may be too late, isn't it delightful how Friedman is perfectly willing to send ANOTHER 150,000 of OTHER PEOPLE and OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS to Iraq so that he can claim he was right? Amazing how cavalier these guys are with the lives of America's young people.

God, where on earth does the Times FIND these people?
0 comments
Bookmark and Share